My second favorite story (from the same book whose name I'll have to recall) is about a famous Rabbi who is on a plane trip. The flight attendant is a blond, blue eyed very non-Jewish looking young woman but the Rabbi can tell she is a good person. She treats him very well, and she exudes a wonderful spirit.
At one point the Rabbi decides to stretch his legs and he walks around the plane. He comes to the area where the flight attendants are he and hears davening (praying). He peeks around the corner and it is the very same flight attendant.
He greets her with amazement and says, "I had no idea you were Jewish!"
She replies, "I converted to Judaism. My family is Chrstian, but Judaism called to my soul and I converted."
The rabbi and she speak more and he tells her, if you need me for anything let me know.
She replies that she needs him now. She is engaged to a wonderful Jewish man, but his family does not want him to marry a convert. They aren't at all religious, but they want their son to marry a woman Jewish from birth.
The rabbi promises to contact the man's family and tell them how wonderful the girl is. He does this and they give him a hard time, telling him that it is none of his business! They are agnostic, have no faith at all -- because they are holocaust survivors and if there was a G-d, why would He have let that happen! Yet they will not sanction their son marrying a girl who was formerly a Chrstian.
The rabbi doesn't know what to do. He decides to visit the girl's parents to see if there is any way to reconcile them to the marriage. He is shocked when the girl's father says, "Rabbi, we have kept this secret ever since we came to America -- even our daughter doesn't know, but we are Jews. We survived the Holocaust and we decided that being Jewish wasn't worth the hatred -- we pretend to be Chrstian and we raised our daughter as a Chrstian in the hope that she could escape the fate that befell us."
The Rabbi can't believe it! He calls the man's parents and tell them that the girl is really a Jew by birth, and convinces the two sets of parents to meet.
As the prospective in-laws walk into the room the two old men gasp in amazement and shock, and then run to each other, hugging for all they are worth! Moshe is it you? Yankel is it YOU?
The two had been Yeshiva students before the war, and were the best of friends. They made a pact in those days that one day they would each marry and if one had a son and the other a daughter they would betroth them to marry.
The war came, and each lost track of each other. They both became bitter and turned their back on G-d and on Judaism.
Yet, miracle of miracle, their children found each other and against all odds fell in love and the match promised so many years before came to be.
The miracle brought together the son and daughter, and it also returned their parents to G-d.
Bookmarks