It was prophesied to Rabbi Akiva that his beloved daughter would die on the day of her wedding. Akiva was a student of signs and omens; he believed the prediction. But he also believed, deeper still, that the Torah's commandments could redirect a decree.
The tradition, preserved as Gaster's exemplum No. 318 (which is also exemplum No. 136 in the main collection), tells what happened on that day.
The wedding proceeded. The guests arrived. The bride dressed in her wedding garments. Before entering the hall, as was her ordinary habit, she passed a poor man at the doorway and slipped him alms — a few coins, tucked quickly into his hand, the way a practiced giver does. No ceremony. No audience. She had done it a thousand times before, and she did it on her wedding day.
That night she went to her chamber and, needing to remove a decorative pin from her veil, stuck it into a crack in the stone wall before lying down. In the morning, when she pulled it out, a dead snake came with it — a viper that had crept into the room during the night and would have bitten her as she slept. The pin had gone straight through its eye.
Akiva asked his daughter afterward, "What did you do yesterday that was different from any other day?"
She remembered the poor man. The small gift. The coin pressed into a hand at the door.
Akiva went out and declared to his students, quoting the Book of Proverbs: "Tzedakah tatzil mi-mavet — righteous giving saves from death" (Proverbs 10:2). Not only from ordinary death, but from the specific death foretold. The verse is almost a chemistry. A coin to the poor, in the right moment, is a tool that works against the decree itself.