So Much Better Together | Rabbi Shlomo Landau

I was traveling and I had organized my schedule so that I could take an early morning flight, make it back to Newark Airport, and then chap a Shachris at one of the nearby communities. I come to the airport on time, and when I get to the gate, our flight is delayed. Okay, maybe I still can make it. And then it's delayed again. And at some point, I realize I'm not making Shachris at any Minyan. I'll be lucky if we land before Zman Tefillah. Baruch Hashem, we did land before Zman Tefillah, but I have to daven in the airport. I don't like traveling in airports, so I went searching for a gate, a terminal, where nothing is going on. There's no flights incoming, no flights outgoing. And I found an area of the terminal which was dead. There was no one there. I walked all the way into... next to the gate, next to the windows, I put on my Tallis and Tefillin, and I start davening like a mentsh. I get up to Shmoneh Esrei, I'm standing by the window, so I close my eyes. About halfway through Shmoneh Esrei, all of a sudden, I have a feeling or a sensation that someone is very close to me, right near me, and I start hearing noises and start getting a little nervous. Maybe they're trying to take stuff from my hand luggage. Even worse, maybe it's an anti-Semite that sees a Jew in a Tallis and Tefillin and who knows what he's going to do to me. But I'm like, no. You’re in the middle of Shmoneh Esrei. You're talking to Hashem. Figure it out. Keep calm. And I did, to my credit. At the end of Shmoneh Esrei, finally I take three steps back, I open my eyes and when I turn to the right, I see that standing there, right next to me, is another holy Jewish brother, and he's putting on his Tallis and Tefillin. And as soon as he finishes putting on his Tefillin, he says to me, It’s so much better when two guys daven than when one guy davens alone. No? And I nodded. Of course it is. And then I realized something superpowerful. You know, often when it comes to challenges of Kedushah, or moments of struggle, we feel like it's just us and the Nisayon. We're all alone and we have to fight off this huge Yetzer Hara. And it is difficult to do it when you're on your own. But if we realize that when we're going through a Nisayon, a challenge, an ordeal, at that very moment, there's another Yid, somewhere in the broader Vayimaen family, that's going through, perhaps, an identical Nisayon. Maybe it's even in the same airport. Maybe it's even further back on the plane. Maybe it's in one of the office buildings in Manhattan that you are walking by. Then you understand you're never alone. Somewhere, some way, there's another Yid that's going through that Vayimaen Nisayon. Like the fellow next to me said, It's so much better when two Yidden try to do something than when you're all alone. Think about that. I think it'll give us tremendous Koach. Like Shlomo Hamelech says, Two are better than one. It’s so good when you know you're not doing something alone. Understand, we're part of one family, we're part of one Mishpacha. We give ourselves strength and we can overcome anything.