Outside the Outside
On Sunday morning, we took an Uber from JFK to the Ohel. Our driver pulled up in a spotless red Tesla. No smells. That’s basically the Uber equivalent of winning the Mega Millions, only with better odds.
I sat back to relax, despite being unsure of the driver’s nationality, proclivities, or whether he’d eject us at any point because, you know, Gaza, Zionism, the world is salty right now.
Eliyahu, not one for small talk, asked him if he was worried about Waymo stealing his job. The driver, completely unfazed, said, “the God provides my business and my prosperity. I just have to do my work.” Which is exactly the kind of thing you hope your Uber driver says instead of, “I see dead people."
I asked where he was from, bracing myself because he looked vaguely Middle Eastern. He said India. Then, with zero warning, he starts speaking Hebrew. It turns out that twenty years ago, he was giving tours to Israelis and was almost fluent in Hebrew. Which made me feel bad, because his accent rolled perfectly while mine still falls flat.
Then he tells us his son is really into Judaism, so he sends him to the “Chabad house”. And when he lived in New Delhi, he himself would go every Friday night for services, followed by “a big party,” which sounded suspiciously better than what we offer at Chabad Intown.
And the strangest part? None of this felt weird. Of course, our random Uber driver in New York is a Hebrew-speaking Indian who sends his kid to Chabad.
Out of millions of people in New Delhi, and millions more in New York, and somehow he was our driver.
Nothing normal about it, but normal anyway. Which is basically the tagline for life right now.
Before we got out, I told him, “If you ever feel the need for prayers to be answered in the most direct way, you can always pop into the Ohel yourself.”
“Really?” he said.
“Sure! People from every walk of life go there.”
And I almost added, “The pious, the secular, and the clinically bizarre—it’s a full house.”
As I walked out, he called after us, “Israel is keeping the whole world safe, I support them!”
Again, not what I expected, but here we were.
As a child, I heard the story about how the Baal Shem Tov ascended to heaven, and they told him that Moshiach will come “K’sheyafutzu Maynosecha chutzah” when the secrets of the Torah ( Chasidic philosophy) spread to the outside.
Well, there’s outside, and then there’s “my Uber driver from New Delhi speaking Hebrew in a Tesla.”
If that’s not outside, I don’t know what is.