Living with Miracles 

Sometimes the miracles in our lives are awe-inspiring and momentous, and sometimes they’re manifested as a little extra dose of Heavenly help when needed. Either way, when we look at our own day-to-day existence, we see so many instances where things came together in a way beyond nature and logic.

Three times a day, we thank Hashem for “the miracles You perform for us daily.” When you’re an entertainer in the limelight, sometimes those Divine hugs are more apparent. But if we take stock, we’ll surely see all the Heavenly bounty around us.

Yisroel Lamm

In Sound Condition

The hall was packed, but the mics were silent. We really needed a miracle

It was the wintry morning of one of the early HASC Time for Music concerts. On the way to the full-day, pre-concert rehearsal in Lincoln Center, Sheya Mendlowitz, MBD, and I went in to the Lubavitcher Rebbe to receive his brachah, as we had done every year. When we got back into the car after our stop, Mordechai mentioned that the Rebbe had wished us “brachah v’hatzlachah on the concert,” whereas in previous years he had said “on the rehearsal and the concert.”

It was a little unsettling, but we were not really concerned until we arrived at the hall and discovered that the crew could not get the sound system working — and a working sound system is crucial for rehearsing. The musicians and artists gathered, but the sound system remained down. It was getting late, and we still needed to run through the entire program, so we went ahead and did the best dress rehearsal we could without the sound, hoping the issue would be resolved by showtime.

The engineers were doing their best to get the system going, but when the 7:30 show time arrived, the hall packed with an excited and oblivious audience, and the sound still wasn’t working, we really needed a miracle. It was a producer’s and performer’s nightmare. A few minutes after the scheduled start time, the chief sound engineer, Larry Gates, figured out a work-around. By 7:50 the sound was working. The performers relaxed and the audience settled in to enjoy. And as the Rebbe promised, we had a very successful show.