VIN Exclusive: Anyone Would Have Done What I Did, Says Jewish Man Who Loans his Lexus to Stranded Charedi Stranger

NEW YORK (VINnews/Sandy Eller)- Pre-holiday travel woes were transformed from a major headache into a global lesson in kindness and brotherhood, when the lives of strangers from two very different Jewish communities intersected on a North Jersey roadway late last month.

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A pair of voice notes that went viral on WhatsApp in recent days told the story of how Chesky Brecher and Nader Bolour met on May 25th on Englewood’s E. Palisade Avenue just two hours before the onset of the Shavuos holiday.

A cantor who lives in Staten Island and had been hired to sing over Shavuos at the upstate Raleigh hotel, Brecher followed Waze on a detour through Englewood Cliffs after coming off the New Jersey Turnpike, making his way to the Palisades Interstate Parkway as he headed towards South Fallsburg.

Attempting to maneuver through congestion in a work area at the highway entrance ramp, Brecher was pulled over by police, fully expecting to be handed a ticket and allowed to continue his trip upstate. Instead, he discovered that he had unknowingly been driving with a suspended registration, the result of an insurance mix-up and a mailing address snafu at his place of work, both of which had been previously corrected.

Efforts to persuade police not to impound his Suburban fell flat, as did attempts to call Uber and Lyft, with multiple drivers cancelling on Brecher. Stuck on the side of the road with his family and all their possessions, Brecher managed to get some of his passengers a ride to the Raleigh with a fellow Jew who stopped to offer assistance.

But even as he was inundated with offers of places to stay for Shavuos as word of his situation spread, Brecher never doubted that he would make it to the hotel before yom tov, which was due to start uncomfortably soon.

“There were hundreds of people at the Raleigh waiting for me to give them beautiful tefilos – prayers – for Shavuos and there was no way that we weren’t going to figure out how to make it happen,” Brecher told VIN News. “But as the time kept getting later, I realized that whatever I was trying wasn’t working, so we decided to leave it up to Hashem.”

Divine salvation came in the form of Nader Bolour, a 56 year old Sephardic Jew, and his 2020 Lexus ES 350.

Bolour had left work much later than he originally anticipated and had gotten stuck in traffic on the FDR Drive as he made his way home to Englewood.

Finally making his way up the highway ramp to the George Washington Bridge, Bolour noticed several stopped cars on the side of the road and a cluster of Hasidic men, but with his own clock ticking down towards the holiday, Bolour reasoned that someone else would come along to lend a hand, a decision that he regretted within seconds.

Coming across Brecher, his wife, baby and their young children, all standing next to a police car at the parkway entrance ramp in Englewood Cliffs, Bolour didn’t hesitate for even a moment before stopping his car.

“It was literally like a movie, like homeless people, and I said I got to do something about this,” said Bolour. “This is crazy. It’s Erev Shavuot and it’s 6, 6:30 in the afternoon, so I pull up to the guy.”

Hearing what had happened, Bolour realized that the only way for Brecher and his family to make it to the Raleigh before Shavuos was if they started driving immediately. He told Brecher to take his Lexus, refusing any offers of taking money or even any form of identification to ensure that his luxury car would be returned.

“I told him ‘There’s no need – we’re all brothers – go take the car,’” recalled Bolour.

Balour told his wife Mandana, what he had done when he got home. She turned the episode into a teachable moment for the couple’s younger children, even as Bolour was thanking G-d for an opportunity to start the holiday on the heels of an epic mitzvah.

“Kids, come and hear what your father just did,” said Mandana Bolour. “You see, you have to be inspired by your father.”

Driving up to Sullivan County, Brecher was stunned by the generosity of the stranger who not only gave him his car, but insisted that he not rush home immediately after the conclusion of the holiday, telling him instead to take his family home the next day to Staten Island before returning the car to Englewood.

The two stood together in Bolour’s driveway when Brecher brought the Lexus back the car back to Englewood, singing a song of from the prayer of Hallel. While Bolour thanked G-d for granting him the opportunity to help a fellow Jew, Brecher expressed his Heavenly gratitude for the help that saved him in his hour of need.

As someone who has been giving classes in gratitude for the past 10 years and recently began sharing weekly motivational messages on WhatsApp, Bolour decided to inspire others with his story.

He retold it the following week to his more than 500 WhatsApp followers and convinced Brecher to share his perspective a week later with the group. Their voice notes began making the rounds on WhatsApp and quickly went viral.

“My phone blew up,” shared Brecher. “I had just gotten a call from the Chabad rebbetzin in Palm Springs, when people from Israel reached out saying that it’s on every group. It’s unbelievable how far the story reached – every community where I wondered whether the story had reached them, I got a call or message from someone there saying what a kiddush Hashem the story made.”

Brecher remains moved by Bolour’s generosity and is grateful for the opportunity to share a story that shows the Jewish community’s depth of kindness.

For his part, Bolour noted that while people typically gravitate towards others from similar backgrounds, the opportunity to prove that he had spent the intermediary weeks between Pesach and Shavuos actively improving his love for others of different backgrounds, had him entering a holiday that commemorates the giving of the Torah ready to embrace its teachings with a full heart.

“I think anybody would have done what I did,” said Bolour.

“The real truth is that I don’t get any credit,” added Bolour. “It is all Hashem and my wife, who is the body behind all of the spirituality that is learned in our home, and maintains the spirituality in our house.”