The Human Side of the Story

For the week ending 3 July 2010 / 20 Tammuz 5770

The Sticker that Saved

by Rabbi Mendel Weinbach zt'l
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In our Parshat Terumah issue we related the story of the car driven by an Arab which was stopped at Erez checkpoint and identified by the checkpoint commander as a stolen vehicle because its bumper sticker had three Hebrew words on it: Ain od milvado. ("There is no one but Him.")

How that sticker got on to that bumper is a story in itself. Some yeshiva students involved in outreach in the Jerusalem suburb of Maaleh Adumim had approached one of the residents who had just purchased a brand new car and tried to interest him in religious observance. When he stubbornly refused to listen they politely departed but not before asking him if he would mind if they put a sticker on his bumper with a message of faith in G-d, and to their surprise he consented. Half an hour after the sticker was attached, the car was stolen from in front of the home of its owner who came running to the head of the yeshiva with a complaint of suffering such a loss after consenting to the placing of the sticker.

The rosh hayeshiva assured him that no harm could result from that sticker and even convened a group of students to say Tehillim for the distraught fellow to recover his car. An hour later the phone call came that the stolen car had been recovered – because of the identifying bumper sticker.

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