Amsterdam
AmsterdamiStock

* Translation by Yehoshua Siskin

Here’s a story from Amsterdam that was sent to me by Taibi Kamissar, a Chabad emissary in that city:

“It’s impossible to describe how much caring and loving-kindness we have witnessed here since the violent attacks on the Jewish soccer fans of Maccabi Tel Aviv. But the following story stands out among the rest.

One of the women in the Jewish community here had an important job interview scheduled for Friday morning. Like all of us, she awoke on Friday to a flood of concerning announcements about what had happened the previous night. Wanting to help, she got in her car and rode to the center of Amsterdam in order to bring an Israeli family that she had never met back to her home. They would stay there until they could find another flight back to Israel.

The hour of her interview arrived and she was still in the middle of her mission. When they called her from the office where she was to be interviewed, she explained that she was busy in extending care to those who urgently needed her help. She was asked if she had considered that she could lose this highly sought job for not coming in for the interview. She answered that, from her perspective, she was doing what was most important since this was an emergency, as her brothers and sisters were in danger.

She ended the call, but this was not the end of the matter. After several hours she received another call from the same office. The boss of the company, a Jew without much connection to the local community, heard the story and told her that she had gotten the job. Without any meeting or interview. If she was so devoted to her people, he said, she absolutely had to work for him.”