I had just gotten home and was finally sitting down when my phone buzzed. A rabbi in New Jersey had forwarded me a picture of an Israeli passport with the text: "Found this passport on the streets of Manhattan. Does anybody know this person?"
I looked at the picture and almost fell off my chair. I knew exactly who it was! It was Dvir!
I immediately called the rabbi who had forwarded me the message. "I know this guy!" I said.
He laughed and replied, "I don't actually have the passport. I just forwarded it from another WhatsApp group."
The passport had already taken on a life of its own, bouncing from one WhatsApp group to another, hoping that eventually someone would recognize the owner.
I tried to call Dvir to let him know. No answer.
I called again. Still nothing.
Maybe he saw my name and thought, "Uh-oh ... the rabbi is fundraising again!" and decided to let it go to voicemail. Who knows.
But I knew that Dvir flies from Israel to New York for business every week, almost always returning home on Thursday evening. And it was now Thursday afternoon, which meant he was probably already on his way to the airport.
Since I couldn’t get hold of Dvir, I called Jack, the CFO of his company.
"Jack," I said, "I think I know where Dvir's passport is."
"What do you mean? His passport is missing?"
"He probably doesn't even know yet," I replied. "But trust me, you need to go and get it."
I gave Jack the phone number of the man who had found the passport. What happened next was pure and visible Divine Providence: The finder of the passport and Jack were just blocks away from each other in Manhattan!
Within minutes, they met, Jack grabbed the passport and raced to Dvir before he reached the airport, and handed it to him.
Dvir boarded his flight to Israel completely unaware of how close he had come to disaster, thank G-d and thanks to a highly networked group of rabbis on Whatsapp!
Whew!
Later, I realized that there’s a deeper lesson here.
For several hours, Dvir had a significant, life-disrupting problem. He would’ve been stuck, unable to get back to Israel.
And yet, he wasn't anxious. He didn’t panic.
Because he didn’t even know! While he calmly continued toward the airport, other people were already solving the problem for him.
And while we may not have lost our passports, the same goes for the rest of us. How much time do we spend overwhelmed by our worries? We worry about our health, our children, our finances, our future, the security situation in Israel, the state of the Jewish people worldwide, natural disasters … the list is unending.
But just because we don't see the solution doesn't mean there isn't one. Long before we become aware of the problem, Hashem has already begun arranging the solution.
Our job isn't to carry the weight of the entire world on our shoulders; it’s simply to do our best, say another prayer, take another step forward—and trust that Hashem is already holding the passport we think we've lost.