One morning after davening, a friend informed me with much excitement that his beloved son had gotten engaged. I congratulated him excitedly, and afterward this new mechutan asked me for a loan of 5,000 shekels.
I did not have that sum with me that moment, and in general, I don’t walk around with such sums in my pocket. Actually, I wasn’t sure that I wanted to loan him the money, so I had a ready excuse. “I don’t have the money on me right now.”
But while I was talking, I thought to myself that this was a big mitzvah and, baruch Hashem, that there were good reasons for his needing the money. My friend, I hope, did not even sense how these thoughts were flitting though my mind, because I immediately said to him, “Tonight I have an event in the shul’s simchah hall, and then, im yirtzeh Hashem, I’ll have the money for you.”
We arranged that he would meet me at the hall.
When he came to borrow the money, I took out the envelope with the money the ba’al simchah had given me. I counted the bills and discovered that 100 shekels was missing from the 5,000 shekels. I added a 100-shekel bill from my wallet and handed over the loan.
Now I had time to think about what had happened. How was it that 100 shekels were missing? We had agreed on a specific sum, and it should have been more than the amount of money that was in the envelope. I was missing a thousand shekels.
Later on, during a quieter moment, I asked the ba’al simchah whether he had found a thousand shekels. He did not understand the question. Why would he find a thousand shekels for me? He’d already given me the sum I’d asked for. There was a sum he still had to pay me, but we had already agreed to that.
That thousand shekels that had disappeared disturbed me greatly. I had no evidence to prove that I had not been paid the full amount. I had already signed that I’d received the entire sum. It could be that I had lost the money, or it could be that he had brought less than the agreed-upon sum, but whatever it was, there was nothing I could do about it.
A few days later, I was in the same hall once again for another event, and the Yid who had hired me for the previous event came to pay me the remainder of the sum he owed. I said to him, “I have an idea. Make a cheshbon of how much money you brought to the hall to pay all the people you hired, and how much was left for me.”
Within half a minute his eyes lit up, and he said, “You’re right! I gave you a thousand shekels less than we agreed on. I’ll pay it to you now.”
Baruch Hashem, the money came to me. I don’t usually count the money I receive, and now, in the zechus of giving a loan to my friend, I discovered the missing money and was saved from a significant loss, while the ba’al simchah was saved from owing money he didn’t know he had to repay.
