I believe the following story is especially fitting as a way to give thanks to Hashem for seven years that we have been zocheh to bring the light of emunah to the world.
A Yid from Kiryat Gat told me:
I gave a Yerushalmi Yid a ride in my car, and suddenly he asked me, “Do you listen to the Hashgachah Pratis phone line?
I felt a bit uncomfortable about his asking me personal questions. My passenger sensed my discomfort, but he went on, “Forgive me for asking – but I simply cannot stop myself from persuading anyone I meet to listen to the phone line.
At that point I began to learn something of the life-story of my Yerushalmi passenger:
I grew up in the nightmare known as debt. My father was heavily in debt, and I suffered terribly from it. I decided that this would not happen to me.
I got married twenty years ago bs”d, and ever since then I have lived thriftily. I saved money in every possible way. For instance, on Shabbos I would give my children only a half portion of fish; and I had all sorts of other ways of cutting down on expenses.
We all suffered from my extreme stinginess, and the most amazing thing was that I did not achieve my goal. Despite my constant saving and cutting down on expenses, I was not able to put aside money to avoid future debt.
This was how we lived until four years ago, when I discovered the Hashgachah Pratis phone line.
I started listening, and slowly, gradually, simple emunah was instilled in me. When I say each day in Birkas Hamazon that Hashem is the One Who provides and sustains and does good to all, and prepares sustenance for all the creations that He created, that is the simple truth. Hashem gives parnassah. He decides how much I will have and how much I will be able to put aside.
Cutting down on expenses in an extreme way would not help me. It would bring nothing other than the feeling that I was choking.
I became a normal person, and I started to act like everyone else. Today I buy several types of fish in honor of Shabbos, as befits a ben Melech.
And the incredible thing – which, when you listen to the phone line you know is not so incredible – is that today I succeed in putting aside 5,000 shekels every month!
“Can you now understand why I’m so excited,” the Yerushalmi Yid concludes, “and why I am convincing anyone I can to connect to this amazing phone line?”
What’s left for us is simply to thank Hakadosh Baruch Hu for seven amazing years, and to ask Him to enable us to continue spreading emunah throughout the entire world.
Gut Shabbat
Pinchas Shefer
