Seeing that I was upset, my friend hurried to assure me, “It’s not the sefer from the reading of the chassan Torah; it’s from the reading of the haftarah.”
Indeed, the sefer had to be rolled back “only” from Parshas Pinchas, and a devoted gabbai like ours would not allow for it to be done too quickly, so the parchment would not get creased, chalilah. The gabba’im rolled up the sefer patiently, and everyone around them worked on their middos and on the emunah that everything is ordained miShamayim and that every delay is for the good. And suddenly someone called out, “Look what it says here!”
He pointed at the letters woven into the cover of the sefer Torah, and I moved closer to see what he was talking about. And right there the words declared that the sefer had been written l’ilui nishmas a chashuveh bachur who passed away thirty years ago at the age of 17, on the 28th of Tishrei.
Today was the 28th of Tishrei!
I recalled once seeing a notice about something that was dedicated in his memory. It reported there that he was the son of kedoshim, that he had a pleasant demeanor, and that he was growing in Torah, chassidus, and yiras Shamayim.
And now we were witness to incredible hashgachah pratis. The mistake made by the man who had pesichah was completely directed from Above so that this chashuveh bachur z”l should be zocheh to eternal life – that on the day of his yahrtzeit they would read from the Torah written in his memory!
At the end of the davening, while I was wrapping up my tefillin, I could not get over what had happened. Suddenly I no longer cared about the passing minutes. We were all excited about the Heavenly revelation taking place right before our eyes. Someone made quick calculations and came to the conclusion that the 28th of Tishrei could never come out on Shabbos or on Thursday. Of all the days when we read from the Torah, this date could only come out on a Monday. Over the course of the thirty years since this bachur passed away, it had happened only five times, and the next time would not be for another twenty years!
We hope that until the next time comes, techias hameisim will have already occurred.
