Usually, when we do chessed we can only imagine what we saved, but we will never know what is truly at stake. I actually do know, and it is clear as day to me how much effort and how much money kishka is worth. Here are the facts:
Over the years I adopted the custom of bringing my neighbor a piece of kishka every Friday. It started after several times that he tasted our cholent and very much enjoyed it. As a result of that, one Friday I brought a portion of kishka to his home, and I did the same the following week as well. In the beginning it was a nice idea, and afterward it became a regular custom. He does not need to prepare kishka – he receives it from me.
One time, on Erev Shabbos in the summer, my entire family and I headed out to spend Shabbos in Yerushalayim, in my parents’ home. We left early, while the day was still young, so the phone call reached me when I was already in Yerushalayim. On the line was my neighbor with a question: “Can I come get the kishka?”
“The truth is, we’re not home now,” I said. “We’re in Yerushalayim, but there is a piece of kishka from last week left in my freezer. If you take a key from the neighbors, you can go in and take the kishka.”
I put down the phone and thought to myself that it had gotten a bit out of hand, that it was not so appropriate to bother the neighbors and ask them for the key, all for that lovely thing called kishka. It wasn’t something so difficult for a person to prepare on his own. While we had made ourselves a pleasant, friendly custom, he could have managed without me if I was in Yerushalayim.
I called the neighbor back and apologized. “I think it’s not a good idea to go into my house just for this. This week I cannot give you the kishka.”
So that’s the way it was.
Shabbos passed pleasantly. We got home on Motzaei Shabbos, tired and happy, but when we unlocked the door of the house and opened it, the stench of spoiled food greeted us. Apparently, the freezer had remained open the entire Shabbos. It was a hot Shabbos, and in our absence the air conditioners hadn’t been working, so all the chickens in the freezer defrosted completely and spoiled.
I realized that minutes before leaving the house I had opened the freezer and taken out frozen ice-pops for my children to eat on the way. Probably in my rush, I had left the freezer door open.
When the neighbor called to ask for the kishka, and I’d remembered the kishka sitting in the freezer, I hadn’t begun to imagine that Hashem was sending me someone to close the door of my freezer. I thought then that the exertion was not worth it, and with my own hands I pushed away the help sent to me from Shamayim.
The story that could have ended with “What hashgachah!” had the neighbor gone in, taken the kishka, and closed the freezer door – ended very differently.
And this too was hashgachah pratis, to teach us an important lesson.
With Chessed a Sukkah is Built
Last year my sukkah was smaller, and my brother-in-law asked me for my extra boards. I gave them to him happily, but my brother-in-law asked for something else: “I want to make a mark on the boards indicating where they belong. This will help me a lot. Can I do it?”
I really didn’t want marks of the boards. “You know what?” I finally said. “Make very small marks.”
That was good enough for him. He thanked me for giving permission, and he made marks that were so small that only he could decipher them.
After Yom Tov he returned the boards, nice and clean as he had received them. Then something almost unbelievable happened: We moved into our own apartment. We moved our things in, and I stored the sukkah boards on the top floor, along with the rest of the neighbors, where each neighbor received a corner to store his boards.
Erev Sukkos arrived. I made a few calls to family members asking them to help me carry down the boards from the top floor of the building to our home, and the only one who was able to help me was my brother-in-law, the same one who had taken the boards from me the previous year. Together, we went upstairs and discovered that someone had tried to make order there and moved the boards around, mixing everything up.
And now the question was, how would I identify my own boards?
This is when my brother-in-law was able to help me out. He told me, “Remember the marks I made last year? According to those marks I will know which boards are yours.”
And that’s how he identified the boards, according to the tiny marks he had made, and so a beautiful sukkah was built.
The chessed from the previous year stood by me and my sukkah.
