Reb Mendy S. is a young man who earns a good living running an Amazon business, and things have been going smoothly for him. One day he comes into his office, and his heart skipped a beat — Amazon had without warning or legitimate explanation closed his account (as is known, they are capable of doing this).
He made several attempts to recover it, but there simply was no one to talk to. He sent emails to this manager and that executive, but it was like talking to the lamp. Reb Mendy was left saddled with thousands of dollars worth of merchandise — of which a significant part was not even paid for — and he could not sell anything since his account was closed.
Reb Mendy went to daven Shacharis, his heart shattered. He felt hopeless, as if the gates of mercy were closed to him. Following Shacharis, a fundraising appeal was announced for Rav L’Hoshia, the renowned chesed organization which feeds thousands of hungry children in Eretz Yisroel.
Mendy rifled through the literature, and he saw that a donation of $391 — the gematria of “yeshua” — entitled the donor to a beautiful painting of Rav Yeshayala. He was normally not a person who ran after segulos or cared much for pictures of tzaddikim, but something inside him told him that this is where his yeshua was. He gave the amount, taking the picture home with him.
He was home later in the day when a strange idea occurred to him. He snapped a picture of the painting he had just received and emailed it to Amazon without an explanation attached.
Mendy has an application on his email which allows him to see whether his email was opened by the recipient. On the application, he was astounded to see that his enigmatic email of the tzaddik’s visage had been opened, not once or twice, but dozens of times. This was a phenomenon that he had never experienced before with Amazon, a company notorious for routinely ignoring emails.
The email went out Thursday afternoon. By Monday morning, Reb Mendy’s Amazon account was reopened as if it had never been closed, and there were even some sales recorded as well.
