My cousin was returning to Brooklyn from Monsey, where she and her husband and baby had just spent yom tob with her in-laws. Heeding her mother-in-law’s advice, my cousin had taken all her jewelry with her, even though she wasn’t planning to wear most of it. Her mother-in-law warned her repeatedly never to leave jewelry at home when staying away overnight and, above all, never to pack it in her suitcase.
Dutiful daughter-in-law that she is, she had carefully stowed the small green velvet bag containing her jewelry in the baby’s carrier bag on the outward-bound leg of the journey and did the same homeward bound. My cousins stopped briefly on Lee Avenue in Williamsburg to shop for a few items on the way home. At one point, my cousin pulled the baby’s bottle out of the carrier bag to give it to the baby, not noticing that she had also dislodged her jewelry bag, which fell onto the sidewalk.
Checking Every Store They Had Shopped In
During this brief stop, a man who was handing out flyers for a local merchant walked over and handed her a flyer. My cousins got back into their car and drove home. At home, she immediately realized that her jewelry bag was gone and told her husband. He rushed out to retrace their footsteps, first to the car and then all the way back to Lee Avenue, checking every store they had shopped in. No one had turned in a small green velvet bag.
One storekeeper, however, suddenly remembered looking out his shop window and seeing a man hand a woman a flyer and then bend down and pick up something green, put it in his pocket and walk away. Despite the crowd of shoppers in his store at the time, the flash of green caught his eye. With heartfelt thanks, my cousin’s husband drove home to see if my cousin still had the flyer.
Finding Out the Name of the Man Distributing the Flyers
A phone call to the publisher of the ad on the flyer established the name and address of the man he had hired to distribute the flyers on Lee Avenue. My cousins called the police, reported the incident, and passed on the information. The police proceeded immediately to the address and caught the man off guard. He handed over the green velvet bag, which was still intact and which the police returned to my cousin.
My cousin thus recovered her lost jewelry thanks to a “chance” glance through the window of an extremely busy storekeeper. Always take your jewelry with you? Maybe...maybe not. Listen to your mother-in-law? Sure...most of the time. Hashgachah peratit? Definitely. (excerpted from the Feldeim Publishers book – “When the Time is Right”)
Reprinted from the Parashat Kedoshim 5784 email of Rabbi David Bibi’s Shabbat Shalom from Cyberspace.
