His name used to be"Ronnie"

I’m sitting here in my freezing, new and empty apartment, wrapped in a blanket and eating dried mango I just bought from the shuk. Tears are streaming down my face as I read the heart-wrenching stories from R’ Paysach Krohn’s book, In the Spirit of the Maggid. He marvels, in many of his stories, both tragic and joyous, how one small act or word changed someone’s life forever. I have experienced this phenomenon many times and speak about it in this poem I wrote a few years ago, and now in this story I want to share with you.

In the 1970’s my father and mother both became religious while they were in their early 20’s in Seattle. My father was born and raised in Seattle (in fact my Great-grandmother was as well) and my mother, originally from Chicago, came to Seattle in her early 20’s to live near her sister. My parents had both been involved with Chabad at the beginning of their process of becoming religious, but not long after had moved to NY and joined the community in Far Rockaway before returning to live in Seattle 10 years later. I never really thought much about their process of becoming religious and how life may have been very different if they had not become more observant.

About 30 years later, in 2005, after two years of seminary in Israel, I moved to NY and studied at Lander College for Women. I met a girl name Chani Raskin and we connected right away but it wasn’t until after a year or two of knowing each other I finally made it to her house one Friday night to join her family for Shabbat dinner. 

We were sitting around the table with her family, and her father starts asking me the usual ‘get-to-know-you’ questions about where I am from etc. I responded that I was from Seattle and he responded curiously, “Oh really?” “I was a bachur there on shlichus many years ago.”

  

I always get excited when I meet people who have been to Seattle so I respond, “How cool! When were you there and who do you remember?” 

It turns out that he was there in the mid-70’s at the same time that my parents were there and becoming religious. Since he was involved in Chabad I mentioned that my parents were both involved in Chabad a bit when they were becoming religious. 

Now it was his turn to get excited, “Who are your parents? What is your last name?” I tell him my family name and he says, “Wow that sounds so familiar! What is your father’s name? So I reply, “Isaac Velvel but he used to go by his English name, Ronnie/Ronald.” 

His response still gives me chills when I think about it.

WOW, “he astounds, I remember your father! I kashered his first kitchen! 

My eyes started tearing up as it hit me; I was sitting there as a religious girl, studying in an Orthodox college at the table of the man who kashered my Dad’s first kitchen. A man who saw the beginning of my Dad’s journey of re-connecting to God, and may have even been someone who encouraged and motivated him to continue learning Torah, is now seeing the “result”. All of the sudden I saw what could have been and what was; my dad became religious and now here I am, religious too. If my Dad had not become religious, I may not even exist, let alone be sitting at my friend’s Shabbat table in Crown Heights. The incredible amount of divine providence involved in every detail that led up to that moment felt literally awesome. And for my friend’s dad to see the product, so to speak, of the work he did in Seattle 30 years before - how powerful.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this story recently. Of the deep connections we make and the powerful impact we have, even when we are unaware. It is incredibly difficult to live life being constantly conscious of what we are saying, to whom we are speaking, what we can do for someone and how we can make an impact. But, as you can see from this story, we have no idea how far-reaching our words and actions are. If you would have told my dad and this young bachur in the 1970’s that their daughters would become friends at an Orthodox college in New York, I’m sure they would have laughed. 

But look who’s laughing now?