The Stone Speaks to Us

We received this story from Rav Dovid Fierman z"l from Beit Shemesh several years ago. May the publication of this story be l'ilui nishmaso:

Last Shabbos, my brother-in-law Chaim told me the following story of unfathomable hashgachas Hashem:

On Friday an old friend of mine called and asked me for advice. Twenty years ago, his uncle Dov from Kfar Saba was walking in the street and saw an Arab riding on a donkey that was pulling a cart with a nice slab of marble inside it. He looked a little closer and couldn't believe his eyes. The marble tile had the Hebrew words Shivisi Hashem... on them, exactly like the tiles hung above the bimah, where the shaliach tzibbur davens in shul.

"What are you planning on doing with that?" Dov asked the Arab. "I'm taking it to use for a tiling job I have," the Arab responded gutturally.

Then and there, Dov decided that he wouldn't allow it to happen. "I'll buy it from you," Dov told the Arab. "How much?!" the man asked immediately, eyeing the Jew greedily.

They bargained for a short while and then agreed on a price. Dov handed over the money and took the heavy marble tile with the passuk on it from the Arab's hands. He brought the tile straight to his shul, where he offered it to the gabba'im. They assured him that as soon as their plans for redoing the interior of the shul became a reality, they would mount the tile in a fitting place in the shul, above where the chazzan stands. In the meantime, they placed it in the storage room behind the shul.

Several weeks later, they were finally able to start construction on the central shul in Kfar Saba, but the marble didn't match the design of the new shul, so they didn't mount it. It remained in the storage room behind the shul, hidden behind other neglected shtenders, sefarim shelves, and siddurim no longer in use.

All this happened twenty years ago. On Friday, before I came here, my friend, Dov's nephew, called me up and told me that his uncle Dov had passed away several years ago. Today, he got a call from the gabba'im in Kfar Saba. They were asking him to do something with the marble tile.

"You know, it's been sitting here for many years, even before your Uncle Dov passed away," they told him. "Now we want you or someone in the family to take it by 12 p.m. today, or we'll have to get rid of it some other way."

My friend was calling me to ask if I had an idea about what to do with the marble tile? His uncle had exerted so much effort for it, and he thought it was important to put it in a respectable place.

I thought about what he said, and I told him, "Ask the gabba'im to check if there's a name on the back of the tile. Perhaps someone donated it l'ilui nishmas his family members."

Several minutes later, my friend called me back with an answer. "Listen to this," he told me. "The name engraved on the back of the marble tile is Tzemach."

"Tzemach!" I shouted. "Tzemach who?"

"Tzemach Hirschler," he responded.

"Do you understand?" Chaim continued. "Tzemach Hirschler was my father! I told him to read me the other names on the tile, sure that my father had donated it l'ilui nishmas someone. He began reading a whole list of names to me my father's sisters who were killed in the Holocaust, and other members of his family. I was in a state of shock. I hadn't known that my father had once donated such a stone. The most incredible part was that of all his friends and acquaintances, he decided to ask me for advice about what to do with it. What are the odds?

"Of course, I did what I had to do. I paid a driver to pick it up and bring it to my house." Rav Dovid Fierman concluded:

And this is where my story ends. From what I understand, the marble tile is still in Chaim's house, and he's searching for a suitable shul where it can be donated, but as I started off, the hashgachas Hashem here is simply unfathomable, an open revelation of the Eibishter here in His world!