In the loud and noisy hubbub of the Machane Yehuda market on a Friday morning, it was only by a chance of fate that I saw the cell phone fall to the ground with a small sound of splat as it hit the pavement. I bent down and picked up the Zach Morris-style brick of a cell phone.
Great. Now what?
"I saw who it fell from," a voice echos through the tunnels of my ear drum. "There! The man in the black hat!"
With information about as helpful as being told to look for the Jew, I sprinted off towards the unfortunate owner who had now, unknowingly, dropped his unfortunate attempt at a cell phone.
Success. Adoni, ani choshev sh'ze shelcha... With a look of confusion, the man takes his phone and thanks me. We wish each other Shabbat shalom and are on our separate ways.
Fast forward, er, rewind, to the night before, Thanksgiving dinner, as sit in a Jerusalem living room full of colleagues I have now just met for the first time. And one, is frustrated. He is not satisfied with the religious environment amongst his classmates. Many of them aren't.
But he can't figure out what to do. He doesn't know what the next step is - how can he affect change, how can he get something new started. Something like, say, mincha.
Bing! A light goes off in my head. I flash back, three years ago, when I sat and talked with a teacher, a mentor, about my own frustrations, and she gave me the gift of a simple idea. You want to pray with your classmates? Round them up, promise to be quick and to the point, and do it! Don't hold back!
So we did it. And with that, HUC's seven-minute (daily) mincha was born. It wasn't revolutionary. We did not change worlds. But it was a statement. It was a success. And it was so simple.
So I, in a pay-it-forward moment, passed on the idea to my newly met colleague. And he ate it up. Of course! he said. It seemed too easy. So obvious. But never thought of.
We'll see what happens.
In these moments of unexpected interaction, it seems we have the power to tip the scales of our reality forward, towards something better, towards something easier, something nicer, something not what is today.
And, so often, all that holds us back is fear: fear of trying something new, fear of thinking outside of the box, fear of running after the unknown, of interacting with a complete stranger.
But, if we can overcome that fear - and we always can - we have the power to change worlds.
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