A Story About A Very Special Book

This was amazing! We had a long day up at Bracha (Mount of Blessing, in Israel). Just before we left, Daniel, one of the younger boys starts, showing us this little book he found in a garbage pile. We were looking at is and realized it was a little tiny prayer book. Daniel asked me if I would like him to run and grab another book from the garbage, that there were a bunch of important looking books there. I almost said "No, thanks, just leave it" because we were just about to leave, but instead said "Please, if you can get one quick." He ran off and was back real quick with this dirty, dusty, wrinkled and falling apart book, about the size of a pocket sized siddur. It was in pretty rough shape; he handed me the cover, then the rest of the book and said "I think these went together." When I opened it up, all I could really read was Torah, Nevi'im, and Ketuvim in Hebrew, and saw the IDF emblems. That was pretty neat and exciting, a really beautiful find.

On the way home from Bracha, I had dusted off the binding and the torah and put them back together. Sitting in the van carefully holding it together, something caught my attention. I looked down at what I was holding, and realized that this Torah, the way it was worn, fit perfectly in my hand. The IDF soldier who previously owned it must have been right-handed, and we would had the same size hands.

I often wonder who was the person who owned this little book, and why it ended up in a pile of garbage up there on Bracha. There is some hand writing in the back, and it would be so neat to meet that person, and to be able to return it put back together. If it ever happens, I hope it'll be with me and it can go back to that person. But until then, and even if it doesn't happen, I'll hold onto it and learn to read.

Thinking about this made me think about the lives of so many people. We were once dirty, dusty, and falling apart. Left where we were, we would've been useless. But we were picked up, put back together and made into beautiful, useful vessels for HaShem.