Chaim from Ashdod relates: In the morning I learn in kollel, and in the evening I write STa”M. After having invested a lot of time in my writing, I sent a package of mezuzos and tefillin for review by an expert proofreader who is known to be a yarei Shamayim.
A few days later he called and told me that there was a pair of parshiyos for tefillin shel yad and rosh in the package I had sent him, and there was a question regarding them that he needed to ask a rav. He was very doubtful about their kashrus, and he was sending them to a rav to determine their status.
I had worked very hard writing those parshiyos. I’d invested so much in every single letter. I spent a lot of time, bent over my table for hours writing them – hours of work for which I hoped to receive fair payment, and now it seemed that all that time had been for naught.
One small hope remained, that perhaps the proofreader had made a mistake and the rav would say there was no problem and the parshiyos were kosher.
This was a futile hope, because I knew the proofreader to be someone who did his work faithfully. But nonetheless, so long as there was no final decision, all my work had not yet gone to genizah.
During Minchah, in Shemoneh Esrei, I asked Hashem to help me so that if the rav would say that the tefillin were pasul, I should have the strength to accept this loss. I asked Hashem to strengthen me. I did not ask for the parshiyos to be kosher, since it was too late for that. I asked for the strength to accept the rav’s decision with peace and serenity, emunah and joy, for the “gam zu l’tovah” to leave my mouth easily, without any inner complaints on my part, chalilah.
The next morning, the manager of the institution where my wife works called us. He apologized briefly and explained that there had been an error in the accounting of my wife’s salary throughout the year, and he needed to correct it and transfer to our account the amount he owed us.
The amount owed was 30,000 shekels!
I received this message on the day when I was preparing to hear about a big loss. Indeed, later on, I heard the rav’s decision that the parshiyos were pasul, but then I already knew that it was not so terrible. There was a large sum in the bank, and we would deal with the loss easily. I accepted the decision with serenity because I had the strength I had received from my Father in Shamayim.
