I am an avreich living in Beitar. One day I got a call from my dear son. “Abba, I don’t have a kippah.”
“What does that mean?”
“We were playing during recess, and suddenly my kippah fell off and got lost.”
Did I know what they were playing there? They fall, get up, run, come back, pass near some gate, bend down a bit too much, and the kippah falls into some deep hole or bath of cement in a building zone. With my active son, anything could happen.
“I’m coming right away,” I told him. I found another kippah in the house and hurried to his cheder. At the doorway, I met both the supervisor and the menahel, who were both there. “I brought a kippah for my son,” I told them.
“That is really important,” the supervisor said. “It happens often that a child loses his kippah.”
“You know what?” the menahel said. “Perhaps you want to purchase a few kippot and bring them to the cheder?”
“That’s a good idea,” I said. “Im yirtzeh Hashem, I’ll buy them.”
For several months this good idea remained just an idea. Every time I returned from a shopping trip, I would remember the kippot – only after I got home. Each time I told myself that it was really a pity that I hadn’t purchased the promised kippot. It would be a wonderful gemach that would be a zechus for me and would save children embarrassment; but still it didn’t happen.
Then one day the time finally came. I purchased several kippot in a variety of sizes and asked my son in the morning to bring them to the menahel.
That day, the cheder’s number showed up on my phone. My heart skipped a beat, as I wondered if my son had done something to warrant parental intervention. The next moment, I heard the menahel’s voice speaking excitedly.
“I have to tell you something amazing,” he told me. “I came from the talmud torah today and saw a child from one of the younger grades standing with his hood on his head and crying. His kippah had fallen off, and he didn’t know what to do. I told the boy to go to the supervisor, and I went into my office. And then, at the entrance to my office, I saw your son coming with the kippot you sent! You sent them specifically today, when a child needed this favor so badly. Tizku l’mitzvos!”
I was amazed. In the zechus of this child, I finally made it to the store to buy the kippot for the cheder. I was appointed as the messenger who would send him the kippah, and that’s why I remembered to open the gemach exactly at the right time.
