I had a dream last night that my car was stolen, so imagine my surprise when I went to get my car from shul tonight and found the rear window smashed and two of my bicycles gone. My first thought was that this week one of the best on record and that I hadn’t been able to show enough appreciation to God for all the good things happening in my life. My theory is that when things are going too good, something bad has to happen in order to get you close to God again, to me, it’s one of the purposes of life – to get you thinking that God is in control and no matter what you do – he can take it away in an instant.
Whenever I leave my bikes in the back of my car, I cover them, whenever I leave them over shabbos in back of the car – I lock them to each other and to the inside of the car – I was running late for shul so I just didn’t lock them, I remember the split second debate and thinking I didn’t want to miss davening shemona esrei with a minyan. Alas, they are gone and there is not much I can do, except learn from the event.
This past week has been one of the best on record, life in fact, does keep getting better and better and I was wondering what sort of hakaras hatov I can show to thank God for it – I guess I didn’t make it in time, because it was decreed on Rosh Hashanah that my bikes would be stolen (in the prime cycling season) it could have been due to my need to give more tzedakah or a million other reasons. It could also have happened because God wanted me to give my thoughts of the event over to the world. As I stated before, the week was a good one, thinks are happening in my life that I cannot discuss yet with the public – but they are good things and they are happening quick – whenever something good happens we humans tend to forget about God, but when bad things happen we cleave to him, my life has been just that. In my adult life, I have never been financially successful (I mad 80k one year – but was emotionally miserable) and it hasn’t been too bad, but whenever I save up money, whenever I’m finally out of the hole – something like this happens and I have to go scrambling around to try and figure out how to pay next months rent. Good thing I work in restaurant, I never have to pay for food.
Unlike other material things in my life that have been stolen from me, bikes are the most painful to lose. My bikes are my babies, I ride them every day and like any cyclist knows, have grown attached to them. One of the bikes stolen was my road bike, it cost $1000 and I had recently bought a new wheel set for it, it had about 4,000 miles on the thing and weighed 18 pounds. The other bike was my street bike, a mountain bike used for jumps and tricks, which I rode nearly every day in the city of San Jose, around the Stanford campus or around the waterfront in San Francisco. It hurst more because the street bike was older and customized heavily to take the abuses of skateparks, roof drops and jumping onto picnic tables and that sort of thing – it cannot be replaced and when it has to be replaced it will cost at least $1000 to do so – although Craigslist may be good to me.
I happened to be talking to a lady friend of mine at the time of the discovery and she immediately offered me one of her road bikes that is sitting around – if that works out it shall be nice. But still whenever something bad happens I begin to reflect on the path of my life, my spiritual quests and my closeness to God. Unlike most people, I don’t have the classic existential question of “why do bad things happen to good people?” because I know that life is full of challenges, these challenges are supposed to build character and force someone to grow close to Hashem. Funny that I was literally reading Iggeres Ramban (Ramban’s Mussar Letter) on Friday night during shul and the entire thing is about anger and humility and how humility leads to fear and love of God – I think the biggest importance is how we react to loss. I look at loss as the best chance to figure out life, figure out goals and make a cheshbon.
As strange as it may seem, I am constantly debating with myself about putting up certian posts, I never just hit publish – it’s a whole spiritual process of “is this going to help anyone” followed by “is there any point of this, or is it just letzonos” of course much of the stuff I put up may not have apparent meaning or be helping anyone, but I’ve been in contact with enough readers to know that you just never know how something is going to help someone. People are strange beings.
So this is where I say you should give me money, because I provide you with lots of entertainment for free, last time I asked for donations it was when my car died, this time two of my prized possessions were stolen and it was coinciding at the point when I was going to ask for help with buying a new computer (someone already donated an older computer which I can’t seem to get to connect to the internet)
My laptop is 8 years old, has no webcam, no battery life and freezes enough for me to actually get mad at it. I honestly have no idea what I’m going to do with out my bikes – hopefully I can replace one of them quick before I go insane. No amount is too small or large – last time I asked for donations – I received $900 toward the purchase of my new car (which now needs the rear window replaced) and the donations ranged in amounts from $5 to $150.
My paypal is frumsatire@gmail.com – if you click personal – they will not charge me, thank you!
Having your bike stolen really sucks, happened to me last summer.
The story of what happened after was quite interesting:
I found it for sale 1 week later on Kijiji. As I couldn’t reach the guy listing it, I went to the cops, set up a “sting”, they were going to send an undercover friend to come and “buy” it with me.
By the time I reached the guy, he had sold the bike, but offered me another one, as he had a few to sell. The cops would no longer come with me, but I went just to see who stole it, possibly get the cops on his tail. With my steretypical mind, I imagined I was going to encounter some black bum, my wife got pissed and said for all I know it may be a guy with long payos.
When I showed up, I was a bit shocked to recognize the guy, an Israeli junky that had gone to my yeshiva when we were kids, and lived next door when I was a kid. I didn’t have the heart to beat the crap out of him for what he did. He let me test drive some of his bikes, when checking them out, I memorized the serial numbers.
I went straight back to the cops with the info, adding that I knew his name and had his address. When I mentioned it, they took me to the back, where I identified his mug shots, apparently they had been looking for him, as he’s been in and out of jail.
After I was done, I wondered if I did the right thing. On the one hand, I probably assisted them in getting a thief of the streets for a while, on the other, I ratted out another Jew to the authorities.
Never saw my bike again, but it did give me some things to contemplate. The double suspension model I had is out of production, the upgraded one is way more expensive ($1500), so I got a used hybrid.
I was told by one of the greatest and most widely accepted poskim today, that one is obligated to do whatever he can to put away anyone who is harmful to society – Jewish or not, frum or not.
If you really think that God had anything to do with your bikes being stolen, you really trivialize him and aggrandize yourself. Stuff happens and it has nothing to do with god.
I think that God controls all and has do with everything in my life and yours as well.
Heshy, I think your response to this is awesome. I just think you have an error in your thinking which isn’t a problem with respect to bikes but is with respect to other things.
God never wills evil. We live in an evil world, that is true, but God is here to rescue us from evil, not to inflict it on us. God did not cause your bicycles to be stolen, but he certainly did cause you to respond to it by saying “we humans don’t run the show here on earth. All our possessions and even our lives and our health can go up in smoke in an instant. Only our relationship to God has permanent and eternal value and can’t be taken from us.” And that’s certainly an insight that it may be worth the price of a bicycle.
If you go the “God stole my bicycles to teach me a lesson” route you are soon trying to figure out what the five people who got stabbed in Israel did or what the 10k + people in Japan did. God does not cause disasters. He is with us in our disasters, consoles us, and points us to the things that last.
Well, here’s one deep philosopher.
you’re naive to think Hashem is only involved with bigger things. Hashem controls everything – everything you have and dont have is bc of Him.
You should report your bikes stolen to the police and post on the Bike Forums message boards and anywhere else that there are lots of cyclists. I’ve read lots of stories here in LA of people recovering their bikes.
By the way, your pic on this article is very much like one of mine (Minus all the locks of course 🙂 ) https://picasaweb.google.com/tamaraeden/Amsterdam#5544335103377199218
Hesh,
My condolences on your bikes, what happened is really unfortunate.
I would probably feel worse for you another day, but I just got back from the Fogel funeral, where I stood near the shapes of 5 dead bodies.
Two parents, an 11 year old, a toddler, and a 3 month old infant. All knived to death.
Who were the Fogels?
They WERE the family in Itamar.
Yankel,
I just check it out on A7, what a horror story. I hadn’t heard about it before as I rarely read the news, and the papers here wouldn’t say a thing about it anyway, after all, it’s only Jews being killed, not poor helpless palestinians.
What’s equally as bad is the ridiculous reaction by Netanyahu saying that “we have to educate them towards peace”. Who elected this bozo?
While I’m not a fan of BB, I saw his statement as an indirect way of accusing the Palestinian leadership for the massacre, and dismissing the notion that this was just the act of some radical nut.
He was basically saying, “Don’t condemn the murder while you really support it, and don’t complain when we take action against all of Palestine, as opposed to ‘the individual terrorist(s)’, since it was precisely your education and brainwashing of these people which caused this to happen.”
“Action” here unfortunately does not mean real action, rather the 500 building permits in the west bank.
Sorry to hear about your bikes dude.
All the love
so sorry. my spanking new shiny bike was stolen a couple years ago and it kinda sucked. but you move on.
silver lining – your nevuah (or ruach hakodesh/whatever you want to call it) was almost on the money. whenever i have dreams that somewhat come true, good or bad, i always feel kinda cool.
sorry to hear about your bikes being stolen.
its always good to try to figure out the message G-d is sending you when things like this happen. in my personal experience, i always noticed that whenever someone is about to get married or even just engaged, there is always some kind of financial loss, lost wallet, stolen bike, etc. the agnostic can chalk it up to being distracted and causing it to happen yourself, but i definitely think its a settling-the-score measure done by G-d during a time of great “wins”. so i hope thats what this is 🙂
I dreamed about a red and yellow bike, over the weekend. I had a chance to take it, but I didn’t. I wound up catching a ride to a train station, instead. Very weird. Glad to hear everything else is looking up for you.
yo’el
A year into our aliyah and I had to explain to a very upset 8-year-old that his bike had been stolen along with his sister’s and mine. Six months later, I saw a foreign worker who works in construction nearby riding it down the street. When I followed him to the “compound” where he lives with other foreign workers, I was stopped by the large former resident of an East bloc country who was “guarding” the area. “No bikes here”, he said. “You made a mistake”.
Police would do nothing. Certainly has me rethinking my empathy for deported foreign workers in Israel…
Do you not have renters insurance? You should be able to claim for them from that? if you don’t, get it right away. Couple of hundred bucks a year.
Sorry to hear this, Heshy.
I had the pleasure of being in monsey two weeks ago and was riding my giant tcr advanced road bike at 28mph when a taxi came up behind me, went around me on my left and slammed on its brakes to make a right turn right then in front of me.
I said goodbye to my dura ace wheels, carbon fork and frame. At least you have a chance however small, to find your bike in the future.