Photos: Menachem Kalish

I

t was late one Sunday night, about five years ago. I was in bustling Ben Gurion airport, all checked in, with one hour to boarding and no kids to chase.

It was my first time flying alone in over a decade, and an hour all to myself was a luxury. I wandered in and out of stores, until, being more of a reader than a shopper, I ended up at Steimatzky’s.

I walked up and down the aisles, stopping at the autobiography of Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau. I’d been meaning to get a copy of the English translation, but now that the original Hebrew was in front of me, I looked at it contemplatively. Could I do it? I flipped through some pages. Go on, be a good role model, I told myself. If you want your children to read English books, you should at least be willing to try Hebrew.

Yeah, but this was long. And it was so… not English.

All of a sudden, I heard a man’s voice. “It’s a good book. I recommend it.”

Startled, I looked up. An older man was standing next to me, smiling. Wearing a rounded rabbinic hat and a frock coat.

I looked down at the cover of the book, where Rav Lau smiled up at me. Then back up at the man.

No, it couldn’t be.

Down, up. Book, man.

Here? In Steimatzky’s?

I’m not sure how many times I did my head bobble, back and forth, book and man, before I finally got up the guts to ask, “Atah haRav?”

He inclined his head graciously. “Tell them to give you a discount,” he said, winking.

Of course, I bought the book. And immediately called my husband, who said, “Get his autograph!”

Right. I raced out of the store, found Rav Lau nearby, and asked him to inscribe the book, which he did.

And that was the end of the story.

At least for now.

Which, if you want to know the embarrassing truth, I find kind of odd because over the years, I’ve been waiting for the second half to emerge.

You know, the unbelievable ending to the Hashgachah pratis story, which begins with a totally random, what-are-the-odds? encounter in an airport and ends with some eye-popping denouement that forever alters my or my descendants’ destinies.

I read the book (in Hebrew!), which was beautifully written and inspirational, but I didn’t uncover a personal message hidden in its pages that would reveal my great purpose in life. But why else would Hashem take the trouble to arrange such wild circumstances to ensure I buy this book? Was it just to get a good Lifetakes out of it? (“I’ve handed her a story on a SILVER PLATTER, and still, it takes FIVE YEARS—”)

 (Excerpted from Family First, Issue 595)