Great Returns

We’ve been a nation of wanderers from the time of the Patriarchs, and we’re still constantly traveling from point A to point B. Plus, we don’t pack light. Add kids and strollers and sheitel boxes to that mix, and something is bound to get left behind. But when it’s tefillin that get lost, a huge scramble ensues. Because in the words of the great Abie Rotenberg, What a situation, where have Shnooky’s tefillin gone? He better find them soon or they might end up in Hong Kong.

Or in the case of Jerusalem travelers, doomed to reside in an Egged lost and found until the coming of Mashiach.

But not as long as Sasson “Sossy” Karako comes to the rescue. An Egged public transportation employee for 47 years, Sasson knows buses. He knows passengers. And he understands what happens when the two mix… and then something gets left behind. That’s why, over the last 12 years, he’s made returning lost items his mission, and has returned over 800 pairs of tefillin, shtreimels, sheitels, black hats, and even a memorable wedding ring.

We meet up in a coffee shop in — where else? — the Central Bus Station. From there, he’ll be going to visit his brother Moshe in Herzog Hospital for geriatric and respiratory care, just like he has every single day for the past three years when complications from Covid set in.