It happened several years ago. I returned home from my job at the bank, where I work as a clerk, and on the way I saw a small ad: Furniture needed for a beis medrash established recently – tables, chairs, bookcases. We would be grateful for any contribution.” I did not think there was a way for me to help them, but the request touched my heart, and so I took a note with the phone number.
The next day, I came to work as usual, and then I saw a carpenter taking apart my desk. “Excuse me, this is my work table,” I said.
“You’ll get a new table,” he told me. “This is a new branch, and the management has decided to upgrade the furniture.”
Indeed, just a month earlier, the branch had moved to a new location. This was an upscale branch, originally meant for clients from abroad. The furniture in it was expensive and heavy, but the management had decided that it was not suitable for the bank right now. The clerks needed furniture with a modern, simpler line, and the fancy, heavily decorated, impressive quality furniture was to be tossed into the trash.
The clerks near me claimed that the furniture we had until now was comfortable and more suitable, and what did we need this revamping for, but the carpenter continued his work. He had received orders from the management, and this was what he had to do.
He went from one desk to the next, from closet to shelve to chair, and took apart everything. Suddenly, he turned my way and asked: “Perhaps you know of someone who would want this furniture?”
A moment before I shook my head no, I remembered the note I had torn off just the day before from the small notice. “Yes, I have the number of someone who could use this.”
I called the number, which, it turned out, belonged to the rav of the shul. “There is a donation here of furniture for your beis medrash,” I told him.
He asked several questions and clarified to where he was to send a van to pick up the furniture.
“Not a van, a truck,” I emphasized. “There is a huge amount of everything here, and it is all great quality.”
The rav was excited, and the avreichim got together and arranged for a truck. They came to load up the furniture and were amazed by the quality, quantity, and beauty of the pieces. Their beis medrash merited truly magnificent furniture.
I was happy – I had been zocheh to glorify Hashem’s house.
But this is just the beginning of the story...
My name was now listed in the bank’s construction department as someone who knows people and institutions that need furniture. Several days later, the architect of the department called. He said they were closing an entire floor of the bank in Tel Aviv, and they were going to get rid of the furniture there. “Do you know someone who needs furniture?”
I said, “For sure. I’ll call you right back with the details.”
At that second I did not know of anyone who needed furniture, but I knew exactly what I had to do. I started a round of phone calls. I called one yeshivah, then another and another, until at the end, two trucks were sent off filled with furniture for Yeshivas Shemaya, and another two trucks for Yeshivas Beis Kol.
The success excited me. I am merely a bank clerk. I don’t have extra money. The tzedakah I am zocheh to give is not more than the standard that is acceptable in Am Yisrael, and here I had the zechus to fill yeshivos and shuls with furniture. In my zechus, the voice of Torah would be heard in greater comfort and grandeur, and all it took was my making a few phone calls.
Two weeks passed, and the department of construction contacted me once again. This time they were renewing the branch in Yerushalayim, and with the previous successes still fresh in my mind, I searched for the next yeshivah. This time, trucks set out with the furniture for Yeshivat Porat Yosef and Rinat Torah.
Several more phone calls of this sort, and the battei midrash in the North and the center of the country received tables and chairs and closets and shelves. In Bnei Brak and Modiin Illit as well, I already have “clients.” I was zocheh also to help avreichim who were so pleased to have a new closet in their homes. Hodu lo, barchu Shemo.
In the meantime, my phone number became known on the other end as well. Yeshivos started calling to ask if I knew of someone who was replacing their furniture and was interested in donating their old furniture. The “business” flourished, and a waiting list was created.
One day, I got a call from yeshivas Slobodka. The tables and chairs in this heiligeh yeshivah are decades old, and they were about to fall apart. The rabbanim were sitting at rickety “dancing” tables, and they desperately needed to replace them. “Can you arrange for 500 units?” the yeshivah secretary asked.
Five hundred! No less! And each including a table and also a closet! I had never dealt in such quantities. The deals I had brought about were for up to fifty or seventy units at once. Once we had dealt with even a hundred, but five hundred? There was no chance.
“I would be happy to help,” I said, “but I have no idea how to do so.”
Less than two months passed, and I received a phone call from the carpenter who worked for the bank: “We’re closing down two large branches in Netanya, and we have a huge amount of furniture to give away – five hundred units!”
Three trucks made their way from Yeshivas Slobodka. The tables were no longer dancing; only the hearts were dancing with thanks and song to the Giver of the Torah. How fortunate are you, all the bnei hayeshivos, who are sitting at the tables of the Omnipresent and learning His heiligeh Torah!
