A Mother, A Mezuzah and Matzah

Approximately 25 years ago an aging mother, a big “macher” within Hadassah, and the mother of two non-observant adult children  pulled her son aside after a trip she took to Israel and said, “I want you to be the one to say the eulogy at my funeral,” and she gave him a mezuzah she brought back from Israel.

The mother was heavily involved with Hadassah and other Jewish organizations and lived a modern orthodox life, and it pained her greatly that her two children didn’t follow in her ways…she always wanted to see that her children observed something of Judaism, anything…

Fast forward to Feb. 13 2019…it is a windy day in California and I am traveling through…wind caused many trees to fall in the area causing road closures where I was in on business and I was forced to take some side streets that I had never been on.

As I am driving on an unfamiliar street looking for my way back to familiar territory, I notice a house with a mezuzah and a man working on a computer near the window… I passed the house slowly after realizing it was getting late and I needed to daven mincha…then I thought to myself that only Hashem could lead me into such a situation and that the Rebbe wants me to check it out and see if there is a Jew in the house (even though it was a very non Jewish area).

I turned around, parked my car, grabbed my tefillin and proceeded to the door. Sure enough, it was a mezuzah, and the man was a Yid…a famous photographer with the Hebrew name “Yisroel”. He was having a tough day because a tree fell on his car earlier in the day and totaled his expensive car…nevertheless he was quite surprised to see an orthodox Jew with a beard and hat at his door…

The next 20 minutes were supernatural…he put on tefillin for the first time in over 40 years and he asked me to take a picture because he said, “My mom (his mom) would love to see this.”

I have put on tefillin with many people but there was something different about this time…

Yisroel gave me his business card and I rushed off to daven mincha…

Weeks later, I found myself at the ohel, with a huge desire to leave Yisroel’s business card with the Rebbe…for some reason Yisroel remained on my mind…

Fast forward to today, 13Nissan, I find myself back in the general area where Yisorel lives and I wanted to bring him matzah, unsure how to get to his house, which i only passed by months earlier as a result of road closures due to a severe wind storm which literally blew me past his house…I call Yisroel using a picture I took of his business card…

He answered the phone as if G-d Himself was calling… he tells me “I have been looking for you since the day after we met two months ago”… “you were sent from Heaven”…”I must tell you the story”…”you are an angel sent by G-d, i will stay on the phone and guide you until you are here at my house, i must see you”

I met Yisroel and it was quite a site: a man of over 50 years of age who has lived his whole adult life as a secular person and here he is with tears in his eyes begging to meet with a religious Jew to talk about G-d Almighty…

Here is Yisroel’s story:

The next day, (Feb14, the day after I met him and put on tefillin with him as a result of seeing the mezuzah on his door post) Yisroel got a call from his sister that their 94 year old mother was rushed off to the hospital…unfortunately she went into the next world, only shortly after seeing her son in the picture wearing tefillin (this is the mother who always wanted to know that her kids would be observant)…all as a result of the mezuzah she gave him 25 years earlier when she told him she wanted him to speak at her eulogy one day…Now Yisroel was putting the pieces together and he saw how his mother’s words from over 25 years ago litterally played out in real life through the very mezuzah she gave him… and so he did, in front of hundreds of people, many of them orthodox Rabbis, he spoke about his mother and her prophesy and the day an orthodox Jew came to his door after seeing the mezuzah that was given to him over 25 years earlier by his mother…

Today I gave Yisroel matzah and he popped the question…”I haven’t been to a Seder in over 10 years, can I crash yours?”

Turns out I was planning on making a Seder by myself and I was worried that I would fall asleep and I was hoping I would have one guest…turns out I will…

A mother, a mezuzah, matzah and now a Seder…

To make the story more interesting, turns out that Yisroel’s photography style is quite “Baal Shemsky”

He travels to remote places and “gets lost in the place” for several days until he finds one or two unforgettable images…see some of his work below.

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