One day, I was cleaning out the kollel’s storage room. I was not expecting to find anything special there. I imagined that I would find a few sweaters belonging to people who had long ago purchased replacements for them, towels whose owners had despaired of finding them, and of course old sefarim, which I would be able to put at the disposal of the people learning in the kollel. I did not think I would find a pair of tefillin there, but that is exactly what happened.
People guard their tefillin, and even if they forget them one day in kollel, they come to retrieve them the following day. Nonetheless, an old, dusty tefillin bag revealed itself before my eyes, literally calling out to me to find out to whom it belonged.
I took the bag, dusted it off, and then I saw clearly the name of the owner of the tefillin. I did not know him. I took the bag and asked the avreichim learning in the kollel whether they knew who this person was.
“This Yid,” one of the old-timers in the kollel told me, “passed away several years ago.”
I told myself that while this Yid had already moved on to a different world, he had certainly left heirs. I did some investigating and found his daughter’s phone number.
When I called, she answered the phone. “I am calling from such and such kollel,” I said. “We found a pair of tefillin that used to belong to your father z”l in the storage room.”
“What?! Really?!” The woman was very excited. “I don’t believe it. That is ... just now!”
Her words came pouring out, and I could hardly make out what she was saying and why she was so excited. Finally, I understood that her son, the grandson of the tefillin’s owner, was going to have his bar mitzvah very soon. His parents had little means, and they were concerned – and clueless – about how to cover this large expense of purchasing tefillin for their son. They really did not know what to do.
And then, such a yeshuah! Her father’s tefillin were discovered, and the bar mitzvah boy would don his grandfather’s tefillin, be’ezras Hashem!
It is incredible that the tefillin were lying in the storage room for several years until just the right moment came along.
