Four years ago an avreich told me an amazing story. To protect their privacy, we’ll call the avreich Yosef and his friend Binyamin.
Yosef and Binyamin had apartments in Beitar. Their Rebbe lives in Yerushalayim, and so they preferred to rent out their apartments in Beitar and use the rental money to rent apartments in Yerushalayim. This was a comfortable arrangement for both of them.
As their families grew, their rental apartments became too small, and they concluded that a change was needed. How? They had no idea. “The best thing would be to buy an apartment in Yerushalayim,” Yosef told Binyamin.
“I think so too,” Binyamin answered, “but it doesn’t seem realistic to me. Where would I get the money to pay the outrageous prices for apartments here?”
“I have no idea,” Yosef answered, “but we can certainly daven for this.”
The two friends decided to daven, each for the other, to find an apartment. They chose perek 76 of Tehillim, which includes the passuk, “And he was in Shaleim...and his dwelling in Tzion,” which they would say with kavanah every day, and ask Hashem yisbarach to arrange an apartment in Yerushalayim for them.
A half a year of reciting Tehillim passed, and Yosef had an idea. The apartment he was renting belonged to someone who owned the apartment next door as well. He called the owner of the two apartments and proposed that he would buy both apartments from him and combine them into one large apartment of 105 square meters. The owner of the apartment wanted to sell, but his price was quite high: 2,600,000 shekels.
“I own an apartment in Beitar. I can sell it and add a bit, but such a large sum...it’s impossible for me,” said Yosef.
The owner of the apartment, a Yid who does not keep Torah and mitzvos, answered in a completely unexpected way. “As you know, I am not religious. Painfully, my children are also irreligious. What will be with me in the World to Come? What merits will I have? By now I’ve known you for fifteen years. You’ve acted honestly with me all the years. You’ve always paid rent on time, you have a large family, and you’ll buy the house and do mitzvos in it. This will be a zechus for me. I’ll sell you both apartments for the price of 1,400,000 shekels. Let’s close the deal.”
Yosef joyously related to Binyamin that his prayers were answered, and he’d found an apartment to buy. This roused Binyamin to do some more hishtadlus in the matter. He checked out every potentially suitable apartment but did not close a deal on any of them, due to the high prices. At one point he went to look at a four-room apartment, and he saw, hanging in the dining room, a picture of a great tzaddik, his wife’s grandfather.
He asked the elderly woman who owned the house, “What is your connection to this tzaddik? We are his grandchildren!”
She related that the tzaddik had a connection to her family. “Twenty years ago, after my husband passed away, this tzaddik advised me to move to Eretz Yisrael. I did so, but now I’ve decided to move back to America. It would be a zechus for me if his grandchildren would purchase the apartment. How much are you willing to pay?”
This was a very expensive apartment, worth more than 2,500,000 shekels, but the woman was so happy to sell it to the grandchildren of the tzaddik that she agreed to sell for only 1,600,000 shekels.
Thus, two avreichim were able to buy apartments in Yerushalayim, not by their own strength but by saying one perek of Tehillim with kavanah.
