The Wedding vs. The Electric Company: disaster happily averted!

September 27, 2006 - 3:46 PM by Sarah

One of the things that is striking about the Israeli character is the way that strangers get involved in each other’s lives. Some times this can be annoying, such as when a harried young mother is approached by a stranger and told “your baby looks cold, you should put a blanket on him.” But sometimes it’s touching, such as when my air conditioner repairman set me up on a blind date (and it was actually a reasonable match), and sometimes it is life-saving, such as when the stranger is watching your child closely enough not just to notice that he is cold, but that he is walking away and about to fall down a flight of stairs (or whatever). Same character trait, named by some as “pushiness” or “not minding your own business” and named by others as “caring about the people around you.”

Eliesheva posted a story by a friend of hers in Raanana, showing that when push comes to shove, the Israeli Electric Company is your friend:

My husband David called me up a week before my daughter Ruchama’s wedding to Moshe and said : “We have a wrinkle…” .

The electric company had posted a notice on our apartment building announcing that there was going to be a power outage in our neighborhood to allow for a major repair. The problem was that it fell out exactly on the day of the wedding… ..

I called the electric company to ask (read: beg) them to postpone the repair work, since we really, really needed the use of the apt. to prepare for the wedding (you know – makeup, hair, etc.). I was immediately transferred to a manager named Zion. He understood the problem and explained that they absolutely couldn’t reschedule the power outage but he would see what he could do.

Two days later we spoke again and he said that he had sent some people out to look at the site and that they were having trouble isolating our building from the rest of the area. But – not to worry- if he couldn’t resolve the problem – we could have a room in the electric company’s building to use as we wish! I was flabbergasted – I asked him if he’d ever see a bride leave from the Electric Company. He said: “actually, it’s happened before J”.

The next day he called and in a happy voice conveyed his best wishes for the upcoming wedding. He asked me to tell the bride Mazel Tov [congratulations] and that she would have electricity because he personally went to look at the location and he found a solution.

So we get up bright and early on Sunday, and lo and behold, there is a generator parked right outside of our building. That’s right – our building was hooked up to electricity all day from our own private generator while the rest of the neighborhood had a blackout!

It was truly amazing. There are people here with big hearts who made it clear that our happiness was important to them as well.

We sent a warm thank-you letter to the electric company along with the attached pictures.

Just goes to show that Chesed [kindness] is alive and well in the land and people of Israel.

generator wedding