On a recent trip to Israel, I visited the Western Wall - formerly called the Wailing Wall - a sacred Jewish prayer site.
It was Rosh Ha-Shana, the Jewish New Year, so the place was bustling.
When I looked at the people praying beside the wall, I thought of Aliza, my next door neighbor when I lived in Jerusalem. She was not a conventionally religious person - she did not keep a kosher kitchen, for example - but she had a very deep faith in God.
One Friday evening, the eve of the Sabbath, she told me, I went to the Wall to pray that my daughter will find a good husband - and I prayed that you will, too.
She added: I put my prayers on a piece of paper and stuck them in the cracks between the rocks.
This last part in Hebrew was "Samti petek" - (literally, I put a note.)
For weeks, if not months, she continued this practice. Again and again, she would tell me: Samti petek... and I would smile.
Eventually her daughter moved to New York City, and I returned to Canada.
Was it co-incidence that both she and I met our husbands not long afterward?
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