One of the Electric Wires
Along with the dishes we brought down from the high shelves for Pesach, the toaster oven came down as well. “We can start using it,” I said. During the previous two days we’d worked hard cleaning, and we’d eaten cold food the entire time. Everyone was missing fresh hot food. “Let’s get a move on,” I said excitedly. “We’ll cut up potatoes, and we’ll have Pesach’dig french fries.”
We cut up potatoes and put them into the toaster oven, but we were deeply disappointed. The heating element did not turn red, and the potatoes remained hard. Under such circumstances, so close to Pesach, we could not look for sale prices. I went to the nearest store and purchased a new toaster oven.
It cost 500 shekels.
“I think I know why this happened to us,” I told my wife. “It’s because in the last two months we did not give ma’aser properly. Maybe you could take care of this?”
The next morning I went out to daven, and when I returned home my wife told me two things: The first thing was that she had taken care of the ma’asros, and the second thing was that she had an idea to check whether one of the electric wires in the toaster oven was disconnected.
I took apart the toaster oven and discovered that, indeed, one wire had become disconnected. I replaced it, we put on the oven, and it worked! But now there was smoke coming out it.
“I promised 50 shekels to tzedakah this morning, and I still haven’t given it,” I explained, and I hurried to pay the fifty shekels to tzedakah.
Then I came to check out the situation again, and I discovered that I had aligned the plastic on the wire too tightly. I separated the plastic so it would not get hot, and wondrously enough, the old toaster oven was working perfectly.
I hadn’t yet opened the box of the new toaster oven, and the store agreed to take it back.
I think this story speaks for itself. There is no mishap that occurs for no reason. Everything is accounted for, so that we should make our own accounting.
