Several years ago, one of the Gedolei Hador attended a wedding at the Paradise Hotel in Be’er Sheva, where he served as mesader kiddushin. After the chuppah, as he was walking toward the car, a thirty-five-year-old woman from Ofakim approached him in tears.
‘Ever since I finished seminary, sixteen years ago, I have been searching for my zivug, but to no avail. The kallah who just got married was a girl I taught in preschool when I was twenty. She was only four years old. Sixteen years have passed, and she has merited to meet a wonderful ben Torah, while I still haven’t found my zivug.’
The Gadol felt tremendous compassion for her, but then asked an unusual question: ‘Have you ever cursed yourself? Have you ever spoken against yourself?’ She thought for a moment.
‘Yes. Fifteen years ago, when I was twenty and had just started going out, my father suggested a boy. He was a good boy, but I had concerns about the family and refused to meet him. My father insisted, and when I became angry, I told him, ’If you force me to meet this boy, I will never get married.’’
The Gadol was shaken. ‘Really? That’s what you said?’
‘Yes.’
He explained, ‘The Creator of the world has made a covenant with man’s lips. Our words have an impact and can even cause harm. We must rectify this.’ He brought her to a local kollel, gathered three men, and had her stand in the center to conduct hataras nedarim.
‘Now,’ the tzaddik told her, ‘daven for your zivug. The same words that prevented you from finding your zivug will now become the words with which you daven and implore Hashem to grant you your chosson.’
She poured out her heart to Hashem, crying, ‘Hashem, You know how old I am. With every year that passes, the pain increases, along with the fear that soon my chance to marry and have children will be gone. Only You can save me.’
From that day on, she davened every day with tears, begging for a yeshuah. Six weeks later, she returned with an invitation to her vort, which was being held at the same Paradise Hotel. ‘I met an amazing man from South America. He is thirty-eight, and we’re getting married. Hodu laHashem!’
Four hundred people attended the vort, including the Gadol. With the kallah’s permission, he told them the story that had begun at that very spot just six weeks earlier.
‘I am certain,’ he concluded, ‘that over the years, her family and friends suggested all kinds of possible solutions. Perhaps you need to lose weight. Perhaps it’s your glasses. Maybe you need to change the way you dress. Perhaps you’re too picky. But Hashem showed us that what was holding things back was something she had said fifteen years earlier.’
We don’t always understand the reason we are facing a particular challenge. Often, the reason is not at all what we might suspect. (Meant To Be)
Reprinted from the Succos 5787 email of The Weekly Vort.