One day, the shadchan, Reb Shmuel, called to suggest young woman from a reputable family for my son Shimi.
“The girl’s father, Reb Dovid, is looking for something special for her – a brilliant lamdan,” Shmuel told me.
While my son Shimi was, baruch Hashem, an excellent learner, it seemed a bit premature to call him a brilliant lamdan. I daven that he will continue on his path and eventually earn the crown of Torah, but...
The shadchan continued talking about the aspirations of the girl’s father until he finally came to the point. “In short, the father wants to farher the young man to get an idea of his level of learning.”
“No problem,” I said.
The shadchan arranged a time and place, and the next day the girl’s father, Reb Dovid, met with my Shimi. “What are you learning now?” he asked.
“Shabbos,” my son answered, referring to maseches Shabbos. But the would-be father-in-law misunderstood; he assumed that Shimi was delving into the halachos of shemiras Shabbos.
Immediately, Reb Dovid’s eyes lit up. “For years,” he told Shimi, “I’ve had a tremendous kashah that bothers me no end. How could it be that, regarding such-and-such a matter, the Mishnah Berurah writes one thing, and the Biur Halachah states exactly the opposite! How can this be, if they were both authored by the Chafetz Chaim zt”l?”
Shimi had a ready solution to Reb Itzik’s quandary. “That’s a good kashah, and you can find an answer in sefer Minchas Yitzchak,” he told the prospective father-in-law. Then Shimi proceeded to quote the Minchas Yitzchak’s explanation in detail.
Reb Dovid was overjoyed. He told Shimi that he had been closely associated the author of the Minchas Yitzchak z”l while he was still alive. Later, after the Minchas Yitzchak passed on to the Yeshivah shel Maalah, Reb Dovid went on studying the sefer regularly.
And now, lo and behold! Here was a young man who gave him an answer to his long-standing kashah – and davka from the sefer that was so dear to him!
Reb Dovid was overwhelmed. Shimi was just the young man he was looking for! Now, he thought to himself, all we have to do is get on with a few meetings between the two young people, and prepare a l’chaim!
And Reb Dovid wasn’t disappointed. A short while later his family and mine became mechutanim, baruch Hashem.
When things calmed down a bit, I asked Shimi, “What’s your connection with the Minchas Yitzchak? How did you know to answer Reb Dovid’s kashah? You’re learning maseches Shabbos, not hilchos Shabbos!”
Shimi laughed and explained, “Just one day before the farher, two distinguished rabbanim were sitting behind me in the beis medrash. And what were they were discussing? Precisely the same question that Reb Dovid asked me the first time we met. One of them had read the answer in the Minchas Yitzchak, and he quoted it word for word.
“The whole discussion was very interesting to me, so I listened carefully. The very next day, when I met Reb Dovid, I remembered it, baruch Hashem, so I was able to say it over almost word for word.”
I could only marvel at the wondrous ways in which Hashem orchestrates events to make a shidduch come about! If we’d had any doubts, it became crystal clear to one and all that Shimi’s shidduch was Heaven-made.
