Hi all.

I just read R’ Micha’s QSA entry on mi-shepara, and it occurred to me that I came close to running afoul of same recently.

We (my DW and I) will IY”H be in E”Y next week (let’s see how many more TLAs I can put into one sentence). We arranged for an apartment. As soon as I had committed to a rental, something better came up. I found myself sorely tempted to tell the lessor that I had found something nicer. However, my DW kept me on the straight-and-narrow. She asked to see the phrasing of my email, and said that by my using the word “confirmed”, we were committed to same, for better or worse. (This was her legal, not halachic, advice, as a freshly-minted JD from Rutgers/Newark. Of course, she won’t be able to practice law until she gets admitted to the bar.)

But her advice made be realize that had I told the lessor that something better had come up, I could well be in the position of somebody for whom the “mi-shepara” curse would apply. Since I really don’t need a curse right about now, I figured that I wouldn’t try to second-guess what HQBH wanted for me.

שבת שלום

PS: I hope that our landlord doesn’t keep two cotton-eating insects in the apartment. That would make him the lessor of two weevils.

–
Art Werschulz (agw STRUDEL comcast.net)
…. insert clever quote here …