Rabbi Ari Neuwirth told a story about Rabbi Burstyn from Miami Beach who went one Wednesday afternoon to the fruit store located in his yeshiva. He picked up some vegetables and an entire crate of oranges for his family. As he was walking out, one of his talmidim saw him carrying the heavy crate and offered to bring it to the car for him. The Rabbi said, “Sure, thanks. I’m going to go back into the yeshiva. Please make sure you get the right car. Mine is the blue Honda Odyssey. Just stick it in the middle row of seats.” Later that afternoon, the Rabbi got into his car and saw the vegetables and oranges were not there. The student must have put it in the wrong car.
The next morning, while Rabbi Burstyn was looking at the cars in the lot to see if someone else had a similar car to his, he saw Menachem, a worker from that fruit store, and asked him if someone mentioned that, by accident, they had a crate of oranges put in their car yesterday. Menachem looked at the Rabbi and said, “Were those supposed to be yours? Those oranges saved my life.” Menachem explained, the previous afternoon he was driving home and suddenly got a diabetic attack. He quickly looked for the glucose pills that he always carries around with him, but they were nowhere to be found. He panicked, his blood pressure was diminishing, his sugar level was diminishing, his palms were sweating and he was losing his vision. His hands were shaking so much he couldn’t even retrieve his cellphone to call Hatzalah. He pulled over to the side of the road and hoped someone would see him. He fell backward and his hand stretched into the middle row of seats, and he felt an orange, right there in his car. He picked it up, he started to eat it. His sugar level started to increase, his blood pressure went up, his vision came back. Baruch Hashem, the orange saved his life. He wondered where those oranges miraculously came from. It was Hashem, setting that situation up in advance for them to be there for him at the precise moment that he needed it.
[Told by Rabbi Ashear]
