Tour Bus from Heaven

As told to Barbara Bensoussan by Yehuda Azoulay

The average trip to a soda machine results in the machine spitting out a can of cola. But in my case, my most recent trip to a soda machine produced no can. Instead, it produced a very “uncanny” opportunity to do a mitzvah.

I was in Tzfat with a group of 45 Moroccan Jewish businessmen from Toronto on the first day of what was billed as the Sephardic Unity Israel Trip. We’d toured all around Tzfat, and now everyone had gathered back on the bus near the new cemetery of Tzfat for the next leg of the trip, a visit to a winery. We were waiting for three of the trip’s rabbis, who had gone to immerse in the mikveh of the Arizal. We were originally scheduled to leave at noon, and now it was almost one, with no sign of the rabbis.

It was scorching hot, and I was dying for something to drink, so I decided to run up the road to where I’d seen a soda machine near a small building. It was up a hill, and I arrived there, panting.