a rare sight

                In front of the Smithsonian museum of Air and Space, a tour group of Asian students sat on the steps waiting for the bus to come.  Out of the ten students in front of me, I counted eight engaged with their ipad oblivious to the other members of the group.  Although these gadgets are produced in Asia, I don’t think this sight had anything to do with their Asian background. This is a standard scene for most young adults in the developed world and it may explain a strange incident that took place a few days earlier.

                We were seated for breakfast at a coffee shop in the heart of Jewish Long Island with another religious couple and their baby.  My two kids were mostly on the floor crawling around and playing with some books.  We chatted amicably and caught up about the happenings of the last three years since we last saw them.  In the midst of our conversations a middle aged man with pinkish skin, light eyes and upturned nose approached our table. He looked dignified in his business suit and didn’t appear to be unbalanced; in fact he was in a business meeting with a religious Jew a few tables away.  He turned to us and said in a confident, but slightly nervous tone, ‘this is beautiful to see two families having a nice meal together with their kids, it is really great. You guys are awesome*’.

                We thanked him and returned to our conversation, not sure what exactly we had done to warrant such lavish praise. Was it the kids, or was it that adults were having a conversation without a smart phone or a computer on the table, or did we just look happy?  But, a compliment was not enough. A few minutes later, the man, on his way out says, ‘you guys are really awesome’ as he plunked a fifty dollar bill on the table, ‘I want to pay for your meal’.  Stunned, we politely refused, but he insisted and walked out. We ran after him and forced him to take the money back.

                I am not sure if this man was an evangelical Christian who wanted to fulfill the promise that G-d makes to Abraham that he will bless those that bless Abraham (or his descendants) or if he was genuinely moved by the scene or if he was in a midlife crisis and he missed having family or we can get cynical and maybe he lost a bet. I’ll never know, but if we did move him in some way, it could be that the display of real connection is not common place, but a commodity in our distracted world.  Indeed, as the parsha warns us in the first line, there are no small things in the world and we don’t know which mitzvah it is that will ring the highest bill of all.