When I Drove Through a Red Light
I got my drivers license when I was 16, but after I moved to Israel when I was 21 I decided driving in Israel was too hard and scary. So even though I got an Israeli license around 25 years ago, I would only drive when I visited my parents in Baltimore.
More recently, though, I decided I wanted to try driving in my adopted homeland. I began renting a shared car for a few hours here and there. To run errands. To attend school events. To take my kids on small trips.
And yesterday, I rented a car to take my son back and forth to a weekly activity. And on the way back to return the car, I found myself at a red light, and I needed to make a right turn. And I didn’t see a sign that said “No turn on red” like they have in Baltimore, so I checked for pedestrians and I turned.
When I turned I heard beeping, but in Jerusalem there’s a lot of beeping. So I didn’t really pay attention. But when I stopped to pull over to park, a man in a junky car who looked like he’d just returned from Uman pulled up beside me and signaled for to me to open my window.
“Hey, do ya know ya just ran through a red light?! And there’s totally a camera at that intersection!!”
I responded, “I thought I could turn on red, cause in America unless there’s a sign…” but by then he had driven away in a fury of exasperation.
And I thought about what a kindness this man had done for me. What a chesed that he had gone out of his way to pull up beside me and tell me that I had done something wrong, so I wouldn’t do it again. Saving me from a ticket or a suspended license or G-d forbid hitting a Israeli pedestrian who isn’t expecting for some American driver to turn on red.
And I thought of those times when I want things in my life to go a certain way and they don’t. Or I want everything in life to be easy and comfortable, and instead everything becomes suddenly and unexpectedly complicated. And how deeply upsetting and disappointing that can be.
And I thought how maybe, at those times, Hashem is like that Breslover saying: “Open your eyes! That red light is there for a reason.”
BEAUTIFUL!