This past Friday night we hosted a South African themed Shabbat dinner. We advertised it for months in advance, sending out brochures, facebook messages and email alerts. We flew in a speaker, Ilana Skolnik—the former Miss South Africa and a convert to Judaism—who suffered under the Apartheid regime. We brought in Cantor Ari Klein with his choir. The excitement and response were overwhelming, and we soon realized we were expecting a crowd of 400 people. Well, man plans but G-d has His own plans. On Thursday we began receiving reports about a major blizzard about to hit New York, and when as the strongest impact expected? Friday night at 7pm, of course—exactly when our Shabbat dinner was supposed to start. There was even speculation that this storm might be one of the biggest blizzards to ever hit the Northeast.
We started getting emails, phone calls and text messages from people in the community wondering if the Shabbat dinner was going to be cancelled. Even the general manager of the Marriott, where our shul is located, called to ask if we were cancelling services. I explained over and over to everyone that asked – “No! We are not cancelling. Chabad Israel Center is marching ahead with the plan.”
On Friday morning media and radio reports began issuing warnings, urging the public to stay at home during the storm, and we started receiving phone calls from people who had reserved and paid, asking for a refund. One woman said she would think twice about reserving at our events in the future if we didn’t reimburse her.
Another person told us, “I am sure you can appreciate, the reason we won’t be attending tonight is purely due to the extreme weather and not wanting to put our lives in danger. So, would you like me to risk my life to attend or lose out on a lot of money?!”
Still another person said, “I trust that you’ll practice what you preach and act morally in this situation and give me back my money. I certainly do not think Chabad is about 'taking' money from people in natural disasters. That is certainly not what a shul is supposed to be about.”
I found myself facing a huge dilemma, and I truly didn’t know what to do. On the one hand, these people had a legitimate complaint! The meteorologists were predicting the storm of the decade and they weren’t willing to venture out in the thick of it—completely understandable. On the other hand, their money had already been spent preparing for the event. The venue, tables and tablecloths were already rented and paid for. The food was prepared and the caterer and waiters had been paid. The blizzard was unexpected and out of anyone’s control. Someone will lose out because of it, but who should it be? Should we refund the money and lose thousands of dollars, or should the people who reserved be the ones to forfeit the money?
As always, when a dilemma strikes we have the Torah to guide us, and interestingly, last week’s Torah portion actually deals with a number of money-related laws, including what to do in this situation.
In the discussion about safeguarding a friend’s belongings, the Torah makes provisions for “unavoidable damages.” The guardian is not responsible for unavoidable damages such as armed robbery or natural death.
Our dinner was clearly a case of unavoidable damages. The caterer had already made the food, the hall, tables, chairs, tablecloths and decorations had been rented. The speaker and choir had been brought in – and the blizzard threatened to derail all that. Definitely unavoidable damages.
Once I figured that out, I got back to all the people expecting a refund. I explained that according to the Torah we did not have to issue a refund, but I offered to reimburse them from my own personal money if they really felt they needed it. I feel fortunate that the wonderful people in our community were so understanding once I explained it. They all graciously agreed to forfeit the money they had paid.
In the end over 200 did show up despite the blizzard! And they all had such a wonderful time that nobody wanted to leave. It was truly a magnificent affair. Why did G-d decide to bring such a powerful storm that night? I’ll probably never know. But even Winter Storm Nemo was not able to dampen our Shabbat spirit, as we celebrated with song, prayer and good food.