Lord, How Will You Get Me Out of this Mess!

I am a Sabbath observer. Pleasure on the Sabbath is a "mitzvah". In fact, we say "Shabbat Shalom" - peaceful Sabbath - as a greeting. One of the more humorous explanations of "Shabbat Shalom" is that on a normal week day, your evil inclination tries to coerce you to indulge, while your good inclination is begging you to resist. But on Shabbat, indulgence is a "mitzvah" so your good and evil inclinations are at peace.

The explanation is rather tongue in cheek but the point is accurate - part of the Shabbat celebration is to have extra festive dining beginning on Friday night and continuing throughout Saturday day and evening.

I told you that to set the context for something that happened to me around the summer of 1991. I was in Hong Kong, and I was invited to my friend Saul Levy for Friday night dinner. Sauly lived with his family on the mountain somewhere about the HK Hilton where I was staying. If festive dining on Shabbat was a mitzvah, then you would go straight to heaven after dining by Sauly.

That would have been the first hot kosher meal I would have had all week, and I was looking forward to it with great relish. Unfortunately it was not coming that easily. You see, that afternoon I got detained at a vendor factory, and then got stuck in traffic coming back to the hotel. With just 30 minutes remaining before sunset, I ran up to my room, threw on my Shabbat suit, grabbed 10HK Dollars to pay the cab (once Shabbat starts, no mor carrying or spending) and ran back down to the taxi stand where I hoped to grab a cab and get up the mountain, a 10 to 15 minute drive.

But when I arrived at the taxi stand I was shattered to see a line about 30 people long, and only 1 taxi arriving every few minutes. The prospect of going back to my room and having tuna fish for Sabbath dinner was not too enticing.

After a few minutes, and just about ready to throw in the towel, I looked up and said to myself - "Lord, how will you get me out of this mess?" Just then, the dispatcher called out to everyone on the line - "this cab is going up the mountain - is anyone going that way?" I guess everyone was heading to Kowloon for a night of lively entertainment, so luckily, I was the first one on line going up the mountain. I looked up, said "Thanks Lord", jumped in the cab, and arrived with 3 minutes to spare!

True story! These things really do happen!