Lessons In Emunah

He reluctantly pulled himself up, slung his knapsack over his weary shoulders, and walked for several hours until he discovered that he was approaching the same big rock that he had passed several hours earlier.

As a visitor, one can often feel a sense of danger there, although if one’s Jewish radar is properly tuned in, one can feel the concentrated presence of Hashem in His Holy Land, more so than anywhere else on earth.

I’m not moving from here until the Baal Shem Tov gives me a blessing for a child. Either he can bless me, or he can step over me, but without his blessing, I’m not moving from here!

Finally, with little time to spare, Pinchas steered his loaded minivan onto the block where their hosts lived. Then he started circling. “Who can spot a parking spot?” he called out to his restless crew.

I think there were actually two criminals in my apartment that night, a man and a woman.

Abe and I were a bit surprised that Eliyahu Yeshaya would spend over a $1,000 on a half-week trip to the Ukraine. We didn’t know that he had his own itinerary in mind.

My team leader and quality control checkers lived overseas. They paid little attention to the dramatic events I had just undergone. But they did sense that I was feeling vulnerable, and it was showing in my work.

She called the woman over and asked her to wait. Mrs. H. went into a room and returned with a large bag, which she handed to the customer, telling her that she had already paid for it.

Although it’s been more than 40 years since we last met, how could my husband and I forget Steve...

So along with my gratitude sessions, I decided to be more aware of saying thank you to people who deserve acknowledgment along the way – service providers, bus drivers, and the like – which I’m not always good at doing.

He reread it time and time again, but finally decided he’d just have to accept that he didn’t understand it and move on.

Logically, it isn’t possible for you to make it to work on time. But there is a Creator. And nothing stands in His way.

When he first found out that his bar mitzvah parsha was Yisro, which contains the Ten Commandments, Yedidya felt that Hashem had been particularly generous with him.

Our wonderful founding bochurim were now by and large married with children of their own. So it was a magnificent ever-expanding yeshiva family that now populated the alumni gatherings.

They rushed her downstairs to be X-rayed and were stunned to discover that their patient no longer had pneumonia; her lungs were clear. They could not explain or understand her sudden recovery.

He went with a measuring tape and a good friend, who always agrees to lug furniture home for me, and brought it home.

We were surrounded by honking cars and looks that could kill. I was guilty of gridlocking! I was the inconsiderate idiot, insanely selfish and stupid.

She would give them Chanukah gelt and donuts, maybe even latkes, and would try to make the festival as happy as possible. But it wouldn’t be the same without Abba.

There was one man in a wheelchair, and some of the assembled were uneasy about leaving him behind. If they would begin pushing the chair, they would surely not make it to shelter quickly enough.

We were heartbroken. Beyond the cost, who could deny the holiness and sentimentality of a boy’s tefillin?

When it comes to our health, hishtadlut often means going to and listening to a doctor.

The bus driver signaled to the hordes of frustrated people at the various bus stops that he could not stop for them, but some brave/foolhardy souls literally stood in front of the bus trying to block its path in their frenzied determination to get on their way.

Abe started taking out the money from all of his pockets and passed it onto the two Russian-accented guards, who were wearing pouches. The two men looked bewildered and incredulous.

If a person relies on human beings, Hashem will remove His hashgachah and leave the person in the hands of those whom he is depending on…

The next day, there was knock on their door. "Who is it?" asked Mrs. Levi, but no one answered. She asked again, and again no answer, so she looked through the peephole, but saw no one.

He had deposited Shlomo’s real, original check into his account, and when it had cleared he had made up this weird story to get an additional 3,600 shekels out of Shlomo!

With hope and a prayer, and the longing of a daughter to save her mother from the abyss of sadness, Laura drove straight to Minnie’s home and knocked on the door, her arms filled with unexpected packages.

Every so often I would sit down at the baby grand piano in my childhood home and play a few songs. I had learned enough to play piano on an intermediate level.

It was one of the few weddings, maybe the only one I’ve been to, where people weren’t talking to each other or on their cell phones during the chupah.

The thunderous, urgently repeated “Ya’amod” precipitated a virtual kibbutz galuyos that made my heart skip a beat and my breath catch in my throat.