It was sheva brachos for Yehuda Yitzchaki and Yehudis Yakabovitch. Yehudis’s father Yekusiel got up to say a few words.
“I would like you all to know why I took this young man as my son-in-law,” he began. “A few months back, I had to go from Yerushalayim to Bnei Brak. It was a blistering hot day and I was in a hurry, so I went to a hitchhiking spot to hitch a ride. A car stopped, and it was driven by none other than my new son-in-law Yehuda. We started driving and hit a real bad traffic jam. The trip took close to two hours, it was hot, and the car didn’t have air conditioning. Yet not once,” here he paused for dramatic effect, “not once during this frustrating trip did Yehuda honk at anyone. Not once! When I saw his self-control, I decided this was the young man for my daughter.” Yekusiel finished with a few words of brachah and sat down.
Yehuda leaned over towards him. “My horn wasn’t working that day,” he explained with an apologetic smile.
Got you to smile? Do I have your attention now? Sometimes all it takes is a short but powerful story, like the one above, to get your reader’s or your audience’s attention.
That’s why Rabbi Dovid Kaplan’s Impact! books are such a hit. Each one is filled with stories and anecdotes with punch lines that can make you roar with laughter, or fill your eyes with tears, or, at the very least, cause you to pause and think. What more can anyone who needs to give a speech—or to listen to one—ask for?
Shabbos Table Impact!, the latest book in the Impact! series, is no different. In this book, the “punchy” short stories are on the parshah, and each one drives home an immediate message or lesson for the reader that will make him think about the parshah in a way he may never have thought before.
For example, the above story about the chassan with assumed self-control appears in the book under Parshas Bamidbar. Oh, you want to know the lesson it brings out from that parshah? You’ll have to read the book to find that out…
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