Shlomo Schweder had only 35 left minutes to go. The gate to his flight back to the States was about to close, but he was at the end of the line, and it wasn’t moving as fast as he needed it to!
It was the year following Covid, and Shlomo had been learning in Eretz Yisrael by Reb Tzvi Kaplin. Now it was over, and it was time for him to return. The night before, he had arranged with his friend Dovid to get a ride to the airport in Dovid’s rented car, right after Shacharis. After davening, Shlomo had scanned the bais midrash, only to find Dovid’s seat empty. He was nowhere to be found.
That was when Shlomo realized that he had to make his own arrangements — and fast. It was already past 9:00 AM, and he was flying with United at 1:00 PM. He grabbed his bags and ran to the nearest monit-pickup station.
He knocked on the door of the only waiting monit, whose driver told Shlomo that he was reserved. Within three minutes, another monit pulled up. Shlomo got in quickly, but only after he sat down did the driver tell him that he couldn’t bring him to the airport. “I can bring you only to the Tachana Merkazit (Central Bus Station in Yerushalayim),” the driver told him. “From there, you can take a train that connects to the airport.”
Without a choice, Shlomo agreed.
At the train station, Shlomo tried swiping his Rav-Kav, but the machine read, “Insufficient Funds.” He tried reloading his card, but that too didn’t work. He ran to the receptionist to reload it, and after she took her merry time, she confirmed that the card wasn’t functioning, and she issued him a new one. He again dashed to the turnstile, pressed the elevator button repeatedly until it came to bring him down to the platform, and got down there just in time to hear the final blow of the train’s horn as it pulled out, right under his nose. There, he waited for 30 whole minutes until the next train came.
He finally arrived at the airport, much later than he’d planned, and got in line at the check-in counter. When he lifted his luggage onto the weighing scale, the clerk told him that he was overweight.
He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “I’m overweight?” “No,” she laughed. “Your luggage is overweight.”
“Oh,” he said with slight relief. “But how can that be? I weighted it right before I zipped it up, and it read less than the max.”
“I mean that it’s the wrong shape,” she explained. “You must check it in on a different line.” By now, Shlomo was a bit distraught — or a lot. He had been hitting wall after wall. Now he had to start waiting on another line?
While waiting there, with the stress written all over his face, an employee confronted him and asked him why he was so tense. “My flight back to the States leaves in less than an hour, and now I have to wait on a new line and likely miss my flight.”
The employee pulled him to the front and asked one of the receptionists to assist him so he wouldn’t miss his flight. In no time, his luggage was checked in. Shlomo thanked Hashem for the “First-Class” service and began swimming through the crowded airport, dashed straight through security, and proceeded to his gate.
Huffing and puffing, he pulled onto the plane right before they were closing the gate. He was excited to finally be on the plane enroute to see his family after a long zman, and he breathed deeply as his stress eased up.
But his excitement was short-lived. As he approached his row, he realized that his assigned seat was right next to two immodestly dressed women. There was no way he could sit there, but who was going to start switching seats now? Everyone was already comfortably seated, awaiting takeoff.
A flight attendant came by and asked Shlomo what was going on. “My seat is by the window,” he explained, “but I’m unable to sit there.”
In no time, the flight attendant found him a new seat. The new seat was near a window with an empty seat at his right and a yeshiva bachur at the other end of the row. For the whole ten-plus hours of the flight, he enjoyed his “First-Class” seat in Economy.
Finding a different seat was quick and easy only because everyone had already been seated. From when the gates open, it isn’t known yet which seats will be vacant, and Shlomo might have had to wait around, awkwardly standing and hoping he’d be able to get a better seat. It was only because Hashem orchestrated the delays that he experienced that he was spared from that. In His Divine wisdom, Hashem had Shlomo pull in “perfectly late” and find the “First-Class” seat smoothly, bringing him to his next stage in life — post Eretz Yisrael — with a little notification: Hashem is always with you.
