At 10 a.m. Monday morning, the delivery truck rolled up to the Zucker home, and the driver rang the doorbell.

“You got a forklift all ready to handle this load?” he said.

“I’m sure the forklift will be delivered any moment,” Rabbi Zucker said apologetically. “Can I offer you a drink while you wait?”

“Nah, I’ll wait in my truck for a few minutes,” the driver grunted accommodatingly.

Twenty minutes later, the driver was feeling less accommodating. “Your forklift gonna show up or not?” he demanded of Rabbi Zucker. “I’ve got other deliveries to make today, y’know.”

Several hundred miles north, my phone rang.

“Rabbi Paretzky, where’s the forklift?!” the rabbi asked worriedly.

“Hang on, let me find out what’s going on,” I said.

The forklift, it turned out, was just being reloaded onto a new truck after the old truck had crashed into the car ahead of it. No worries, it would arrive in another 30 minutes.

Rabbi Zucker pressed a $50 bill into the hand of the U-guard truck driver as he relayed this unwelcome news.

At long last, the forklift arrived. “Okay, man!” cheered the driver. “Let’s get these pallets unloaded!”

Rabbi Zucker jumped into the driver’s seat of the forklift… and froze. Buttons and levers, complicated dials and controls seemed to stare up at him. He hadn’t known that operating a forklift was so complicated. How in the world would he know which buttons to press to safely ferry the 8,000 pounds of materials to his backyard?

“Hold on,” he implored the antsy truck driver. “I just need to make a quick phone call.”

The truck driver shook his head in undisguised impatience.

“Rabbi Goldstein,” Rabbi Zucker greeted his chavrusa. “I have a strange question. Who in this community knows how to operate a forklift?”

“Well, actually,” Rabbi Goldstein said, “a guy I learn with on Tuesday evenings drives a forklift for his job at ABC Warehouse. His name is Abe Williams.”

“Hang on,” interrupted Rabbi Zucker. “I know Abe Williams! He’s a great guy and would definitely help me out. But isn’t he sitting shivah right now for his father?”

Rabbi Goldstein cleared his throat. “Sitting, yes,” he replied carefully. “But shivah, not exactly. You see, Abe’s father wasn’t Jewish. Abe is honoring his death with a shivah-day hiatus from work, but no halachos of shivah technically apply.”

Feeling insensitive but stuck, Rabbi Zucker dialed Abe. “Hello, Abe. I’m so sorry for your loss. I was wondering if you’d like to do a chesed that would surely be a merit for your father’s memory….”

“The forklift driver will be here in ten minutes!”  Rabbi Zucker announced to the driver, pressing a $100 bill into his hand.

A non-shivah turned eiruv-unloading operation is definitely not how I had imagined prepping for the new Bayville eiruv. But sometimes help is hard to come by, and Hashem is endlessly creative in providing solutions.

*Names and locations have been changed to protect identity of those involved

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1098)