Mitzvah Truck on Shelburne Road
I've been annoyed about our kitchen table ever since we got it seven years ago when we moved into our new home. We ordered a square table from the same person who did our kitchen and counters and I thought it would be just perfect. But when we got it, it just was never right. Too small, to shaky, not quite the color I thought it would be, you know the drill.
But what could I do? I resigned myself to just tolerating one of those imperfect things about life you can't change. Then something exciting happened. One of my kids burned the table top. I know, I know. How on earth do these things happen? It doesn't really matter. That's life with kids. Fighting it is futile. Trust me on this one.
Well, the burn marks made the table even more annoying, but by the same token they sort of opened a little door in my mind to the possibility of replacing the table one day. Because it was really pretty ugly at this point. Lo and behold I see on Jewish Cleveland Freebay, which is a Facebook group where people in the Jewish community give stuff away to each other (that I happened to have created), that my dear friend Nancy Greff was giving away a table.
The color was right! The size was perfect! I waited patiently because other people were interested in it before me, and then finally, the wonderful thing happened. It was all mine for the taking! My daughter and I drove over there, took a look, and fell in table love.
Anyhoo, my darling husband borrowed a pickup truck from a friend, drove out to Shelburne, and proceeded to pick up the table. On the way he gets a phone call from someone he barely knows that they are moving and have some Jewish sukkah stuff that they have no idea whom to give to. None of the local synagogues wanted it and they were just going to put it out with the trash. Then they thought of him. Maybe he knew someone who could use it?
"Well," says my husband, "I am actually on my way to Shaker Heights in a pickup truck. Where do you guys live?"
"We live on Shelburne," they said. Of course, we should have known! So off he went to accomplish a two-for-the-price-of-one mitzvah. One for this family and one for his wife. Because for some reason my dear husband did not really see the need for a new table, bless his soul. So this whole pickup truck venture was simply a favor for me, his wife.
So he heads over to the sukkah people, picks up the bamboo for the schach, and the sukkah frame, and throws them in the back of his newly-acquired truck. He then heads over down the street to the Greffs to grab the table. He tells them the amazing story whereupon Michael says, "Hey, I could really use a sukkah frame!"
"It's all yours," says my happy husband. So Michael got the sukkah frame, we got the beautiful table and we put the bamboo up on Freebay, where it was happily claimed by that evening.
Ethics of the Fathers tells us to be mindful of each mitzvah because "one mitzvah brings along another mitzvah." Each mitzvah joins to the next, like cars on a train. Be the kind of person who follows a mitzvah, keep your eyes and ears open, and I guarantee you, interesting things will happen!! As Rabbi Dr. Seuss put it: "Dad always says to me, / ‘Marco, keep your eyelids up / And see what you can see.'"
Shabbat Shalom,
Ruchi Koval
