My flight was supposed to leave Israel Thursday
morning at 10:40 A.M. To be on it would
require me to wake up at approximately 3:00 A.M. give or take a few assaults
on the snooze button, daven Vasikin and leave immediately for Ben Gurion
Airport in order to beat the rush hour traffic.
To compound things, the reliable driver who had
picked me up at the airport upon my arrival told me that he would be in England
visiting his parents on the day that I was scheduled to return to the States,
and therefore wouldn’t be available to take me.
So given the fact that I had been lazily waking up between 5:15 A.M. and
5:45 A.M. during my stay in Israel, I was worried that I might sleep through the
alarm that would be set to 3:00 A.M. and/or that the yet to be designated
substitute driver might not show up on time.
After passively suffering for a week over the downside
implications inherent in a flight leaving at this time in the morning I finally
decided to take action by changing the flight from Thursday at 10:40 A.M. to Thursday
at 12 :40 A.M.
My anxiety evaporated in an instant. Instead of saying goodbye to everyone and
then go to sleep at 9:30 P. M. Wednesday night, I would now be saying goodbye
to everyone and then leave for the airport at 9:30 P.M. Aside from the $200 I paid to change the
ticket there didn’t appear to be any downside to my switcharoo.
Or so I thought.
That Hashem thought otherwise was already apparent by
early Wednesday morning.
What I had thought was merely a clean wash was
actually more akin to a debit balance against me in terms of zilzul the kovod
(lack of respect) of Eretz Yisroel.
While my cheshbon as to the fact that there would be no social time lost
with family in pushing up the flight by ten hours was correct, I had forgotten
that I wasn’t dealing with just any ten hours.
We’re talking here about ten hours in Eretz Yisroel,
not the Bronx.
I had spent $200 to walk away from ten hours in
Eretz Yisroel plus the opportunity to daven with a vasikin minyan in
Yerushalayim. So on Wednesday, the morning
after changing the ticket, I discovered that all of my money was missing from
my wallet.
How it happened I still can’t figure out, but the
why of it is very clear to me. It was
$200. Midda keneged midda (measure for
measure), dollar for dollar for the $200 I spent to walk out on the kedusha of
Eretz Yisroel.
Moreover, the money was in twenties; ten twenty
dollar bills. One twenty for each hour
that I was in hurry to return to shmutz l’aretz.
