Our lives are filled with challenges, some of which are so hard that they don’t seem to make any sense. And then there are challenges that are so great, you have no choice but to find a way to make sense of them.
June 2, 2026, started out as the most regular day of recent memory. That afternoon, I picked my son up from school, and was nearly home when I got a frantic phone call from my wife. She was hysterical, screaming that our eight year old daughter Charlotte had been hit by a car. The panic in her voice was terrifying.
Pulling up to the house two minutes later, I was relieved to see my dear friend, my chavrusa, on scene. He’s a Hatzolah guy, the person I rely on whenever we have a medical situation, with another close friend and Hatzolah volunteer there as well. Seeing the two people who are always there for me on scene made me feel like everything was going to be okay.
But then I saw my chavrusa look away from me. He was looking at his car. And suddenly everything clicked.
He was the driver.
My beautiful daughter, who never stopped moving, was laying motionless in the street. And standing there filled with fear and heartache, I kept asking myself how could this be possible? How could it be that my chavrusa, the person I loved like a brother, the husband of my wife’s dear friend, someone who stands for chesed in our community… How could he have been the driver of the car that hit Charlotte?
At first, it didn’t make any sense. But then slowly, even at that moment, things started coming together. I knew that people would talk, that fingers would be pointed, and that all too soon our community would be torn apart.
And I couldn’t let that happen. My friend, my brother, couldn’t be the reason for our community to become divided. Not him, someone who stands for shalom. Someone who is the polar opposite of a reckless driver. Someone who is always the first person to speak to others about driving carefully. At that moment, I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that this accident was Yad Hashem, and that something greater was happening here.
Before leaving to the hospital with my wife, I hugged my friend, to let him know that this wasn’t going to destroy the close bond we had built over the years. He was so torn up over the accident he couldn’t even look at me.
The whirlwind that is every parent’s worst nightmare continued. My wife and I rushed to the hospital and saw with our own eyes how Hatzolah and the hospital staff did everything they could. They worked for 40 minutes trying to revive Charlotte. But it was clear that she wasn’t meant to come back to us.
The next day, at the levaya, I spoke about how the Satan was testing us. How he wanted to show Hashem that our beautiful neighborhood, a neighborhood which is the epitome of achdus, couldn’t handle a machlokes. But the Satan underestimated us, I told everyone, and we were going to prove him wrong.
The responses we received from the levaya and the hesped were beyond anything we could have ever imagined.People started asking themselves: If Charlotte’s parents could be moichel the driver, how could they allow grudges and machlokes to fester in their own lives? People began forgiving as a zechus for Charlotte’s neshama, with stories pouring in by the dozens.
So now, in Charlotte’s memory, we created Shalom for Charlotte, an initiative encouraging every member of Klal Yisrael to forgive, to forget, and to move on. Do it for Charlotte. Do it for yourself. Do it for Klal Yisrael.
The Beis HaMikdash was destroyed because of sinas chinam. Right now, we have the opportunity to rebuild it with ahavas chinam.
We ask all of you: Go to our website. Take the pledge.
Resolve to end machlokes, to drop a grudge, or not speak negatively about people. Because together, in Charlotte’s memory, we can bring Moshiach.
This article was found in Nekuda Tova Issue 90.