“Please come with me,” she begged. “It’ll be a one-time thing — and the trip won’t last more than 24 hours”

As told to Sarah Pardes by Ruth Laniado 

B

ack in 2011, a few days before Rosh Hashanah, I got a call from my older sister. “I need a huge favor,” she said.

My sister runs a company that imports women’s clothing from Europe to Israel. Every few months, she flies abroad to visit the factories, usually accompanied by her business partner or her husband. This time, however, both were unavailable. “Please come with me,” she begged. “It’ll be a one-time thing — and the trip won’t last more than 24 hours.”

My initial instinct was to refuse. The days before Yom Tov are already hectic, and, baruch Hashem, I have a number of small children. Also, until that point, I’d never once left Israel. I’d never had a need nor a desire to leave my beautiful country. But my sister was desperate, and my husband volunteered to watch the children. So, for the first time, I found myself applying for a passport and packing my bags for a flight.

A day before we were scheduled to leave, my sister called with an update: Because of production delays, the flight would be pushed off by a week, to two days before Yom Kippur. Once again I hesitated, but my husband urged me to do this chesed for my sister, even arguing that the new timing was better.