I live in the holy city of Yerushalayim. It is a big city with a large population, more than any of the other cities in the country. When I learned the halachos of eiruvin, I decided to take a chumrah upon myself, which doesn’t obligate others: I do not carry at all in Yerushalayim. This became my regular way of life.
As on every Erev Shabbos, I was asked to do my job of taking out the trash, but this time it was getting late and I did not want to carry the bag outside the building. Claims of kavod and oneg Shabbos crowded my mind for a moment or two, but I decided that since I was zocheh to keep this chumrah, I would continue to uphold it and would not carry the garbage bag outside. I set the bag down in an inconspicuous spot in my house and went out to shul.
On Motza’ei Shabbos, my wife was looking for her cell phone – searching and searching and not finding it. I made a simple suggestion: Call the phone, and let’s see if we hear it ringing. That’s when we had a total surprise: The sound of the phone’s ringing was coming from the garbage bag.
Had I taken it out on Erev Shabbos we wouldn’t have heard the ringing of the missing phone. My chumrah enabled us to find the missing phone quickly and easily.
