You Don’t have to be a Jewish Traveler to Experience G-d’s Miracles in Your Life

As we travel, Rabbi Ben and I experience miracles all the time.  One of my favorites is how whenever we arrive in a new place on Friday, we immediately find the best hotel and price.  Any other day of the week, we may have to spend hours checking dozens of places, but on Friday, erev Shabbat, we always get the best and nicest deal in the first place we stop.  The first few times it happened, we couldn’t believe it and still wasted several hours hunting around, only to return to that first spot.  But now whenever we arrive somewhere erev Shabbat, I walk into the very first nice place I see and bargain a good deal and I know we are set and I can begin to prepare for the Sabbath.

But you don’t have to travel to see incredible and unusual miracles.  They happen all the time, every day.  Sometimes they are hidden miracles, like swerving the car in time to avoid a collision – maybe without even noticing we’ve done it! Sometimes they are miracles we take for granted, like our eyesight, hearing, and limbs.  Yet sometimes they are overt miracles.  Over Sukkot I heard a story about just one of these miracles.

Aliza, one of the congregants at Newtown Synagogue in Sydney, Australia, has been telling me about her journey in exploring Judaism.  One of her biggest obstacles to increasing her observance and her connection to G-d has been her job.  Her boss would not let her off on Saturdays or most holidays.  But Aliza felt that keeping the Sabbath, being one of the most important commandments in the Torah, was important to her.  On Yom Kippur, she sat down on the floor at work and read the Torah and read the commandment to keep the Sabbath… and made up her mind to do so.

Later that week, she approached her boss and told her boss that she wants Saturdays off, and that she is happy to work Sundays instead.  Her boss refused.  So Aliza quit. She quit! Right there, on the spot.  What amazing courage!  Hashem should bless her so much in the merit of this amazing thing she did just out of her love for Hashem!  And He should bless us all that we should ALL have such courage!

So Aliza left work and called her mother.  She told her mother what she’d done and only then realized that she now had no job.  Uh oh.

On her way home from work, before coming to Newtown Synagogue for Friday night Shabbat services, she got a phone call.  A previous employer she’d had was calling to offer her a job.  Not only did it include better pay, but the hours were Monday-Friday 9-5 or 10-6, giving her the flexibility to take care of her daughter and mother, AND allowing her to keep Shabbat completely!

There is only one explanation for this miraculous timing, a matter of mere hours: G-D.  G-d rewarded Aliza’s faith, love, and courage by extending His hand to her and giving her a position even better than what she had had previously.  This is proof that G-d cares for us and is involved with each of our lives individually… And it is proof that, as Rabbi Ben has mentioned previously in one of his stories, that your parnossa, your livelihood, is determined on Rosh Hashana and sealed on Yom Kippur and that cannot be changed.  The income you are meant to having coming to you will come – and keeping the Shabbat will NEVER stand in the way of this.

Kol hakavod to Aliza! You can join her on her journey, read more about her, and offer her words of encouragement at her blog, It’s a Long Road.