עַ ל שוּם שֶ פָ סַ ח הַ קָ דוֹש בָ רוּךְ הוּא עַ ל בָ תֵ י אֲ בוֹתֵ ינוּ בְ מִ צְ רַ יִ ם
Because the Holy One, Blessed be He, passed over the homes of our forefathers in Egypt
A woman once came to me after I delivered an inspiring lecture and said, “Rabbi Orlofsky, I hear what you are saying and I want to change the world.” I said to her, “Listen, you have three little children and a husband and a home to take care of. You have plenty of things to keep you busy with. You are fine.”
“No,” she insisted, “I want to change the world.”
“Alright, what is your degree in? “I don’t have a degree; I never received a higher education.” “Okay, what special talents and abilities do you have?” I continued to ask. “I don’t have any special talents or abilities.” “Is there anything you do which is exceptional?” I finally asked. I was hoping she would come up with some kind of answer. “I bake,” she said.
The next day she called me back with a plan. “I figured it out. There is a school for special children in my neighborhood and I am going to bake cupcakes for them on Rosh Chodesh. For fifty kids, I’ll make fifty cupcakes. I make good cupcakes with filling and frosting.” It sounded like a good idea.
The day after Rosh Chodesh I received another call. It was her and she was flying. She told me, “The principal of the school called me and said, ‘You don’t know what you did. These are kids who don’t see very well, hear very well or move very well. The one thing that works well for everyone, though, is their sense of taste. And you made them very happy.’”
A few months later I was talking with the same woman and asked her how everything was going. “Good, I am setting up a website.” “Okay,” I replied, “I am not that technically savvy, but don’t you bake cupcakes? Why do you need a website? You can’t email them.” “Well,” she said, “after a couple months of baking cupcakes for this one school, I started getting calls from schools all around Yerushalayim. They asked me, “Do you think you can bake cupcakes for our children too? They would also like a special treat.” Being that I couldn’t bake a thousand cupcakes, I gathered some friends together who could help. One of them said she would help twice a year, another every other month, and a third friend every three months. I am now setting up a website to coordinate the schools with the women and if anything falls short I will make sure it gets covered.”
Pesach is a time when, like Hashem did in Egypt, we can make quantum leaps. It is the time when we can go above and beyond ourselves and achieve the exceptional. Every so often we hear stories of people who start organizations and build great movements. And then we say to ourselves, “I know I may not be able to do anything like that, but I know I can bake cupcakes.” And we all have something special we can do. This was an ordinary person with no extraordinary abilities. She was just a person who cared. Yet she turned around and did something extraordinary that changed countless lives. She took hundreds and hundreds of children whose lives were very gloomy and made them a little sweeter and a little brighter.
