From Our Volunteers: A Misaskim Moment
December 02, 2010
We have only to open our eyes to realize how often we are presented with numerous opportunities to fulfill our destined roles in Hashem's plans. For Mr. Yossie Margaretten, a longtime Misaskim volunteer, the following story confirmed a role that was uniquely designed for him.

Mr. Yehuda Silberstein and his wife and infant rushed to Ben Gurion airport after learning of the tragic passing of Yehuda's father, Moshe Yosef, Z"TL. Confused, desperate, and distraught, he hoped to catch a flight back to Brooklyn so that he could spend the week of shiva together with his mother and siblings. However, before the flight took off, he was notified that the kvurah had already been completed. He urgently needed a minyan before boarding the plane so that he could say kaddish for his father who had been torn away from him way too soon.

With the plane only minutes away from departure, Mr. Silberstein reached out to the passengers rushing to board the plane and begged them to join him. Most passengers had already davened maariv and didn't pay much attention to him' while others were too distracted to take notice of the flustered couple.

In a last desperate attempt, Mr. Silberstein approached a yungerman who was boarding the plane and asked if perhaps he could help him with a minyan. Yossie Margaretten, a trained Misaskim volunteer, immediately recognized the distraught look on Mr. Silberstein's face. He took stock of the situation and requested several passengers to join them for kaddish, assuring them that it would take only 2-3 minutes. It was clearly through Divine intervention that this volunteer's training and experience kicked in under these unusual circumstances, precisely when needed.

Mr. Margaretten guided Mr. Silberstein in tearing kriyah. "On the left side," he gently coached, explaining how it's done when one's parent passes on. Tearing kriyah in the airport, where all sharp objects are prohibited, is no easy feat, but one of the passengers who joined the minyan was able to use his bare hands to start the kriyah process. Next Yehuda said the brachah of Boruch Dayan Emes and the minyan stood by for the emotionally charged kaddish - a son's first heart-breaking fulfillment of the mitzvah of in honoring his beloved father's neshamah. When kaddish was over, Mr. Margaretten positioned his suitcase so that Yehuda was able to sit shivah on it, while the participants in the minyan came over to him to be menachem aveil. As Mr. Margaretten boarded the plane together with Mr. Silberstein, he assured him that his family back in Brooklyn was also being cared for by Misaskim, as he just received a confirmation on his blackberry that Misaskim's gmach nechumim had already delivered all that was needed to the house.

"It was an unbelievable siyatah dishmaya that you were on Yudah's flight," the Silberstein family mused when the same volunteer, Yossie Margaretten, arrived at their home to collect the shivah chairs. "I was so confused and distraught," reflected Mr. Silberstein. "But somehow Misaskim was right there just when I needed them - even in Ben Gurion airport!"


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