I finished davening at the Kosel and searched for a taxi to take me home. A taxi driver approached me, but I hesitated. The sign on the taxi said it belonged to a company that did not keep Shabbos. I waited a bit more, but it was late, and I felt I had no choice. I decided to ask the driver directly, “Do you keep Shabbos?”
To my surprise, he answered “Yes.”
I got into the taxi, and the driver started telling me his story: One day a religious Jew got into my taxi, and in the course of our conversation I told him I was in debt. How much debt? Forty thousand shekels!! The passenger really felt for me and asked, “Do you work on Shabbos?” I thought he was trying to ask me if I worked enough to try to cover my debt, and I said, “Sure!”
“Don’t work on Shabbos,” the chareidi man told me. “You’ll see that you’ll be able to pay off your debts if you keep Shabbos.”
At first I had no intention of listening to him, but I could not get rid of the debts. After a while I started keeping Shabbos, and then I saw that this is indeed a great blessing. Don’t ask me how, but the fact is that within a few months I had managed to pay off the entire sum!
