Number 100

Irecently had a very restless night. It wasn’t due to insomnia or indigestion; rather, I was trying to wrap my mind around the significance of the number 100.

In the Succos issue of these very pages a little more than a year and a half ago, I introduced an innovative program titled “The Hidden World of Shidduchim,” to facilitate a cooperative effort between singles and couples suffering from infertility who are being helped by Bonei Olam. The singles and the couples would exchange Hebrew names (anonymous, with no last names) and would daven for each other. This segulah was recommended by the gadol hador himself, Maran Rav Aharon Leib Steinman ztz”l, in a conversation with Rabbi Shlomo Bochner of Bonei Olam.

We called the joint initiative “Ohel Sarala/Bonei Olam” in memory of our beloved daughter Sarala a”h who passed away about two years ago at the young age of 17, and who was the inspiration for this program. My thoughts, which I expressed in that first article, were that any shidduch that came about as a result of this program, and any baby born, would be a great zechus for her special neshamah in Gan Eden.

“What does all this have to do with the number 100?” you are probably wondering. Well, that is the number of singles who have become engaged while participating in the Ohel Sarala/Bonei Olam initiative in the last year and a half. This translates into 200 singles having found their respective spouses. In addition, over 50 children have been born to our couples. And these are only the ones we have documented through our program. We have no idea how many other singles and couples celebrated a simchah after following the format of this initiative by davening for each other on their own. (Some of them have contacted Ohel Sarala to share their stories with us). Hence my preoccupation with the number 100.