Ever wonder why things just aren’t working out? Sometimes, actually they did work out, just not the way we planned. (I’m not running the world.)
When I moved from one condo to another, I inexplicably took along four big chairs. It made no sense, because the owner of the new place was leaving us a dinette set with eight chairs. Recently I realized the squeaky wheels were taking up too much space and rolling around the apartment getting in people’s way and they just had to go. I tried asking nearby friends and neighbors if they wanted them, but no one did. I didn’t want to get insulted. I mean, they were in excellent condition!
There was a sign in the building about a dumpster and used furniture but I didn’t understand from the sign what was and wasn’t welcome in the dumpster. (In New York it’s easy. You don’t want it? Put it outside. Inside of an hour it has new owners, no matter what “it” is.)
A friend told me the Breast Cancer Foundation picks up furniture and we made an appointment for pickup. They came, saw the chairs, and said they can’t take them because they’re on the third floor. I was stuck with these big chairs rolling around and all my attempts to unload them and I went to the mail room. I couldn’t just leave them on the sidewalk like I would in New York. Then she suggested I put up a sign on the bulletin board in the mail room.
I did that, at 3:00 p.m. Before 4:00 p.m, there was a knock on my door. A man named Danny was willing to give the chairs a good home (as per my sign). And then, of course, my husband, Avrohom Moshe, asked him, “Are you Jewish?” He replied that he was not. Oh well. And then, as an afterthought, he said, “My grandmother was, but I am not.”
Which grandmother? Maternal.
“Danny, you are as Jewish as Moses,” said my husband, “and how about putting on tefilin?”
So Danny put on tefilin for the first time. As I watched Danny repeat after my husband the Shema Yisrael, it occurred to me that maybe this is why I had to bring those chairs from the other apartment, why my previous plans hadn’t worked out. This had to happen—Danny had to graduate from being a karkafta (one whose head has never worn tefilin).
Then we started to talk. Danny told us that his maternal grandmother had been an adult survivor of the Holocaust. After the War, she renounced all religion. She said to G-d, “If this is how You protect your chosen people, turning blind to this horror and deaf to our desperate prayers...” then she wanted nothing to do with G-d. She married a non-Jew and had Danny’s mother, and they settled in Havana, Cuba. Danny’s mother was raised with a fear of religion and she resolved to stay far away from Judaism because being Jewish was dangerous.
Danny’s mother married a Catholic. After Danny was born, his father abandoned the family, never to be heard from again. When Danny was 16, his mother passed away. Luckily, she had taught him piano and he had a diploma to prove it, which he took door to door, asking for piano students. He found students and in this way he was able to support himself. Later, he became an electrician.
Hearing Danny play piano is like being in the room where angels are singing. Danny credits his mother, saying, “Every time someone likes my playing, they compliment my mother as well for I am the product of her talent, love, and dedication.”
Danny spent his whole life thinking he was a Catholic. He is turning 70 and only today found out he is Jewish. Welcome home, Danny.
Rishe Deitsch is the senior editor of the N’shei Chabad Newsletter.
