By Rabbi David Ashear
A young lady named Meirah* began attending Rabbi Maimon’s* weekly classes in Eretz Yisrael. She approached him after class one afternoon to tell him how inspired she was. “Your shiurim were the impetus for my becoming a baalas teshuvah!” she said.
One day, she passed a barber shop and noticed a boy standing outside, wearing a big black kippah on his head. She paused in front of the neighboring store and pretended to look at the merchandise in the window. After a few moments, she walked away. Later that day, Meirah went back to the shop and asked the barber if he knew the boy who had been waiting in front of his store. He seemed to be a very refined young man.
The barber laughed and said that the boy had noticed Meirah and told the barber he was interested in her as well. He gave Meirah his name (Roni*) and information, and she asked Rabbi Maimon to please find out if he might be a good match for her. The person the rabbi called said Roni had sterling middos but was not religiously observant at all.
“How strange,” Meirah mused when she heard that report. “When I saw him, he was wearing a big black kippah.” When Roni found out that Meirah was interested in him, he told Rabbi Maimon he was just beginning to become more religious. Being introduced to Meirah would be an additional incentive for him to continue on that path. Roni began going to shiurim and, shortly thereafter, became a shomer Torah u’mitzvos.
The shidduch was then made and, B”H, this couple was married. When they first met, Meirah asked Roni why he had been wearing a kippah on the day she first saw him if he was not yet religious. He laughed and said, “My friend went in for a haircut and asked me to hold his kippah. He plopped it on my head, and I just left it there.”
Hashem coordinated events so that Roni was wearing a kippah – perhaps for the first time in his life – just when Meirah was passing by. This is how He brought about their shidduch. (Excerpted from the ArtScroll book – “Living Emunah on Shidduchim”)
Reprinted from the Parshas Chayei Sara 5785 email of The Weekly Vort.
