Several months later, Reb Shlomo received a phone call from the stewardess with some astonishing news. Two days earlier, she had been informed that her mother was near death and had a request to make. Not having been in touch with her mother since her decision to convert, she was not even aware that her mother was sick, let alone dying.
Upon entering the hospital room, her mother made a strange appeal: “Please promise to bury me in a Jewish cemetery.”
Shocked, she asked her mother, “Why? And why are you asking me? Ask Dad to do it.” Her mother responded, “I can’t trust him to do it. You see, we never told you, but we are Jewish. After we survived the Holocaust and made it to America, we made a firm commitment never to reveal that we were Jewish. Your father always worried that there would come a time when it would happen again and he believed that this would protect us. We raised you the way we did because we thought it would be for your benefit. However, it was a mistake. Please, bury me properly as a Jew.”
Exhilarated by this astounding news, she asked Reb Shlomo to please call the father again and explain to him that she was, in fact, Jewish from birth. Reb Shlomo called, but the father was very skeptical and continued to refuse to hear about the shidduch. “Please,” said Reb Shlomo, “Let’s be reasonable. What if I come to your house with her and her father? If you would just briefly meet them, I am sure you will be convinced.”
The father agreed, and the three of them arrived at the house. When the door opened, the two fathers looked at each other in shock. “Yaakov, is that really you?” the stewardess’s father whispered.
“Moshe?” whispered the boy’s father. Suddenly, they were in each other’s arms, laughing and crying, hardly daring to believe what had just transpired. These two men had been childhood friends who grew up together in the same shtetl.
“Yaakov,” said Moshe, “Do you remember our pact?”
“Remind me.”
“We promised one another that when we get married and have children of our own...”
“Oh yes,” interrupted Yaakov. “We promised that if one of us had a boy and the other a girl, we would marry them off to each other. Well,” Yaakov laughed, “It looks like it’s time to keep our promise.”
“And that,” Reb Shlomo concluded, “is how we ended up dancing at this wedding tonight.”
