A Check From Beyond: A Stranger, a Kaddish, and a Bank Shock That No One Saw Coming

In the book "The Man on the Wall," which recounts the life of Rabbi Yosef Chaim Sonnenfeld, the rabbi of Jerusalem, there is a spine-tingling story about the power of the mourner’s Kaddish. Rabbi Sonnenfeld himself told it, from the time he was studying in the Ktav Soferyeshiva. Here is what happened:

A respected woman who ran a successful business had, for many years, periodically brought a generous donation to the yeshiva, on condition that the students would regularly recite Kaddish for lonely souls who had no one to say Kaddish for them. The yeshiva appointed a specific student to say Kaddish for those souls.

In time, the woman’s husband passed away. Because he had co-managed the business with her, his death hit the business hard; it shrank and eventually closed entirely. Her finances worsened, and, as the years went by, another burden fell on her: her two daughters were ready to marry, but she had no money for their weddings.

She bore her suffering in silence, accepted the decree with courage, and made peace with her fate. Yet there was one thing she could not let go of, and it weighed on her deeply: keeping up the Kaddish, which might lapse now that she had stopped funding it.

In her distress she went to the yeshiva’s administration and asked them to continue the recitation of Kaddish for the lonely souls until Hashem would broaden her means and she could once again support the yeshiva as before.

The yeshiva’s rabbis were deeply moved by the widow’s righteousness and promised to fulfill her request and continue the custom of saying Kaddish. That promise filled her with indescribable joy; with a sparkle of happiness in her sad eyes, she took leave of the heads of the yeshiva and went on her way. From then on, her own situation troubled her much less, and even the situation of her two daughters, long of marriageable age, weighed less heavily. For once the matter of Kaddish for the lonely souls was assured, she felt she lacked almost nothing in Hashem’s world. And regarding her two daughters, she placed her trust in Him, the Father of orphans and Judge of widows. Being compassionate and gracious, He would surely see her daughters’ plight and provide their matches and all they needed.

As she stepped into the street, an elderly Jew of rare, noble bearing approached her, a snow-white beard falling to his chest, and offered her a warm greeting. She was surprised by the stranger’s cordial manner. Her astonishment doubled when he came closer, began a friendly conversation, and asked about her situation and that of her daughters.

The woman sighed heavily and laid out her bitter fate and difficult finances, to the point that she lacked the basic means to marry off her grown daughters.

"What is the estimated sum you need for your daughters’ wedding expenses?" the old man asked.

"Why is that important for you to know?" she replied, astonished—and then she named the amount.

The old man pulled out a sheet of paper and wrote an order to the local bank to pay her the amount she had named. But before signing his name, he told her that since it was a very large sum, it would be best for him to sign the check in the presence of witnesses who could see him sign with their own eyes and confirm it with their signatures.

Overwhelmed and surprised, she went up to the yeshiva hall and asked two students to accompany her. When the old man saw them, he invited them to watch as he placed his signature on the payment order, and, for extra assurance, he asked them for a scrap of paper and wrote his signature on it as a sample. Handing the large check to the woman, he told her to cash it the next morning.

The whole thing seemed strange and puzzling to the stunned woman. Why was this unknown old man showing her such warmth—and such generosity—as to cover both daughters’ wedding expenses? Still, the next morning she hurried to the bank and, heart pounding, tried her luck.

The bank clerk examined the check, fixed it with a puzzled stare, looked again and again, clearly bewildered. Showing signs of confusion, he asked the woman to wait and went in to the bank manager, who was also the owner, with the check. Then something truly dramatic happened.

When the bank manager saw the check, he fell from his chair and fainted.

Pandemonium broke out in the bank. The clerks, hearing what had happened, immediately ushered the woman into a side room and posted a guard so she couldn’t slip away, suspecting a case of fraud. After the manager came to, he asked to see the woman who had presented the check for payment and hurriedly questioned her about when and how she had received it.

"Only yesterday I received it from a distinguished Jew with an impressive bearing, and there are even two yeshiva students who can serve as witnesses—they saw, with their own eyes, the issuer signing the check," the woman answered apologetically.

"Could you identify the man if I show you his picture?" the manager asked.

"Of course I could, and I have no doubt the two students could identify him as well," she said.

The manager ordered that a portrait of his late father be brought. When the picture was shown to the woman, she pointed without hesitation to him as the man who had given her the check. The manager ordered the check cashed and let the woman go.

After she left the bank, the manager told those present the meaning of the strange episode that had just unfolded before their eyes. The man who had given the woman the check was none other than his father, who had passed away ten years earlier. The night before, his father had appeared to him in a dream and said as follows: "Know that ever since you strayed from the straight path, married a non-Jew, and stopped ensuring that Kaddish was said for me, my soul found no rest—until an anonymous woman came and arranged for Kaddish to be recited for souls for whom no one says Kaddish. By my merit, it worked out that the Kaddish they said in the yeshiva at that woman’s instruction brought elevation and comfort to my soul. That woman will appear tomorrow morning at your bank with a check I have given her to cover the wedding expenses of her two daughters."

When I woke in the morning, shaken by the dream, I told it to my wife, who mocked the whole thing. But when the woman appeared with the check, I realized the dream had indeed been true.

Rabbi Sonnenfeld concluded the astonishing story by saying: "Who were the two students?—I, the humble one, and my friend, Reb Yehuda Greenwald."

The man became a ba’al teshuva, his wife converted properly, and together they were privileged to build a faithful Jewish home.

What’s the point of living if we die in the end? Tzvi Yehezkeli meets Rabbi Daniel Cohen for a real, hard-hitting conversation about beginnings and endings, birth and death:

For the text of the Kaddish, click here.