Twenty years ago I started selling steel doors for a company. In those days there were many break-ins in houses with wooden doors, and people understood that it was the proper hishtadlus to install steel doors. In my office, they easily convinced people that installing these doors was a correct decision, and it was worth doing, the quicker the better, before someone would come and break in.
One morning when I came to open the office, I heard the phone ringing. As soon as I got inside I picked up the phone. On the line was a woman from Kiryat Ono. She wanted to know about a steel door, about quality and price, and most importantly, how soon it could be installed. “When can you come with the door and install it?” she wanted to know.
I looked at my lists and told her my installer would be available the next day. “Measure the space between the doorposts, and tomorrow we’ll bring you a beautiful door,” I said.
Since she was very pressured, she said, “I want the door immediately. If it doesn’t come by tomorrow, I’ll go to someone else. I must have the door right away.”
I reassured her that we would be there as promised, and indeed, the next day, I came to Kiryat Ono together with the installer – a pleasant chareidi bachur, and we started installing the door.
The woman of the house stared at us as if we’d landed from another planet. Something about the way we looked didn’t suit her. She did not imagine that I would show up in kippah, beard, and long jacket, and that the installer would look like a yeshivah bachur.
Suddenly she said, “Don’t you think we should check our mezuzos after everything that happened to us?”
“No problem,” I said. “When you install a door, you fix it onto the existing wooden doorposts, and in order to do so, you need to remove the mezuzos. During the two hours the installer is working here, I could check your mezuzos. Although I’m not a professional checker, perhaps I’ll be able to see something myself.
“By the way,” I asked, “what is ‘everything that happened’ to you?”
“Two serious things,” she said. “A year and a half ago my husband had a heart attack and he still hasn’t recovered, and several months ago our car was stolen.”
We took down the mezuzah, and I immediately saw that there was a problem. While it was written on genuine klaf, it was folded down in the middle. When I unfolded it, I found that some words were rubbed out: “behemtecha” – your animals, and “yifteh levavchem” – your hearts will be led astray.
I told the owner of the house, “See for yourself which words are missing. There are hints here to everything that happened to you. Your animals – hints to your car, which we use nowadays instead of animals; and your hearts – hints to the heart attack.”
The woman was amazed. That same day her husband bought new mehudar mezuzos for the entrance to their home and for all the rooms.
I am excited about this story, not only because of the hints found in the mezuzos, but also because of the simple fact my appearance as a shomer Torah umitzvos brought this about. If not for the kippah and suit that I wore, she would not have dreamed of asking me about mezuzos. Every shomer Torah umitzvos can become a shaliach for very important matters.
