Cutting the Line
At the banquet marking the close of the summer, Rabbi Engel, head counselor of Camp Chevra in Lakewood, shared the following remarkable story.
During the winter of 2020–2021, Malka,* the granddaughter of a prominent rosh yeshivah, was attending seminary in Eretz Yisrael. COVID-19 restrictions, including mask mandates, were still in effect. Her parents were coming from America to visit her, but shortly before their arrival, Malka began feeling unwell. Running a high fever, she went to a Kupat Cholim clinic to be examined.
The waiting room was crowded, and the line moved slowly. With her fever rising, the mandatory mask made the wait even more uncomfortable. Finally, unable to bear it any longer, she asked the woman behind her to hold her place while she stepped outside for a few minutes of fresh air.
Five minutes later, Malka returned to her spot, only to be met with angry protests from several people waiting in line.
“What chutzpah!” they shouted. “How dare you cut the line?”
Malka was deeply humiliated. She had done nothing wrong and could easily have explained that someone had been holding her place. Yet rather than defend herself, she chose to remain silent, swallowing the embarrassment without uttering a word.
After her examination, as Malka was leaving the clinic, a woman in her mid-forties approached her. Her name was Mrs. Carlsberg.*
“I saw what happened,” she began. “You were embarrassed unjustly, yet you didn’t answer back. I know how precious such silence is in Shamayim, and that Hashem listens especially closely to the tefillos of someone who remains silent in the face of humiliation. May I ask you for a very personal favor?”
Malka listened attentively as Mrs. Carlsberg continued.
“My daughter is facing two terrible tzaros at once. She is expecting a baby, but the doctors have told her that the child is not expected to survive. At the same time, her young baby is about to undergo treatment for a life-threatening illness. We desperately need yeshuos!”
Her voice filled with emotion, she pleaded, “Tonight, when you daven Maariv, would you please daven for my daughter and her children?”
“Of course,” Malka replied, deeply moved by the woman’s anguish.
Several days later, Malka was at the hotel where her parents were staying, helping them pack for their return trip to America, when her phone rang.
On the line was the doctor treating Mrs. Carlsberg’s grandchild. He explained that he had been preparing to begin the baby’s treatment, with only one final routine test remaining. But when the results came back, the medical team was astonished. The disease had disappeared.
Not a single lesion remained.
“The baby’s mother gave me your number and asked me to share the news,” the doctor explained. “She wanted you to hear it directly from me!”
Malka was overwhelmed. The child who had been facing a life-threatening illness no longer needed the treatment that had been planned.
Later, Malka accompanied her parents to the airport and bid them farewell. By the time they landed in America, another extraordinary development had taken place.
Their phone rang, and an excited Malka was on the line.
“After you left, I received another call!” she told them. “This time, it was Mrs. Carlsberg’s daughter herself. She told me, ‘I just gave birth to a healthy baby girl! I’m calling you even before I call my own parents because I wanted you to be the first to hear the news. Thank you for your tefillos!’”
Two desperate situations, two extraordinary yeshuos. And all of it had begun with a young woman who had been wrongly accused of cutting the line.
In that crowded clinic, Malka could easily have defended herself. She had every right to explain that she had not cut the line at all. Yet she chose silence over self-defense, accepting the humiliation without responding.
And while Malka had never cut the line in the clinic, her tefillos had been granted a very different place in Shamayim.
For the tefillah of one who is humiliated and remains silent does not wait its turn.
It goes straight to the front of the line.
