During the dark days of World War II, as the Nazis y”s tightened their grip across Europe, a young Jewish couple from Poland fled eastward with their infant son. They had no papers, no money, and no plan — only emunah that Hashem would guide them to safety. After weeks of hiding and hunger, they crossed into Soviet territory and reached a small village in Kazakhstan.
Exhausted and starving, they knocked on the door of a humble peasant woman and begged for a morsel of bread for their baby. Seeing their desperation, she shared her last loaf with them and refused any payment. “Someday,” she said softly, “you’ll repay it to someone else in need.”
Years later, after the war, the family rebuilt their lives in Eretz Yisroel. The baby grew into a successful businessman in Tel Aviv. One day, he noticed an elderly woman sitting on the curb, weeping. She explained in broken Hebrew that she had come from Russia to be near her children, but her only son had died soon after her arrival, leaving her alone and destitute.
Moved with compassion, he brought her home, fed her, and later provided for her needs. One evening, as they spoke over tea, she reminisced about her past — about her village in Kazakhstan, and how, during the war, she had once given her last loaf of bread to a starving Jewish couple with a baby. The man froze. The year, the place, the story — it was him. The bread she had given decades earlier had returned to sustain her in her old age. Literally, shlach lach’mecha al pnei ha’mayim....
Reprinted from the Parshas Vayeira 5786 email of The Weekly Vort.
