Having returned from our trip to North Dakota and South Dakota, we had a few moments to write up this experience of ours.

Dubbed “the magical city,” Minot, ND, experienced record-breaking floods in June this year, as the Mouse (Souris) River swelled, breaking its 130-year-old record and displacing more than 11,000 people.

By the time we arrived in late July, much of the water had receded, but we were greeted by the horror of the aftermath of the attack of the “Big Mouse.” As we made our way toward the home of a Jewish professor at Minot State University, we had to resort to old-fashioned navigation, as our GPS navigator conflicted with what we saw. The navigator indicated that we should continue straight along the road, but we were confronted with a large mound of dirt. Whether it had been man-made as a levee to control water flow, or was a natural result of the flood, we weren’t sure, but we were sure that we couldn’t follow the GPS navigator’s instruction.

Weaving our way through the streets of Minot, we passed block after block of houses gutted completely to the shell, with endless piles of debris lining the streets. Arriving at our second dead end, we wondered how a lone abandoned car with one door hanging open landed in the middle of a large empty muddy lot. We continued to work our way through town, encountering more newly formed dead ends, and making numerous U-turns, finally arriving at the house of the professor. His house is in the middle of a block on a severe incline, and he is surely appreciating all those trips up the steep hill. Half a block from his house begins an area of many, many square miles absolutely devastated by the flood.

Glad to finally meet the professor safe and sound, we sat down at his kitchen table, 216 miles from the motel from which we had checked out earlier that day in Grand Forks, ND. We discussed Kabbalah, Chassidism, and the sanctification of this world through studying Torah and performing mitzvahs. Speaking of which, he proceeded to put on tefillin and read the Shema in Hebrew, put up an additional mezuzah on a basement door that did not yet have one, and purchase a number of books on a variety of Judaic topics.

The magnitude of damage caused by the flood meant that there wasn’t a room available for rent within dozens of miles of Minot, and at close to midnight, we filled the car’s gas tank, prayed the evening service in the gas station’s parking lot, and departed towards Fargo, ND, where we would check in to our hotel 233 miles later.

“Yisroel, maybe you should go see Iv and Avi while I’m waiting . . .”

Agreeing that it was a good idea, I headed off to see the two Israeli men selling Dead Sea products in the mall. Late the previous night we had noticed that one of our tires had low pressure, but it being well after midnight, we hadn’t found anywhere to pump it up. It’s not for nothing that Rapid City, South Dakota, is not known as “the city that never sleeps.” So this morning, after loading up our car and checking out of a motel for the last time on this 38-day trip, we drove to the tire repair shop we had noticed at the mall while visiting Iv and Avi earlier in the week.

Talking to the Israelis at their pushcart in the mall, I noticed their eyes darting around as they scanned the passersby out of trained habit. Both Avi and Iv had affirmed earlier in the week that their spiritual wellbeing is more important than a few dollars, and that “G‑d will give us our livelihood,” so despite the minor distractions, our conversation continued. As we discussed topics both social and spiritual, we were joined by Ephraim, my co-rover. Having completed the paperwork at the repair shop, it was time to wait for the work to be finished.

The discussion turned to mezuzahs, and one of the salesmen who did not yet have a mezuzah in his apartment was interested in getting one. After bringing out the mezuzahs and discussing the differences between the two kinds of mezuzahs we had brought, the second salesman, who did have a mezuzah on every door in his house, asked, “Are these on parchment?” With our response of “Of course they are; we only have kosher mezuzahs!” he learned that the mezuzahs in his house were all non-kosher—being written on paper. While sorry to disappoint him with the unfortunate news, we were happy to supply kosher replacements.

Try as he might, he could not get the tire road-ready.

Ephraim headed back to the repair shop and returned several minutes later with a weary smile on his face. “They can’t fix it. We have to go elsewhere to get it done.”

“Let’s hope we get to see the divine providence in this delay,” I replied.

We had over six hundred miles of road to travel to get back to the airport, where our flight back to New York was scheduled to take off less than fifteen hours later.

Walking through the food court on our way out of the mall, a familiar gold flash caught my eye—a chai (Hebrew for “life”) pendant hanging on a chain around a young man’s neck. “Mah nishma?” I asked, assuming that he was Israeli. “What?” replied the young man. He was from New York, had just graduated from college, and was on a road trip with a friend. They had had a car accident right near Mount Rushmore, and had to stay in Rapid City for the week while their car was being repaired. “I pretty much keep kosher,” he said.

As we are on our way back to Brooklyn, we happily unloaded our remaining kosher food into the truck they were driving temporarily while waiting for their repairs to be completed. Having bought supplies for an event in Rapid City that never materialized, we had plenty of kosher food to pass on, and the young man was pleasantly surprised to see the degree of variety of kosher food that is available even in regional and rural USA (more than 50% of the products on the shelves in the United States are certified kosher; one need only keep an eye out).

We discussed the idea of divine providence as taught by Rabbi Israel Baal Shem Tov, and the fact that although we do not always recognize the positive in apparently negative occurrences, everything is controlled by the Creator and is inherently good. We told him that we had hoped to experience a positive outcome from the delay, and we all chuckled as we thanked G‑d for the flat tire and for allowing us to see why it had to happen.

With the clock ticking, a flight to catch, and a tire that was still flat more than six hundred miles away from the airport, we exchanged contact information and went to get our car.

Note the “chai” hanging from his neck.

South Dakota is under water. Flooding has reached epic proportions. For example, Dakota Dunes, SD, was compulsorily evacuated in advance of record floods, reaching 1096 feet above sea level. Like everyone else, we hightailed it to Sioux City, Iowa. As we drove along, we snapped a picture of major highways that are now accessible only by boat.

Once there, we met with State Senator Dan Lederman. We put a mezuzah up on the door of his home.

Senator Dan Lederman affixing his mezuzah.

“Say, are you guys from New York?”

We looked up from the Torah texts we had been studying to see a couple of middle-aged gentlemen with closely trimmed beards, who had just walked into the coffee shop on 25th Street South in Fargo, North Dakota. “We see guys like you in the movies; they’re always from New York.”

We responded with a cheerful “Yes” and struck up a conversation. We had begun our day as usual with our post-prayer studies in a local coffee shop, sipping kosher-certified fruit drinks. The routine proved fruitful, as the Lutheran pastor and his friend told us of a Jewish professor at the local university, whom they know.

In this age of information, it usually does not take long to find a way to contact an individual if you know their name and place of employment, and within minutes we had a phone number. We called the professor and set up a meeting for the next day for an early afternoon drink.

The next day, in another coffee shop, this one in Moorhead, Minnesota (the “other half” of Fargo, on the other side of the state line), we sat with the professor as he reminisced about growing up in Manhattan, New York, and spoke of his various travels through the States, ending up at the border of Minnesota and North Dakota.

Topics ranged from “Manhattan then and Manhattan now” to the Baal Shem Tov and the inception of Chassidism and Chabad chassidic philosophy, leading into discussion of prayer, known as the “service of the heart,” and each individual’s developing a unique, personal and interactive relationships with G‑d. It’s fair to say that service of G‑d must by definition revolve around fulfilling the divine commandments, which G‑d had given us as a means to connect to him (mitzvah, the Hebrew word for “commandment,” is linguistically linked to the Aramaic term for connection), and the discussion turned to the mitzvahs of tefillin and mezuzah. But as it does when it is being well spent, the time had flown, and we found ourselves about to run late to another meeting that we had scheduled earlier, so we arranged to meet the next day to take up where we had left off.

The following morning, after packing our personal baggage, Judaica items, books and non-perishable foods into the trunk, we packed the perishable food for the remainder of our five-week trip into the cooler that is the dependable passenger in our back seats (two and a half out of the three back seats, to be precise) for the duration of this trip. We topped it with ice, checked out of the hotel, and headed off to see the professor before our departure to the next city on our trip.

We met at his house and followed him to the university, where he is in the process of moving into a new office. We put up a mezuzah on the doorpost of his new office, and he put on tefillin for the first time since the age of eighteen, reading the Shema in both Hebrew and English.

We spoke some more, and then some more again, before parting ways and promising to keep in touch (which has already been the case, with some late night e-mails as I type up this story).