All of this; you need a truck, and so the process is as follows: You rent a truck and drive it up to camp. You unload all the cartons and suitcases, and afterward you return the truck to a certain drop-off point, and from there your return by cab or with someone who is coming from the same place.
That is what I did. Our truck arrived at camp, and after we unloaded the suitcases, I went to return it to a certain point on the map — a place devoid of any Yidden. I arranged with a friend, who also had to return his truck, that his taxi would pick me up there, and we would return to camp together.
The first stage was successfully completed: The empty truck arrived at its destination, and now I wanted to return to camp. I called my friend and told him I was waiting for him. “There’s a delay here,” he told me. “It will take another few minutes.” I waited.
While I was waiting, a private car stopped right near me, and from the window, a man wearing a tiny yarmulke looked at me. “Do you know where there’s a shul here?” he asked.
“There is no shul here,” I told him. “There are no Jews here. How did you get here?”
“Truthfully, I was never here before,” the Yid answered me. He gave me the impression that he was someone who was recently introduced to Torah and mitzvos. “I simply came here from Baltimore for the first time in my life in order to see the house where my grandmother lived 85 years ago, and now I desperately need a shul, because I did not don tefillin today.”
“It’s a miracle that you met me,” I told him. “I should have already been on my way, but because of an unexpected delay I’m still waiting here. You’ll get hold of tefillin easily if you continue this way.” I showed him how to drive in the direction of the camp, where he would find a shul. There, Jewish life was thriving in full glory, with yeshivos and families of precious kollel yungeleit who had come to spend the boiling-hot summer months in the country, far from the pritzus that exists on the city streets.
He thanked me and left.
A minute later my friend showed up in the taxi. “What hashgachah pratis!” I told him. “Because of your delay, I was delayed as well and I was able to help a Yid who needed tefillin.”
My friend was amazed. “What hashgachah! It was an annoying delay, and now I understand why it had to happen. I returned the truck that I took, and for some reason the clerk there wanted to charge me a much larger sum. He claimed that I was supposed to pay more, and I claimed that the additional money he was talking about had not been included in the original agreement. So the minutes passed until it all worked out, and all this — so that this Yid should meet you.”
The sun was heading westward. The road was painted with gorgeous colors of sunset as we made our way to camp. There we met our guest, the baal teshuvah from Baltimore.
I felt that he was a good neshamah, a Yid who had traveled a long route toward recognizing Hakadosh Baruch Hu and Torah and Yiddishekit. I wanted things to be good for him, and I asked if he was married. I set up a meeting for him with our rav, who is involved with shidduchim.
This baal teshuvah is no longer anonymous. His meeting with the kollel yungeleit and the yeshivah, with the tefillah and the learning and the community life, did something to him. He became fully observant and has continued to stay in touch with us.
