It was a Thursday afternoon last fall, and I was sitting at my computer with thoughts of making Shabbos. I had planned to start my preparations ahead of time and made a mental list of what to make Thursday morning. However, as the sun rose higher in the sky, the kitchen remained in the dark while I sat in the den with my fingers tapping the keyboard, happily absorbed in sending emails to contacts near and far. I knew what was waiting for me in the other room but chose to ignore the signals my mind was sending me – the same way our grandson purposefully tunes out the repeated reminders from his parents when they tell him to take a shower.
I guess it’s time to admit that I’m not the biggest fan of
cooking. I enjoy making food for my family and other guests, but I like eating
out and prefer picking up takeout on the way home. There are some weeks when
I’ll cook a different meal every night, and other times when that just doesn’t
happen. I do have some guilty feelings about it, but thankfully, my husband
doesn’t feel that his wife should spend any more time in the kitchen than she
wants to.
When the cooking tasks that awaited me on that Thursday
afternoon could not be put off any longer, I resignedly dragged my feet into
the kitchen to begin. As I went to the fridge, I thought to set it on Shabbos
mode one day early so I wouldn’t forget about it before Shabbos began. I pushed
the two buttons as directed. Wait, something wasn’t right. The usual readout on
the front panel says zero degrees for the freezer and 37 degrees for the
fridge. The readout for both the freezer and the fridge now read 56. 56? 56!
How can that be? Frantically, I pushed the buttons again, but nothing changed.
I pressed buttons here, pushed buttons there and still no change. I went into
the cupboard and pulled out the manufacturer’s manual, flipping to the trouble
shooting page. There was a list of solutions to follow but none of them
addressed my problem. Today, of all days, my refrigerator had to give out. Why
today? Why couldn’t this have been on Monday or even Tuesday? Was this really
happening to me? On Thanksgiving Day no less, when absolutely everything was
closed. What was I going to do about all the food that, up until now, had been
peacefully sitting in my fridge and freezer and smelling just great?
I pulled out the fridge from the wall and pulled the plug from
the socket, then plugged it back in, hoping against hope there would be a
different readout. No change to my fridge, but I did notice just how dirty the
floor underneath it was. So, yes, even in my near panic state, I took out the
cleaning wipes and cleaned the floor and the back panel and the top of the
fridge. Once it was back in place, I tried calling the manufacturer to see if I
could get some help. I thought that maybe, just maybe, the company outsourced
their employees from India, Pakistan, or some other country who didn’t
celebrate this American holiday. But, nope, just my luck, I heard a recording
to call back tomorrow.
And then I remembered what my wise and wonderful husband
often tells me. His thoughts seeped into my head slowly and peacefully like the
dawning of a new day. My husband follows a life of emunah and bitachon and
listens to a daily shiur on the
subject. I too have bitachon, but as
is evident, only sometimes, and not in times of a crises big or small. I
decided right then and there that what was happening to me was coming straight
from Hashem and, as my husband learned, only He could change teva. As my panic receded and my
reasoning took over, I decided that the food in the freezer could easily be
moved to my other freezer in the laundry room and that I wasn’t going to worry
about the food in the fridge.
I turned to look at the refrigerator once more and then burst
out laughing. Suddenly everything was crystal clear. The readout on both the
fridge and freezer didn’t read “56” it spelled Sb. Sb, Sb, oh wonderful and
terrific Sb! I had inadvertently set my fridge in Shabbos mode and didn’t even
know it. I laughed a sweet laugh. It was laughter filled with relief and joy.
It was Hashem Who showed me the way, Who helped me see what I couldn’t see
before.
There were lessons in emunah
and bitachon to be learned and
applied, and I hoped I would retain them. As the afternoon wore on, I told my
husband that I really didn’t feel like cooking. He said, “You’ll be fine once
you start; you always are.” It’s nice having a tzadik for a husband. I smiled in acknowledgement as I went about
my business to cook for Shabbos.
Zahava Hochberg created the weekly column “Musings
Through a Bifocal Lens” for the Monsey
Mevaser newspaper. Zahava can be reached at zahava.hochberg17@gmail.com.
