One day, a woman arrived home and discovered that her wallet was missing. She had left the house with more than 600 shekel, spent some in Yerushalayim, and loaded 100 shekels onto her bus card, leaving about 400 shekels in the wallet. She assumed she had left it on the bus, but the bus company had no record of finding it.
With no identifying cards inside, she feared it was gone, but she refused to give up hope, stating that she would give the finder ten percent of the cash. She decided to view the loss as a kapparah.
Meanwhile, a young man waiting for his bus noticed a wallet wedged beside the bench. Inside were 400 shekel but no obvious identification. Then he spotted the receipt for the bus-card reload. Seeing it as a possible lead, he called the bus company and, with the help of an unusually cooperative operator, obtained the owner’s name and phone number.
He called the family, explained how he had found them, and insisted on bringing the wallet to their home in Beitar himself so he could fulfill the mitzvah of hashavas aveidah in the best possible way. When he arrived, the husband offered him the promised ten percent, but he refused. “I don’t need the money. I need a brocha.”
He explained that although he was no longer young, he had not given up his dream of finding a wife who would enable him to devote his life to learning Torah. As the husband gave him a brocha, his wife suddenly remembered Nechama, who had once spent Shabbos with them and had confided that she was still hoping to find a husband who would be devoted to learning Torah.
The connection seemed almost too perfect to ignore, and the family became shadchanim. Calls and inquiries followed, and eventually the two were introduced and a shidduch was made. At the vort, the young man laughed, “I only wanted to return a lost object—and in return, I found mine.” (Meant To Be)
Reprinted from the 5787 email of The Weekly Vort.