While I was talking to an avreich about chizuk in shemiras Shabbos, another avreich approached me and told me the following:
The insurance company where his wife works received a call from a Yid who does not keep many mitzvos. He introduced himself as secular but added a caveat: “Shabbos, I keep!”
And this is the story he told:
One Shabbos morning a few policemen knocked on my door and told me, “Near your home here, there is a tree that’s about to collapse. It is dangerous, and we want to cut it down.”
“What has that got to do with me?” I asked.
“It’s has to do with you because your car is parked near the tree, and we’re calling you to move the car before the tree falls down.”
“Today is Shabbos,” I told them, “and on Shabbos I don’t move my car.”
“No problem,” said one of the policemen. “Give me the keys and we’ll move the car for you.”
I looked at him for a moment and thought, These policemen are Jews just as I am. Why should I allow them to be mechallel Shabbos? I said, “I don’t know if I’m allowed to give you the keys. I’m going to ask my rav about this.”
They left, and I went to the rav. He told me that it was not a situation of pikuach nefesh, and I was not allowed to give the policemen the car keys for them to move the car. If it truly seemed that the tree was so shaky, they should set up barriers around the tree and cut it down on Motza’ei Shabbos.
I came back and relayed the rav’s words to the policemen. But to my dismay, they did not agree to wait. “That’s your choice,” one of them said. The second one added, “If it’s okay with you that we cut down the tree onto your car, then...no problem. We have to do this now. We can’t refuse an order.”
Suddenly they became so “righteous,” so worried about, chas v’chalilah, the tree falling on someone. The only thing they weren’t concerned with was Shabbos. And what could I tell them? They cut down the tree together with my heart, over the fact that Jews would do this on Shabbos.
The tree fell right on top of my car, and it was completely smashed. This was a car worth 25,000 shekels, and I was happier than I had ever been before, that I had paid 25,000 shekels for Shabbos!
That afternoon my grandchildren came to visit, and they noticed that I seemed more upbeat than usual. I was feeling truly great, and they asked me, “Saba, why are you so happy?”
