A Jew Is Never Lost

It was a Friday morning when Rav Mordechai Pogramansky boarded a train on his way to a certain town for Shabbos. A man sat down next to him and they began to talk. The man was a mohel and shochet, and also a talmid chochom, and he took the chance to engage Rav Mordechai in conversation. They became so engrossed in learning that they did not notice they had passed the stop for the town where they planned to spend Shabbos.

By the time the mohel looked out the window and saw that they were far beyond their stop, it was too late. No train would go back before Shabbos. He turned to Rav Pogramansky and told him their predicament. “Where will we stay?” he asked. “Where will we get wine for Kiddush, challos for lechem mishnah, and food for Shabbos?”

Rav Mottel consoled him. “A Jew is never lost,” said the tzaddik. “When a Jew ends up in a certain place, it is always with Hashgocha Protis, because Hashem wants him there.”

At the next stop, even though the area looked sparsely populated and they knew no one there, they got off the train. They began asking people if there were any Jews in the town, and nobody could name any. The mohel grew pessimistic and stopped asking, but Rav Mottel kept at it. Finally his persistence paid off, and one of the people he asked showed him where to find the town's only Jewish family. They hurried there and knocked on the door.

When the homeowner opened the door, he began to weep with joy. To him it was as though Avrohom Avinu and Eliyohu Hanovi had appeared at his door. The guests told him that they were ordinary human beings like himself, who had been sent to his door min haShomayim. Very happily, he let them in and invited them to stay for Shabbos.

When he heard that one of them was a mohel, his joy doubled. “A week ago my wife gave birth to a baby boy,” he said. “Today is the day he should have his bris. I have been davening all day, begging and crying that Hashem send me a mohel for my son. And here you have been sent from Heaven.”

Rav Mottel was the sandek as the mohel performed the bris, and the two guests stayed with the overjoyed couple for Shabbos. When they left after Shabbos, Rav Mottel turned to the mohel and said, “Remember, a Jew is never lost.”