Some sixty years ago, a Yid from Eretz Yisrael traveled to Australia. He didn't know how to find a beis medresh and couldn't ask anyone either, because he didn't speak a word of English. Shabbos was approaching, and he needed a place to stay.
He came up with an idea. On Friday morning, he went to the fish store. He figured that if he saw someone buying a large, kosher fish, he would ask him whether he was a Yid.
The plan worked. A man entered and purchased a large carp fish, so he asked him whether he was a Yid. The man replied that he was and invited him to stay with him on Shabbos. "It isn't every day that I have the opportunity to perform hachnasas orchim," he said.
They spent a pleasant Shabbos together, singing zemiros and speaking divrei Torah.
On Motzei Shabbos, after thanking his host, he said, "From the looks of your beautiful house, I understand that Hashem blessed you with wealth. But there is something I was wondering about."
"Go ahead and ask," the host said.
The guest said, "I noticed a broken olive oil bottle in your dining room China closet. Why is it there? It looks very out of place, between all your valuable items."
The man replied, “That oil bottle is very precious to me. It carries my life’s story. Listen well, and I will tell you:
"My father was niftar when I was young, and being the oldest child, the responsibility of supporting my widowed mother and younger siblings fell on me. Some kind people had rachmanus on me and helped me get into business. Baruch Hashem, I was met with immediate success. There was plenty of money in the house. However, together with my financial success came my spiritual decline. The first thing to go was my yarmulke. Within a short time, I was completely non-religious.
"One afternoon, I saw a young Jewish child sitting on the curb, crying. It always pained me to see a child crying, probably because I was orphaned as a child, and I knew what it felt like to be sad. I asked the child why he was crying. The child said, 'Chanukah is approaching, and my father sent me to buy olive oil. He warned me to be careful with the bottle because we are poor and we can't afford more oil if the bottle breaks. I tried to be careful, but a cat ran right up to me. Startled, I fell, and the bottle broke.' The young boy showed me the broken bottle lying in the gutter. He said, 'How can I go to my father without the Chanukah oil?'
"I gave the child some money and asked him to buy two bottles of olive oil: one for me and one for his father.
"I hadn't lit Chanukah lecht in years, but when the child said, 'How can I go to my father without the Chanukah oil?' I remembered how my father lit Chanukah lecht each year. I thought to myself, 'The day will come when I go up to heaven, and I will meet with my father again. I asked myself, 'How can I meet with my father without Chanukah lecht?' I took the broken bottle shards from the gutter because something told me this was a turning point in my life.
"That year, I lit Chanukah lecht. Soon afterward, I was keeping Shabbos. Then came tefillin. Now, baruch Hashem, I have a beautiful family, all following the Torah’s ways. It all began with the broken olive oil bottle. Now you understand why I saved it all these years!"
