THE MYSTERY OF THE MISSING PAPER

“Where did I put it? I must remember…” It was the somewhat hoarse voice of old Sholom. With one hand he adjusted his glasses on his nose and with his other hand he rearranged the string that tied the glasses around his neck. “Where can that paper be?” he asked himself over and over.

He emptied his right pocket and quickly picked up the bunch of papers that slowly drifted to the floor. “No, it’s not this and not this either… No, the paper is not here.”

“I don’t understand it,” he mumbled. “If it’s not in the left pocket and not in the right, not in the shirt and not in my back pocket, where can it be? It has simply disappeared!”

As he searched, we stood there, Shmuli and me, in the doorway of the print shop. We watched Sholom looking desperately for the missing paper and our curiosity was aroused. 

“What did he prepare for us this time?” I whispered to Shmuli. 

“The paper doesn’t necessarily have to do with us,” said Shmuli, cooling off my enthusiasm.

“I will have to sit down and try to remember where I last saw it,” concluded Sholom. He turned around and noticed us. He wasn’t surprised to see us at the print shop again without prior notice. Since my bar mitzva invitations were printed by him, he became our loyal friend, amazingly. Now, noticing us, he stopped his search for the paper and greeted us warmly.

“Bruchim ha’baim, my old friends,” he called out with a big smile which we saw more regularly on his face lately. 

“Hello to you too,” I said and then immediately continued, “We see that you’ve lost something. Is it important?”

“You guessed right. I lost a certain paper and it’s very important.”

From Sholom’s sad expression we understood that the paper that he lost was very important to him. We tried helping him look for the lost paper while trying to guess what could be so important about this paper.

“It’s only a piece of paper. How important can it be?” I wondered.

“Maybe it’s very old and worth a lot of money,” suggested Shmuli. 

I immediately agreed with him. “You’re right. Maybe it contains divrei Torah written by one of the tzaddikim of a previous generation. A handwritten paper like that doubles and triples the value of the writing.

When Sholom saw we were continuing to look for the paper, he went back to supervising the work going on in his print shop. “Shimi! What happened?” we heard him say to one of the workers. “Why aren’t you taking care of the problem with the laminating machine?”

“Nothing happened except that I discovered the reason for the problem,” declared Shimi.

“Really? Why is it stuck?”

“No big deal. Just some old paper that landed in the wrong place,” said Shimi.

“An old paper?” I exclaimed. “Maybe that’s the paper we are looking for!”

“He’s right! Quickly give me the paper that you found!” said Sholom excitedly.

Shmuli and I breathed a sigh of relief when we saw the lost paper in the slightly trembling hands of Sholom. 

“Tens of thousands of shekels were saved at the last moment,” I whispered to Shmuli. 

Then we heard Sholom excitedly say to Shimi. “I am so grateful to you; ask me whatever you want in connection with your job.”

Shimi’s face glowed and he said, “For a long time now I’ve wanted to leave half an hour early. Would you allow that?”

“Of course, Shimi!” Sholom took a sip from the cup of water I gave him and then said, “I don’t understand you, Shimi. You could have asked me to appoint you in charge of the orders here at the print shop and you could have asked to work from home and to get a larger salary. Too bad, you lost out.”

Sholom glanced at the paper he held once or twice and then said to us, “You no doubt want to know what is so important about this paper. Rosh Hashana is fast approaching and on the Yom HaDin we ask and pray for the important things that we need. On this paper, throughout the year, I wrote down the things that I need. If I did not find this paper, I would not remember what to pray for on the Yom HaDin.”

Shmuli and I exchanged looks and the thought went through our minds, “Oh, not something worth tens of thousands of sh’kalim, just a plain piece of paper.”

“But Sholom,” I said, “I don’t understand you. Is that what you’re thinking about? Without it, you would not have known what to pray for?!”

Sholom did not understand what I was saying. “What do you mean? Didn’t I explain it already?”

“Yes, you did but I’ve noticed that you are doing exactly the same thing as Shimi.”

“What do you mean?” asked a puzzled Sholom.

I thought a bit and then came up with a good comparison. “Imagine a Jewish boy named Shlomie who lived in one of the difficult times in our long galus. By mistake, Shlomie did something to anger the goyim and they sentenced him to death.”

Sholom listened to me curiously and wondered what I was getting at.

“At the last moment, they brought him before the king for him to approve the sentence and the king says to him, ‘Do you have a request to make of me?’ What will the boy ask for? Of course he will not ask for a candy or a toy, he will ask for his life! Do you understand? When we stand in judgment before Hashem, the only thing that ought to fill our minds and hearts is that this judgment must lead to one and only one result: that we get out of this galus and have the complete Geula.

“In that way, all sorrows will cease, bad will be transformed to good, and this state the world is in, in which G-dliness is hidden will be changed for its true state in which the world is a home for Hashem. Do you agree with me?”

“How right you are,” nodded Sholom in agreement. “We need to ask for the Geula!”