… in one week at UAlbany – and a message for us on Opening Weekend of a new semester:
THE LOST KEY FOB
One day this week a Toyota key fob appeared on our front porch table. Someone either put it there or left it there accidentally. Haley took a picture of it and posted it in the Shabbos House Students whatsapp chat to see if it belonged to anyone. No response.
But the next day, Aaron was standing outside old Shabbos House and saw a guy and girl looking around in the grass. He asked what they were looking for and they said they lost a key fob! They came to Shabbos House to pick it up and turns out the guy is a Rugby team captain and knows a few guys from Shabbos House. They were very grateful. And thanks also to the mysterious passerby who must’ve found the fob on the sidewalk or grass and put it on our porch table.
THE STOLEN PSALMS BOOK
So this goes back maybe a year or two. We were at a Hillel Shabbat dinner and a student, not a regular came up to me and told me a most unusual thing. He had a friend or suitemate, or some acquaintance who admitted to him that he took part in a theft of a Jewish camp in the Catskills. One of the items he took was a leather or leatherette book of Psalms that had been awarded to a camper. He realized it would be significant to the child, and wanted to find a way to get it back to the camper without incriminating himself. So the student handed me the book and told me to see if I could trace the camper.
As part of Shabbat observance I don’t carry outdoors so we left it in the Hillel office and it took a few weeks until we got it here. And then I must have put it away and forgot about it. But we were cleaning up the other day this week and it appeared again and I realized we had to take care of it getting it returned to that camper.
There were some very good clues: The tag with the “Student of the Week” award had the name of the camper and his grade, Camp Shalvah of Bobov (a known Chassidic group based in Boro Park), and the year it was awarded 5782/2022.
I put this information up on Twitter, and tagged a few people. I got a call within an hour from someone who knows the family, contacted them, and within a few hours I had their home address and we will mail it to them after Shabbat. That was fast!
RELEVANCE FOR OPENING WEEKEND AT COLLEGE?
We all have things we feel we’re missing, lost to us or taken away from us. It can be frustrating, upsetting, disappointing. It can set us back.
The way the fob and book were returned was thanks to interconnectedness, people connections, a network. I knew enough people on Twitter to tag in the post that would have connections to the Bobov community in Boro Park. Remarkably, it worked within an hour! And because Haley posted the fob on the chat, Aaron knew to ask about it when seeing the students looking in the grass.
Going alone isn’t easy at college, especially nowadays. We do better when part of a community, with (multiple) circles of friends. We can’t find it all on our own. As the expression goes, “it takes a village”. The strength of a network, of connection points, of people helping people, helps us discover and recover that which might have otherwise been out of reach.
This is why Shabbat together, connecting with each other, celebrating as a community is so important. Yes, we are each individuals and on our own paths, in our own way. But the more connected we are – the better!