I have been blessed with a wonderful opportunity to teach and share my love of Torah with young children who attend the Chabad Hebrew School program not too far from where we live.
I did not grow up in a home where I was exposed to the beauty and value of our heritage. After I began to wonder more about my background, I searched for teachers who could help me understand our faith. It now gives me great pleasure and satisfaction to help inform and inspire precious Jewish youngsters about living a life of Torah. I want to help educate other children from unaffiliated families so they do not have to struggle like I did to find the truth.
Because the Jewish education of each child is critically important, I have agreed every year to pick up certain Hebrew school students and drive them to class on the way to teach. With parents who are busy working, my cooperation each year has helped enable these children to attend Hebrew School. I do not ask nor do I receive payment from the family or from the school for my time and effort.
It seems, though, that The One Above recently ensured that I was compensated for the time I have spent picking up students over the years and taking them to school.
I have an older son who is on life support and paralyzed. After he first became sick, we used a governmental service for our medical transportation needs. The amount of frustration we endured waiting endlessly to be picked up or returned to the house was unbearable. Sometimes after the service would finally arrive even hours late, there would be additional passengers in the car who had to be dropped off first. We then decided to travel using the volunteer transportation services of the local Bikur Cholim.
The Bikur Cholim organization has been kind and generous to us with their assistance, but we could only ask them for rides to medical appointments. We are not able to ask them for rides to a park or to do shopping together at a store. Our son was unhappy staying trapped inside the house. He uses an electric wheelchair, and as much as we wanted to improve the situation, we did not have the resources to purchase a specially designed van to transport him.
Over the summer, the rabbi of the school where I work asked me if we still needed a wheelchair-accessible van because earlier in the year I had expressed the frustration of our situation to him. He had heard of a family that was looking to donate their wheelchair-accessible van which they no longer needed.
My hopes soared as I imagined finally being able to help improve the quality of our son’s life. Baruch Hashem, we now have the use of a comfortable van (valued at around $30,000) with an easy to use ramp that is large and sturdy enough to accommodate our son’s electric wheelchair.
Maybe it is because I chose to drive Hashem’s children to learn His Torah that He made it possible for me to be able to drive our son around so that he could have a better life.
Yes, measure for measure, we will all be compensated. Just keep doing as many good deeds as you can.