My Passport Was Stolen, but Hashem Had Other Plans

It all started about a year ago, when Shir Tohar and her sister, two young students from central Israel, wanted to take a short break between semesters and relax. They chose to travel to London and spent a wonderful week enjoying the city. On Thursday, their last day at the hotel, Shir wanted to visit Kensington Gardens Park.

That same day, her sister suddenly developed painful blisters on her feet, making it hard for her to walk. “My sister really didn’t want to go,” Shir recalls, “but I insisted and eventually, we went.”

They were amazed by how huge the park was, with eight different exits. Without any specific plan, they chose an exit that, to their surprise, was located right next to the Israeli Consulate.

At the time, it just felt like a neat coincidence. “When I saw it, I thought, ‘Cool, the Israeli Consulate!’ but I didn’t think it would matter to me.”

The next day, the sisters packed up and planned to take a direct bus to the airport. They arrived at the central station at midnight. “The moment we walked in, I felt something strange,” Shir says. “There were shady characters, homeless people, people just wandering around, it didn’t feel like the London we had experienced until then. A kind of fear crept into my heart, but we didn’t have a choice.”

Shir volunteered to go pick up the suitcase they had left earlier in the luggage storage area at a nearby hotel. Normally, her sister would have insisted they go everywhere together, but because of her foot pain, she stayed behind at the station to watch over their two backpacks.

“About fifteen minutes later, when I came back, I saw my sister in complete panic,” Shir remembers. At first, she couldn’t understand what had happened. But slowly the pieces came together. Her sister had placed their two bags next to her while using the phone charging station. Suddenly, out of nowhere, someone snatched one of the bags and ran off.

“My sister tried to chase him, but he was too fast and there was no security around. No one helped.” As it turned out, the stolen bag was Shir’s. It held her passport and other important belongings.

What goes through your mind in a moment like that?

“It’s terrifying. You’re in a foreign country with no passport, no idea what will happen the next day. But from that moment until the end thank G-d, it was a good ending and I felt that Hashem was with me the whole time.”

With no passport, Shir had no choice but to return to their hotel. After speaking with their parents, they agreed that her sister should continue to the airport, while Shir would stay behind and go to the Consulate in the morning.

“It was Friday,” she says, “and as someone who keeps Shabbat, I knew I wouldn’t be able to fly out before Sunday. That thought frightened me. I didn’t know anyone in London. I had no idea where I’d stay for Shabbat. I prayed with all my heart to Hashem to help me, to find me a place, to take care of me. I believed He would hear me.”

And He did.

That very morning, a young British woman around her age arrived at the Consulate. “We started talking,” Shir says. “And I found out she was the daughter of a local rabbi.” Shir shared what had happened, and the girl listened with care and concern.

Then she asked, “Where are you staying for Shabbat?”

When Shir said she was at a hotel, the young woman didn’t hesitate—she immediately invited Shir to spend Shabbat at her family’s home.

That’s how Shir found herself spending Shabbat with a warm, welcoming Jewish family, part of a beautiful local community. “Only another Jew, even in a foreign country, can give you that kind of feeling, like family,” she says.

And then, over Shabbat, she learned something incredible.

The rabbi’s daughter hadn’t even planned to go to the Consulate that day. On her way to work, she randomly bumped into a family she knew on the underground (subway). They told her they had forgotten their son’s passport at the Consulate but didn’t have time to go back and get it. She volunteered to do the errand for them.

Now I understand what it means that ‘one mitzvah leads to another,’ Shir reflects.

“Exactly. If she hadn’t taken on that small act of kindness, I probably would’ve spent Shabbat in a non-Jewish hotel, without kosher food and without that special Shabbat feeling. Her trip to the Consulate wasn’t even for herself but it turned out to be exactly what I needed. I see it as divine providence, directly for me.”

Even now, this experience stays with her. “It reminds me that our prayers really are heard. Hashem listens and answers in the most real, tangible ways. We just have to believe.”