We all grew up on stories of people sacrificing for Shabbos. During the first half of the 20th century, there were famous stories of people who were fired every Sunday after taking off from work for Shabbos. Each week they would valiantly look for another job; sometimes not finding anything for a while.
There are countless stories of business people who walked away from the greatest deal in their career all for Shabbos. One story offhand is about an architect in Mexico who had built a magnificent building that he was trying to sell or rent. For some odd reason, the building was not getting any offers. Finally he met with some potential buyers, but they wanted the signing to take place on Friday night. The hero of our story had just started keeping Shabbos and it was a big struggle for him to turn the offer down, but in the end Shabbos prevailed. When a massive earthquake shook the country shortly afterward, his building was one of the few still standing and was in great demand.
I recently had a struggle with Shabbos. It didn’t involve something major like my life’s sustenance. It involved something very tiny; moths.
Before I did a major renovation on my house a few years ago, I suffered from an annual summer invasion of moths. I had a system to keep them contained. I made sure all food was wrapped well and kept closed up. I would still find those moths and worse, the worms that would turn into moths in all corners of my kitchen and eating areas.
I was relieved and rejoiced to see that the moths did not come back to visit after the renovations were done. I assumed the logical reason is because I had moved my kitchen and the windows have more effective screening. The relief lasted until this spring. I started to find moths in my big food closet. I tried getting rid of them, but the situation was so out of hand that they began to appear all over my kitchen. I took apart that big closet, cleaned it out well, got rid of what I thought may be the nest and was happy to see that the moths were gone. For about a month.
It became a monthly project. Clean out the closet, see a bunch of moths after a few weeks and start over. But at least the situation never got worse and the closet was tidier than it had ever been.
But then one month not long ago, the moths did not go away even after the big cleaning project. Every morning I would take a good look and there they were. Sometimes I would see two or three moths sitting on the ceiling, the sides of closet or under the shelves. Sometimes there would be four or five. I would spray them with water or something more toxic. I could check several times a day and would find another one or two moths, despite having killed their brothers/aunts or cousins earlier that day. It became routine to check the closet every few hours to make sure it was moth-free, but it never was. Re-cleaning the closet brought me no resolution either.
One Friday, I mentally wrote on my grey matter that I would need to check the closet before lighting candles. Somehow I only remembered when it was too late. I hesitantly opened the closet to see how bad the situation was after seeing the soft glow of my Shabbos candles. I looked around the closet and counted no less than eight moths hanging from the ceiling and shelves of the closet.
I closed the door and my heart literally sank into my stomach. OK, I will have a big cleanup after Shabbos. There is nothing I can do about this now, I thought bravely. Shabbos continued as it normally does. The family ate, sang, schmoozed and slept. Kids and grandkids played and fought. Just a regular Shabbos. I didn’t bother sharing with everyone about my upcoming battle with the uninvited guests. Why should I gross them out? It took some time until the last dish was washed, Havdala was made and I gave the last farewell kiss to my grandchildren. Only then did I hesitantly open up the big food closet expecting to find a flying army. But instead, I found not one moth. Where were the eight moths whom I had witnessed a little over 24 hours earlier? And what about all their relatives? Not only were they not visible that Motzei Shabbos, I have hardly seen a moth since.
My only possible explanation is that Shabbos somehow ushered them out the door. And I am truly grateful.
