Death of an Air Conditioner

I lost $1,524.18 this week.

Strangely, I am trying to decide whether I lost it at all.

The money left my account. That much is certain. It purchased something I had absolutely no desire to purchase, replacing something I had absolutely no desire to replace.

There was no investment.

No vacation.

No beautiful new piece of furniture.

Just $1,524.18—

and an air conditioner.

But somewhere between the ninth email from my building management and an ancient story in the Gemara, I began looking at that number very differently.

We will get to the Gemara shortly.

First, I need to say goodbye to an old friend.

Eight Good Years

My living-room air conditioner and I recently celebrated our eighth anniversary.

A Friedrich WallMaster.

A wonderful machine.

For eight summers it served our family with dignity. Heat waves came. Humidity came. New York summers pressed against the windows.

The WallMaster went to work.

Then one day we received an email from management.

The neighbor downstairs was complaining about water dripping from our unit.

Not a little condensation.

A lot of water.

Then another email came.

And another.

Eventually there were nine emails in approximately one week.

We tried everything reasonable. I removed the unit from the wall and cleaned it. There was water inside. There was considerable dirt. The superintendent came. Another person tried to help. We made two serious attempts to correct the problem.

And here was the frustrating part:

Inside our apartment, the air conditioner worked perfectly.

Cold air.

No apparent problem.

If you sat in my living room, you would have wondered why anyone was discussing replacing it.

The problem was happening on the other side of the wall.

It kept dripping.

Our neighbor became increasingly concerned. Management became increasingly insistent. Eventually reality became clear: repairing an eight-year-old machine could easily cost north of $600 between labor and parts, with no guarantee that something else would not fail shortly afterward.

It was time.

We went to P.C. Richard & Son and ordered a replacement.

New air conditioner. Delivery. Tax. Haul-away.

$1,524.18.

There are purchases you make with excitement.

This was not one of them.

I looked at my old WallMaster with genuine sadness.

Eight years.

Still blowing beautifully.

And now it had to go because of water falling somewhere I could not even see from inside my home.

It felt like such a waste.

Then I remembered 700 dinars.

The Seventeen Dinars

The Gemara in Bava Batra 10a tells an extraordinary story.

Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai had a dream about his sister's sons.

He saw that during the coming year they were destined to lose 700 dinars.

He did not tell them.

Instead, throughout the year, he encouraged them to give money to tzedakah.

Again.

And again.

And again.

By the end of the year, they had given:

683 dinars.

That left:

17.

Then came Erev Yom Kippur.

Agents of the Roman government arrived and seized money from them.

Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai told his nephews not to be afraid.

They would lose only seventeen dinars.

They asked him how he could possibly know.

He told them about the dream.

Seven hundred dinars had been destined to leave their possession.

683 had gone to tzedakah.

17 went to Rome.

They naturally asked the obvious question:

Why didn't you tell us?

Had they known, they could have given the entire 700 to charity.

Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai answered that he wanted them to perform the mitzvah lishmah—for its own sake, not simply as a strategy for avoiding the financial loss.

And suddenly my dripping air conditioner became considerably more interesting.

Where Will the Money Go?

The Gemara introduces this story with a remarkable teaching:

Just as a person's sustenance is apportioned from Rosh Hashanah, so too are his financial losses.

That does not mean we understand Heaven's accounting.

We do not.

The unexpected expense is not random. It, too, is part of Divine Providence. What remains hidden from us is why this expense, why this amount, and why now.

But the Gemara does give us a startling way to think about money that leaves our possession.

Sometimes the question is not merely:

How can I prevent money from leaving?

There is another question:

Where do I want my money to go?

A roof can take it.

A transmission can take it.

A burst pipe can take it.

Mold can take it.

A boiler can take it.

An eight-year-old air conditioner dripping onto the neighbor downstairs can apparently take exactly $1,524.18 of it.

Life has an astonishing number of ways to present us with bills we never requested.

And they rarely ask whether this happens to be a convenient month.

But the Gemara places another destination beside all of them:

Tzedakah.

Elul

Perhaps that is why this lesson found me in Elul.

We are approaching Tishrei, traditionally a particularly active time for our family in giving. There are people we help, Torah institutions we support, and organizations to which we have commitments.

The air conditioner did not cancel any of them.

I don't want it to.

If anything, the story in Bava Batra makes me want to strengthen them.

Because I cannot control every expense that will enter my life this year.

I can control whether generosity enters it.

Chassidut gives tzedakah extraordinary significance because money represents more than currency. To earn it, a person invests time, intelligence, physical energy, creativity, responsibility—pieces of life itself.

When that money is given to tzedakah, something remarkable happens.

The effort that produced it is elevated with it.

And Elul makes that movement especially meaningful.

This is the month when we examine what we have done with the year Hashem gave us. We prepare to stand before Him and ask for another year of life, health, family, sustenance, and blessing.

Tzedakah gives that preparation hands.

We don't merely say that we want to become more generous.

We open them.

The Better Expense

I keep thinking about those nephews.

They lost seventeen dinars.

They gave 683.

From the perspective of a bank account, all 700 were gone.

But the destinations could hardly have been more different.

Seventeen dinars entered the machinery of Rome.

Six hundred eighty-three entered eternity.

That distinction changes how I think about money leaving my own hands.

I paid $1,524.18 because an air conditioner had reached the end of its useful life in our home.

I am grateful to Hashem that we could afford the replacement. I am grateful for eight years of service from the old machine. I am grateful that what began as an aggravating stream of emails ended with something as ordinary as buying another air conditioner.

But the money we give to tzedakah this Elul?

I don't want to think of that money as gone.

It went somewhere.

It may become food in someone's refrigerator.

Tuition for a child.

Medicine.

A Torah scholar's ability to continue learning.

A family's Shabbat.

A yeshiva's electric bill.

A person recovering his dignity.

One expense replaces a machine.

Another can rebuild a human being.

What Money Is For

Perhaps this gives us a different understanding of making money itself.

Of course we earn so we can live.

We need homes. Food. Clothing. Tuition. Transportation. Medical care. Savings. Security. Vacations.

And, apparently, air conditioners.

Torah never asks us to pretend these things do not matter.

But parnasa can serve another purpose.

Hashem gives us the ability to earn not only so that money can reach us, but so that some of it can reach others through us.

That changes the meaning of abundance.

The question is no longer only:

How much did I make?

It becomes:

What was I able to make possible?

That is a very different balance sheet.

One Final Service

Tomorrow, my old WallMaster will leave our home.

I admit I will miss it.

Eight summers is a respectable career for an air conditioner.

It kept my children cool. It worked through heat waves. It asked for very little until its final week, when apparently it decided to involve the neighbor, the superintendent, building management, two repair attempts, nine emails, P.C. Richard—and the Gemara in Bava Batra.

Quite an exit.

But perhaps it gave me one final service.

It reminded me that money will leave our hands throughout life.

Some we will spend.

Some we will lose.

Some will be taken by circumstances we never chose.

And some—

we will have the privilege to give.

So farewell, my lovely air conditioner.

Thank you for eight good years.

You cost me $1,524.18 on your way out.

But you reminded me that not everything that leaves our account is lost.