Divine Providence at the Mikveh Kelim
We are making a model seder for 47 Taiwanese guests this Shabbat Chol HaMoed, which is why I found myself yesterday, Erev Bedikat Chametz, buying large quantities of tableware and dunking them in a Mikveh Kelim, a ritual bath to make utensils kosher.
To accomplish this feat I rented a car from a car-share company. Car-share cars, I’ve found, usually contain remnants of their previous drivers: a water bottle, an Osher Ad bag, a parking-lot stub.
This shared car was unusually clean, like it had just been cleaned for Pesach, except for one mysterious exception: a package of baby wipes sitting on the passenger seat.
I drove to Talpiot to pick up tableware for my Taiwanese, and then searched in Waze for the nearest Mikveh Kelim, which turned out to be 9 minutes away in Gilo, a neighborhood I’ve rarely been to, on the southern tip of Jerusalem.
When I first got to Gilo’s Mikveh Kelim, it was mobbed with people dunking their new Pesach purchases. But as I removed more stickers than I ever hope to remove again and the sun sank lower into the sky, the Mikveh emptied out. By the end of my dunking, it was just me and another man who was tovelling some new cutting knives.
Everything was going fine until the man cried out, “Oy!” and I looked up and saw his finger was bleeding. Profusely.
So I ran to my rental car, and grabbed the mysterious package of baby wipes, and I gave them to the grateful man so he could stop the bleeding long enough to drive his car home where his wife was waiting for him with a proper bandage.
But before he drove off I told him, “I rented this car, and those wipes were inside. Before you even cut yourself, Hashem put them there to help you!”
He smiled and nodded in agreement: “Nachon, you are right.”
Which made me think of about how God performed a multitude of miracles to take us out of Egypt 3335 years ago, and we can still witness Him making miracles for us over and over again, every single day. If we only open our eyes.
Chag sameach!
WONDERFUL!!!