This week, I visited a milk powder factory in Germany. It is a long-established company in the industry, one that for many years has made sure to maintain kosher certification so that its products are available to customers who require kosher products.
The company’s managers and salespeople are highly orderly and organized—people of spreadsheets and measurements, as befits a respectable German company. Above all, they take great pride in their products.
My role there, as a kosher supervisor, is more closely connected to the production side. The person I deal with at the factory is usually someone from the technical department. But every now and then, someone from the business side of the company joins a meeting, and then, partly out of politeness and partly out of genuine curiosity, I ask about the business as well: Is the company doing well? Do they have enough customers? How are sales?
This week, they told me with great excitement that they have a relatively new customer—a chocolate company that is buying such enormous quantities of milk powder from them that they have had to extend their work shifts just to keep up with demand.
I was somewhat puzzled by this new customer.
First, the company is located quite far away, and there usually needs to be a very good reason to buy goods from such a distance. Most often, that reason is a good price.
Second, from previous conversations I knew that this factory was not exactly the cheapest supplier on the market. Not because they did not want to be, but simply because some of their equipment is rather old—especially their drying tower, where the milk is turned into powder.
The tower is quite old, around sixty years old. It still does the job, but its output is much lower than that of modern drying towers, which can produce twice as much in the same amount of time.
I knew this because several years ago they had proudly shown me the new tower they were building, one that was supposed to double their production capacity. But I also remembered that the new tower, in which millions had been invested, had failed to live up to expectations. It developed a problem and is not being used at all.
“So,” I asked, “what is your marketing method? What’s the strategy? In such a saturated market, how did you manage to convince such a large customer to come all this way and buy specifically from you, despite the higher price?”
My impeccably dressed, tie-wearing colleague smiled slightly and replied in decisive German:
“Reiner Zufall.” - Pure coincidence.
I had been waiting for a precise explanation, one based on a clear, measurable method, so I was astonished when he continued.
It turns out, he explained, that their milk powder has a distinctive aroma. It is created by the milk powder being slightly scorched at a temperature a little higher than it ideally should be.
And this is not something they planned or intended. Quite the opposite: they do not really have control over it. It is, in a sense, a malfunction caused by the advanced age of their drying tower.
The customers tasted it, tested it, and came back saying that this particular aroma enhances their chocolate in a remarkable way. As a result, they transferred almost all of their milk powder purchasing to this factory.
“Reiner Zufall,” he said to me again with a smile.
I took a piece of paper and showed him something about the Hebrew word for “coincidence,” *mikreh* (מקרה). When its letters are rearranged, they can form *rak meHashem*—“only from Hashem.”
“This isn’t *reiner Zufall*,” I told him. “This is *rein HaKadosh Baruch Hu*—purely the work of G-d.”
I thought to myself: This is exactly what I needed to hear on the eve of the New Year.
To see how, in a stronghold of planning and Excel spreadsheets, of methods and strategies, there are moments when even the professionals throw up their hands and say, “We have no explanation for this.”
This is what I needed to hear—to strengthen my faith and trust that the Holy One, blessed be He, directs the entire world “like clay in the hands of the potter”—literally.
And now, you too have had the privilege of hearing it.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Zalman Wishedski