This letter was received from a Company, B.B. Denton of Dallas, Texas:
A member of our board of directors received a phone call from Brooklyn inquiring about a family in dire straights in Monsey. The family in question was struggling mightily. In
the father’s ongoing efforts to support his family, he had recently begun yet another sales job. The voice at the other end of the phone told our board member that a group of friends wanted to get some money to that family without them knowing about it, but didn’t know how to go about it.
After some inquiry, Tomche Shabbos found that A) the new employer was a Yorei Shomayim, and B) this employer would work with Tomche Shabbos in inventing a sale that would pay this man commission.
The next day, we called Brooklyn to inform the group of friends that we were ready for the transaction.
Three days later at about 11:00 at night, a man showed up with an open envelope containing more than two thousand dollars. After it was dropped off, our board member got into his car and headed out to deliver the cash to the owner of the sales company. Half way there, he pulled to the side of the road. He slowly and carefully opened the envelope and began to finger the numerous twenty dollar bills, ten dollar bills, fives and singles. As he related his emotions later he
was struck by the moment. He thought “Something so beautiful is going on in Klal Yisroel that I want to have a part of it.” And with that he reached into his own wallet, added his own ten dollar bill to the envelope, and only then continued his mission.
At Tomche Shabbos, we often think back to that night. “Something so beautiful is going on in Klal Yisroel that I want to have a part of it.” Each of the young ladies that collects cans on Sundays, each person that joins us at the warehouse on Thursday nights, the people that gently bag the challahs, the people that make sure that each family has enough fruit and vegetables, the people that break down the cardboard boxes that are taken to the garbage, the people
that place ads in our dinner journal, the people that send in unsolicited donations for Pesach. Each and every one calls out through their actions “Something so beautiful is going on in Klal Yisroel that I want to have a part of it.”
And that will never be for sale.
