One of my sons has an 18-year-old friend who, with his stern face & his noisy chartreuse motorcycle, doesn't look particularly God-fearing...but he is.
He refuses to own a cell phone with any kind of Internet, gets angry when his friends try to show him stuff from their cell phones, and insists on attending yeshivah rather than working. And yes, he also wears the customary charedi white shirt & black pants.
He trusts Hashem to take care of his financial needs (motorcycle & all that).
Last week, the kosher fast-food owner named Mustafa realized that sending out his usual Arab delivery guys on their motorcycles to deliver kosher fast food to customers risked their well-being due to the many young Jewish males who've gotten fed up with innocent Jews being randomly & brutally attacked—sometimes to death—by Muslim-Arab males.
(Yes, the same Mustafa of the kosher-for-Pesach Thousand Island dressing fiasco that appeared here: rav-avigdor-miller-on-parshat-shemini-all-about-anger.html. Mustafa is also a Muslim-Arab, but he rejects physical violence. He prefers making money & living an enjoyable life.)
So Mustafa sent the Arab delivery guys back home to Beit Tzafafa (a relatively peaceful & upscale Arab community in the Jerusalem area), then called on his Jewish employees to gather as many of their motorcyclist friends as possible to keep the deliveries going.
The normally frugal Mustafa declared, "Instead of paying them 30 shekels an hour, I will pay them 30 shekels per delivery! Just get them here and keep the business going!"
And that's how my son's motorcyclist friend, who happened to be home from yeshivah that evening, ended up earning over 400 shekels in just a few hours.
The icing on the cake was the last delivery of the night.
The staff forgot to shut down the restaurant's website on time. So when they came to shut it down, they noticed a new meal order from Beit Hakerem.
Realizing how bad it would be for business to ignore the order, the God-fearing yeshivish motorcyclist & his buddy took the order and went to find the customer in an apartment located on the 15th floor somewhere in Beit Hakerem.
Just as they reached the neighborhood, the buddy's Netspark-filtered cell phone with its Waze GPS died.
So they made do with the motorcyclist's little kosher cell phone to contact the woman for directions.
Apparently, it's a complicated area to maneuver, which caused them to get lost. So this older lady insisted on coming out to meet them, which ended up meaning a trek of a couple of blocks and crossing a highway—all at her own insistence.
Upon meeting, they apologized for the cooled-down food.
"No matter—I can easily warm it up in the microwave!" she reassured them.
They informed her that she had the right to a freebie in light of the considerable inconvenience they inadvertently caused her.
But she refused. In fact, she even insisted on tipping them!
"I'm sorry the tip is only 5 shekels," she said. "It's the only change I have in the house, I promise! I would give you more if I could! I'll order again next week and give you a proper tip then."
Of course, the boys didn't want to take her tip in light of the circumstances, but she insisted. She reassured them she realized it wasn't their fault (they already apologized profusely via the kosher cell phone, explaining what happened to the cell phone with Waze), and she only felt bad for them.
People like this older Jewish lady end up increasing compassion in the world because she teaches an example of empathy & how to behave when things don't go your way. She only thought about the delivery boys, not herself.
She refused to get caught up in the principle of the matter (i.e., "If I made a meal order, then I deserve to have it delivered right to my door on time & hot!").
Instead, she focused on how the delivery boys had done their best. She also focused on their feelings, that it was late at night & maybe they were tired, and that they felt bad about the whole mess.
I think the above anecdote also shows that it's possible to prioritize yeshivah over working full-time & also to make do with a simple dinky Internet-free cell phone.
Maybe not everyone can. But it's also not as impossible as some make it out to be.
Hashem helps.
He refuses to own a cell phone with any kind of Internet, gets angry when his friends try to show him stuff from their cell phones, and insists on attending yeshivah rather than working. And yes, he also wears the customary charedi white shirt & black pants.
He trusts Hashem to take care of his financial needs (motorcycle & all that).
Last week, the kosher fast-food owner named Mustafa realized that sending out his usual Arab delivery guys on their motorcycles to deliver kosher fast food to customers risked their well-being due to the many young Jewish males who've gotten fed up with innocent Jews being randomly & brutally attacked—sometimes to death—by Muslim-Arab males.
(Yes, the same Mustafa of the kosher-for-Pesach Thousand Island dressing fiasco that appeared here: rav-avigdor-miller-on-parshat-shemini-all-about-anger.html. Mustafa is also a Muslim-Arab, but he rejects physical violence. He prefers making money & living an enjoyable life.)
So Mustafa sent the Arab delivery guys back home to Beit Tzafafa (a relatively peaceful & upscale Arab community in the Jerusalem area), then called on his Jewish employees to gather as many of their motorcyclist friends as possible to keep the deliveries going.
The normally frugal Mustafa declared, "Instead of paying them 30 shekels an hour, I will pay them 30 shekels per delivery! Just get them here and keep the business going!"
And that's how my son's motorcyclist friend, who happened to be home from yeshivah that evening, ended up earning over 400 shekels in just a few hours.
The icing on the cake was the last delivery of the night.
The staff forgot to shut down the restaurant's website on time. So when they came to shut it down, they noticed a new meal order from Beit Hakerem.
Realizing how bad it would be for business to ignore the order, the God-fearing yeshivish motorcyclist & his buddy took the order and went to find the customer in an apartment located on the 15th floor somewhere in Beit Hakerem.
Just as they reached the neighborhood, the buddy's Netspark-filtered cell phone with its Waze GPS died.
So they made do with the motorcyclist's little kosher cell phone to contact the woman for directions.
Apparently, it's a complicated area to maneuver, which caused them to get lost. So this older lady insisted on coming out to meet them, which ended up meaning a trek of a couple of blocks and crossing a highway—all at her own insistence.
Upon meeting, they apologized for the cooled-down food.
"No matter—I can easily warm it up in the microwave!" she reassured them.
They informed her that she had the right to a freebie in light of the considerable inconvenience they inadvertently caused her.
But she refused. In fact, she even insisted on tipping them!
"I'm sorry the tip is only 5 shekels," she said. "It's the only change I have in the house, I promise! I would give you more if I could! I'll order again next week and give you a proper tip then."
Of course, the boys didn't want to take her tip in light of the circumstances, but she insisted. She reassured them she realized it wasn't their fault (they already apologized profusely via the kosher cell phone, explaining what happened to the cell phone with Waze), and she only felt bad for them.
People like this older Jewish lady end up increasing compassion in the world because she teaches an example of empathy & how to behave when things don't go your way. She only thought about the delivery boys, not herself.
She refused to get caught up in the principle of the matter (i.e., "If I made a meal order, then I deserve to have it delivered right to my door on time & hot!").
Instead, she focused on how the delivery boys had done their best. She also focused on their feelings, that it was late at night & maybe they were tired, and that they felt bad about the whole mess.
I think the above anecdote also shows that it's possible to prioritize yeshivah over working full-time & also to make do with a simple dinky Internet-free cell phone.
Maybe not everyone can. But it's also not as impossible as some make it out to be.
Hashem helps.
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