When we first moved, the housing market was in decline, and good properties were a rare find. When I found a suitable place, I grabbed it, dismissing its close proximity to the Conservative and Reform temples - which were both just down the street.
A few weeks later, I was invited to a meeting with a wealthy and prominent member of the Conservative temple. He eyed me thoughtfully from behind his mahogany desk, before writing out a check for $3,600.
“I’m giving this to you because you either deserve it, or you need it. Buying a house directly between the Reform and Conservative temples shows tremendous chutzpah, and I think you should be rewarded for that boldness. However,” he continued, tapping his pen against his chin. “It’s also possible you bought the house without realizing what you were doing. And in that case, you need all the help you can get!”
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Our first house was right across the street from Raheeq, who I got to know very well, not only because he was our neighbor, but also because I had to bring my car to his shop pretty often. Recently, Mikey, one of Raheeq’s guys, came up to me and told me he was Jewish.
“Really?” I asked, in shock. He didn’t look Jewish at all, and I’d seen him around the shop many times over the past twenty years! The thought never even crossed my mind.
“Sure am! Name’s Schaefer. I even had a bar mitzvah!”
“How would you feel about me bringing tefillin next time and putting them on with you?” I asked him.
Mikey agreed, and the next day I went in, we put on tefillin together.
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2020 was our 18th year of shlichus. We came up with a whole marketing plan, really playing to the “chai” theme, including eighteen different initiatives to be deployed throughout the year. I met with our key donors, presenting them with a list of everything I wanted to accomplish, including sending personalized yarmulkes to everyone on the mailing list, subsidizing a set of arba minim for each person, and more. Rounding off the list was a new Torah. Our Chabad house has three Torahs, each taken from a shul that had no use for them anymore. I thought it would be nice to have a brand new one made, just for us.
David, who’d already generously paid off our Chabad house mortgage, scanned the list and asked, “How much would a new Torah cost?”
I threw out an estimate of what I thought it would cost, and David smiled.
“I know that the first mitzvah in the Torah is to have children, and the last is to write a Torah. I completed the first, and I can’t tell you about all the ones in the middle, but I want to do the last one as well. I’ll tell you what, Rabbi: I currently hold stock in Tesla, but it’s not doing so well. When it reaches 900, you’ll get your Torah.”
I watched that stock like a hawk over the next weeks, seeing it slowly inch up bit by bit. The SpaceX rocket was scheduled to launch on Shabbos, and Hugh predicted that by Monday, Tesla stock would reach 900 points. The stock did shoot up a lot after the successful launch, but the market closed on Monday afternoon with Tesla at 898 points.
“Nu?” I asked David.
“Close enough,” he answered. “You got your Torah.”
He even jokingly suggested we should call it the “Tesla Torah.”
