PERSPECTIVES → WORLDVIEW Issue 1078 · September 10, 2025

Coffee with Kareem

If I didn't know it before, coffee with Kareem taught me one thing: Hashem incontrovertibly runs the world— often in unexpected ways

Coffee with Kareem
If I didn’t know it before, coffee with Kareem taught me one thing: Hashem incontrovertibly runs the world — often in unexpected ways

Anyway, there I was, stuck. The pump attendants couldn’t care less, but Eli Petrol could. Out of the dark, this emissary of Eliyahu Hanavi rode to the rescue. He paid for my gas and vanished, trusting me to pay him later. (In case you were wondering, I did.)

Lesson #1: Even in an era when different-looking Jews look at each other with suspicion, never discount the goodness of the Jewish heart.

Back to my breakdown, there’s something curiously medical about the experience of watching your car being treated by a mechanic. The whole scene is akin to a particularly oily operating theater. The patient is opened, innards on display as the surgeon pokes around, trying to locate the trouble while avoiding damage to the vital organs.

Funnily enough, mechanics actually use an auto stethoscope to diagnose strange inward noises like the one my car was making. It’s literally the version you see around the doctor’s neck plus a needle on the end.

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