Saving Life

Yoav, a young  IDF (Israeli Defense Force) soldier was stationed in the city of Chevron. Suddenly, he was shot by an Arab sniper and left for dead. As it was four o'clock in the morning, and no imminent attack was expected; no one was awake to hear the shot and rush to his aid. It appeared as though Yoav was doomed to bleed to death before anybody would ever find him. His short life would come to a tragic silent end.
 
One other soldier however, did happen to hear something. Though not totally sure, he suspected it might be a rifle shot so he went to investigate. He spotted Yoav, who was lying on the ground, bleeding to death. He immediately began to stabilize Yoav's wound and arrange for emergency transport to a medical facility. It took time for help to get to the scene, so he needed to apply manual pressure and any other trick he could think of to keep Yoav alive in the interim - he was literally holding Yoav's life in his hands.
 
Eventually, Yoav arrived at a proper medical facility where he was treated by surgeons. Yoav's parents were notified and rushed to the hospital. The doctors told them that had it not been for the immediate and appropriate actions of the other soldier, their son Yoav would definitely not have survived. It was indeed a miracle that the other soldier heard what no one else heard, and managed to locate Yoav as quickly as he did. They went to thank him, but he had already left the hospital.
 
After Yoav was home recuperating, and everyone was settled, they called the army to find out the name of the other soldier so they could thank him personally. Unfortunately, the other soldier's name had not been recorded in the incident report, so they now had no way of ever contacting him.
 
Yoav's parents owned a makolet (grocery store) in Kiryat Malachi, so they put up a poster in their store, describing the miracle that occurred and asking if anyone knew the identity of Yoav's savior. They figured that Israel is a small country and someone might know someone who knows something.
 
Months passed with no response. Finally after a year, a woman entered the store and saw the sign. She was positive that her son Doron had mentioned such an account. She took out her cellphone and called Doron on the spot. Sure enough, he remembered the incident quite well - it was he who had saved Yoav's life.
 
Soon, all the families gathered together for a joyful tearful 'reunion.'  Doron's mother pulled Yoav's mother aside and told her, "There is a specific reason I came to your store today. You don't remember me, but twenty years ago, I was standing in your makolet feeling lost and forlorn. You and your wonderful husband noticed how sad I looked and asked me what was the matter. I explained that I was pregnant and was overwhelmed. There were so many unbearable difficulties; financially, socially and emotionally. I decided that the only way out was to have an abortion."
 
"You both stopped everything, and calmly and lovingly sat with me. You listened to me. Then you offered so much encouragement and support. Because of you, everything began to look different and I chose to keep my baby. I no longer live around here, but I happened to be passing through and I figured it would be nice to visit your store again to thank you once again for all that you did. The name of that precious baby was Doron."
 

"My beloved Doron, who would not have been born were it not for you, grew up to save your son Yoav's life." (©2014. Printed with permission from Rabbi Baruch Lederman, author of Shulweek www.kehillastorah.org.) 

Appreciating Beauty In Our Lives

On a cold winter morning at a subway station in Washington, a man began to play his violin.  During the next 45 minutes he played six musical pieces.  It was during a rush hour and over a thousand people walked past the musician. Out of all the pedestrians, only 6 people stopped and listened.

People did not know that this violinist was Joshua Bell - one of the best musicians in the world. He played one of the most intricate pieces ever written with his Stradivarius violin, worth over $ 3.5 million dollars.  

Two days before the subway performance, his concert sold out in Boston at an average of $100 per ticket. 

This was a ‘social experiment’ prearranged by the Washington Post Newspaper. The goal of Joshua Bell’s incognito recital at a subway station was to observe how people respond to 'beautiful things' in their everyday lives.

The outcome was absolutely shocking. Only .006% of people stopped to appreciate the beauty of the music and the incredible talent of the violinist.

The other 99.994% of people did not find time to stop and listen to the best music ever written, performed by one of the best musicians in the world.

The pace of our culture is so overwhelming and intense that we developed blindness to the world we live in. We no longer hear or see people around us. We lost our ability to recognize Divine Intervention and to appreciate blessings in our lives. 

Perhaps, this is the time to open our eyes and to see the magnificent world around us. After all, recognizing and appreciating our existence is a completely transformational experience. 

Last Message from a 'Little Girl'

I loved my grandfather Semyon (Shimon) very much.  He and my beloved grandmother Anna helped to raise me and were a huge part of my daily life.  I was the eagerly awaited first born of their only child.  After my father was born, they did not have any more children and they treated me like their own child rather than a grandchild.  My parents worked a lot and my grandparents were my primary caregivers from the time I was one.  

My grandfather was born around the time of the Russian Revolution in Belarus and he and his 6 brothers and sisters were all secular Jews, having been robbed of the ability to study and practice their religion by the Communists.  He grew up during a time when religious observance was an offence punishable by death and/or many years of slave labor in a Siberian labor camp.

Regardless of these facts, my grandfather was responsible for my introduction to Judaism.  As a child, I had been afraid of the dark and he was the only one in my family with patience enough to sit next me at bedtime, hold my hand, and tell me bedtime stories until I fell asleep.  Luckily for me, the stories he told me were ones that he remembered from his early childhood and consisted of Torah stories about Adam and Eve, Moses, Joseph, etc…

Approximately after we had been in living the US for 10 years, when I was 17, my grandfather was diagnosed with lung cancer.  The doctors recommended radiation and told us that he should have at least several more years left as the cancer was caught pretty early and had a tendency to progress slowly at his age.  My grandfather was in his late seventies at this time, but healthy in all other ways.  Cognitively, he was doing very well, taking care of himself, and remembered everything.  He took the cancer diagnosis better than I had expected and repeatedly assured me (rather than the other way around) that he would be fine.  He would say that people should worry less about what doctors tell them as they tend to be pessimistic and present the worst case scenarios. Still, he willingly went along with his doctors’ treatment plans and had to be admitted to Cabrini Medical Center in NYC for several days every couple of weeks for treatment.

My parents and great-uncle (my grandfather’s younger brother) had been spending a lot of time with my grandfather, taking him to various doctors’ appointments and spending a lot of time with him to keep him from being lonely (my grandmother had passed away less than a year ago).  Therefore, when my grandfather was admitted to the hospital for treatment and I assured them that I would visit him there, they decided to go away for two days. 

The morning after my parents and great-uncle left for upstate NY, my grandfather called me from the hospital.  He asked me to bring him several things that he had forgotten to take with him to hospital.  That day, I had plans to go to Action Park (a water park in NJ) with my boyfriend and friends.  However, I could not say no to my grandfather.  I asked my friends to drive me to the hospital so that I could quickly run up and give my grandfather his things before we went to the water park.  When I got to the hospital, my grandfather looked distressed.  I asked him if he was feeling OK, and he said yes, but that he had been visited by a little girl who told him that this was his last day and that he would not make it to tomorrow.  I was stunned since this was totally unlike my grandfather and he had never said such things before.  Not even close!  He was not dramatic or attention seeking by nature.  Still, I figured that he must be stressed about his health and having bad dreams.  I did my best to reassure my grandfather that the little girl had not been real, that it was just a bad dream and that the doctors believed that he had quite a bit of time left. He vehemently disagreed with me and said that she had definitely been real, as he had seen her and spoken to her.  He was totally convinced that it was his last day.  My grandfather asked me to stay with him, but I told him that I couldn’t because my boyfriend and friends were all waiting for me downstairs (something I’ve regretted deeply ever since).  Instead, I did my best to calm him down and promised to come back and visit him the next morning.

Unfortunately, very early the next morning I got a phone call from the hospital and was told that my grandfather had indeed passed away.  I spent a long time grieving for him and wishing that I could go back in time and stay with him when he had asked me to.  I also tried to figure out how he knew that he was about to die when he was not in any acute medical distress.  I did not understand what the significance of the “little girl” was.  No matter how I tried, I wasn’t able to rationalize it.  Then, last year, a friend told me something interesting that shed some light on this.  He’s a nurse who has worked with many hospice patients and watched them die.  He said that the overwhelming majority of them saw and spoke to departed loved ones near the time of death.  In fact, he had often heard his patients name names before they died.  When he mentioned these names to their children and grandchildren, it turned out that these were the names of his patients’ deceased relatives.  If fact, this man, who came from the secular background of the Soviet Union, was so moved by what he saw over the years, that he could no longer deny G-d’s existence and has become increasingly religiously observant.

After the conversation with my friend, what my grandfather told me on his last day of life finally made sense. As did the fact that a little girl came to talk to him.  After all, my grandparents had had a daughter who died of dysentery during World War II.  My aunt was just over a year old when she died and my grandparents had spent the rest of their lives missing her.  Who else but a beloved daughter, would it have made sense for G-d to send to guide her father into the next world?  After all, if she hadn’t told my grandfather exactly when he would die, how would he have been able to predict it with such accuracy? No other explanation is plausible given the fact that his state of health should have led him to believe that he had the potential to live for a while yet.

As I child, I often felt terrible about the fact that my grandparents had to live through the death of their daughter and experience such unspeakable sorrow.  I often wondered why G-d even bothered to give them a child whose very brief life would cause them so much pain.  When I got older, I had heard religious people talk about the fact that there is a purpose to every single person’s life even if we don’t see it clearly at the time.  I heard it said that according to Jewish thought, even during a mundane task or seemingly meaningless life, we have the potential to influence people and events in some unknown way. 

Recently, I’ve come to the realization that a possible “purpose” of my aunt’s very brief life might have been to reaffirm for me and my family something that people are all consciously or subconsciously seeking – a sign of the fact that something beyond this physical world does exist.  To those that watched my aunt die and felt the pain of her too short life, such future events could not have been foreseen.  Nobody could have possibly known then, that many years after her death, her niece would see her brief life and subsequent appearance to her grandfather as a sign of G-d’s very existence.  Thus, having lived for only one year, my aunt has achieved what most Rabbis could not in several decades, bringing her niece closer to G-d and answering her prayers for a “sign.”  I hope that her Kiddush Hashem (suffering and death due to being a Jew/sanctification of G-d’s name) will encourage my entire family and our future generations to lead meaningful and spiritual Jewish lives. 

Kaddish for Deceased Father

A Rabbi in Long Island was once approached by a young man to have kaddish recited for his recently departed father (Kaddish is a memorial prayer that brings merit to a departed soul. It recited every day for a year after a persons death, usually by a family member). The young man made it clear that he would not be saying the kaddish himself but would pay for the Rabbi to arrange for someone else to say the kaddish on his deceased father's behalf.
 

Some time passed and the young man suddenly began showing up in synagogue and reciting kaddish himself. The Rabbi asked the young fellow what had changed and he told him the following:
 

When I was growing up, my father never showed any warmth or affection. He was always cold and uninvolved. One incident that always epitomized this for me was when I was in 5th grade. We had a paper airplane contest in school. I worked real hard to make a great airplane. When it was finished I wrote DAD on it with a bold blue marker. The plane won 1st Prize. When I came home I was so excited, I ran over to my dad, gave him the plane and told him I won. He showed no reaction. He didn't say a thing, he just took the plane and shoved it away somewhere. Not one kind word or even a smile. That incident told me that my father didn't care a bit about me. I knew he didn't love me.
 

When he passed away, I realized my kaddish obligation, but I just could not say kaddish for such a man. I came to you to arrange for the kaddish to be said by someone else. This way my obligation would be dispensed but I wouldn't have to physically say it.

      
Yesterday I went downtown to his office to clean out his desk. His secretary let me into the room and I got to work. When I went through his top drawer I found the paper airplane that I made in fifth grade. I picked it up and held it. I stared at it. When I eyed the word DAD written in blue, a lump formed in my throat. At that moment, his secretary walked into the room and said to me, "Your father used to stare intently at that plane with the exact same misty eyed look you have now. I always wondered what was so special about that plane." I wanted to answer her but I couldn't speak.
 

I realized that my dad cared about me all along. He just wasn't a man of many words. He didn't show his emotions and I didn't know how to see them but now I understand that they were always there. He did love me. Today I came to say kaddish for that wonderful man - my staunchest admirer, my hero, my dad. (©2013. Printed with permission from Rabbi Baruch Lederman, author of Shulweek www.kehillastorah.org.)

The Menorah

Private Stephen Winneger was on patrol one night during WWII when he saw a figure running through a field. He shouted, "Halt or I'll shoot." The figure ducked behind a tree and started to dig. Stephen again shouted, "Halt or I'll shoot!"  He didn't halt. Stephen caught up with him and tackled him to the ground. To his surprise, he found he had captured a young boy. An ornate Menorah had fallen from the boy's hands in the scuffle and Stephen picked it up. The boy tried desparately to grab it back shouting in Yiddish, "Give it to me! It's mine!" Stephen assured the boy that he was among friends, and that, furthermore, he himself was Jewish.
 

        The boy had just survived several long, tortuous years of the Holocaust in a concentration camp and was naturally mistrustful of all men in uniforms. He had come back to retrieve the menorah he had hidden there. It was all he had left in the world. He had been forced to watch the shooting of his father, and had no idea what had become of his mother.

        Stephen took the boy, whose name was David, under his wing. As they became closer and closer, Stephen's heart went out to the boy. He offered David the opportunity to come back to New York City with him. He accepted and underwent official adoption procedures.

        Back home, a curator of the Jewish Museum in Manhattan, saw the menorah and told David it was a very valuable, historic, European Menorah and that it should be shared with the entire Jewish Community. He offered David $2,500 for the menorah—a staggering sum of money in the late 1940’s!  But David refused the incredible offer, emphatically stating that the menorah had been in his family for over 200 years and that no amount of money could ever make him sell it. He would not part with a family mitzvah tradition.

        When Hanukkah came, David and Stephen lit the menorah in the window of their home in New York City. An hour later there was a knock on the door. When Stephen went to answer he found a woman with a strong German accent who said that she was walking down the street when she saw the menorah in the window. She said that she had once had one just like it in her family and had never seen any other like it. Could she possibly come inside and take a closer look?

        Winneger invited her in and said that the menorah belonged to his son, David, who could perhaps tell her more about it. He went upstairs and called David down to talk to the woman. And that is how David was reunited with his mother. (©2013. Printed with permission from Rabbi Baruch Lederman, author of Shulweek www.kehillastorah.org.)

Important Person

Gary was a boy in a Jewish elementary school in Pittsburgh who was known throughout the school as a big behavior problem. Year after year, teacher after teacher, he was found to be incorrigible. He never applied himself to his studies, his behavior was very disruptive in class. He was disobedient and disrespectful. Gary was the class clown or class terror, depending on how you wanted to look at it.

One day he was sent down to the principal’s office (for about the 50 billionth time) because of a “disciplinary infraction” on his part. Of course the principal was quite familiar with Gary, as he had been seen him in his office many many times over the years for such “occasions”. The principal met with him, spoke to him about proper behavior, values, goals etcetera. It was pretty much the standard lecture.

The very next day, there was a noticeable change in Gary’s attitude. As the days, weeks, and months went by he excelled academically and socially. He became a model student as well as a model citizen. He was studious, courteous, and served as an asset in class because of his excellent insightful participation. He got involved in extra curricular school projects and programs.

All of his teachers, past and present were wondering the same thing. What in the world did the principal say to him at that meeting? No one had the nerve to ask.

At the final staff meeting of the school year, one of the teachers got up the nerve to ask the principal about Gary. Everyone took notice when that name was mentioned and a hush came over the room. Everyone wanted to know what it was that the principal said or did at that meeting that produced such a dramatic amazing turnaround in this boy.

The principal shrugged his shoulders and told everyone there that he didn’t know. “I gave him the same talk I would give to anyone in that situation, the same talk I had given to Gary countless times over the years. I have no idea why this time he was suddenly so remarkably affected.”

By this time, everyone’s curiosity was piqued so they decided to go straight to the horse’s mouth and ask the lad himself. Gary recounted the incident as follows:

“First I was sent to the principal’s office, which was nothing new. I stepped inside the office, sat down, and the principal started speaking and lecturing about stuff. To be honest I couldn’t really tell you what he said because I don’t remember and I wasn’t paying much attention while he was speaking.”

“Then his intercom buzzed. It was his secretary telling him there was a phone call for him. He told his secretary that he couldn’t speak now because he was meeting with someone very important.”

“He kept on going with his lecture but I have no idea what he was saying because all I could think about was that he said I was someone very important. I left his office with that one thought spinning through my head – the principal thinks I’m very important. I went on home but that’s all I could think about for the rest of the day – I am very important.”
 

“The next day, I got up, got dressed, ate breakfast, went to school – all the same things I always did, but it was all different. Now I was someone important. I went to my first class, sat down feeling great, and I guess things kind of just took off from there.”    [The foregoing true story was told by Rabbi Yitzchak Chinn, McKeesport Pennsylvania.] (©2013. Printed with permission from Rabbi Baruch Lederman, author of Shulweek www.kehillastorah.org.)

Mother's Hug

Dvir Aminolav was the first Israeli soldier killed in the 2008 Gaza War. His mother Dalya missed Dvir, terribly. One night before she went to bed, she said in a loud voice: "G-d, give me a sign, give me a hug from Dvir so that I will know that his death had some meaning."

That week her daughter asked her to accompany her to a musical performance at The International Crafts Festival in Jerusalem. Dalya, feeling quite depressed, did not want to go to the concert, but she didn't want to disappoint her daughter either, and agreed to go halfheartedly. The concert was a bit delayed. A two-year-old boy began wandering through the stands. He walked up to Dalya's seat and touched her on the shoulder. A preschool teacher, Dalya turned around, saw the boy and smiled warmly.

"What's your name?" Dalya asked.

"Eshel," the boy replied.

"That's a nice name. Do you want to be my friend, Eshel?" The boy nodded in reply and sat down next to Dalya.

Eshel's parents were sitting two rows above. Concerned their little boy was bothering Dalya, they asked him to come back up. But Dalya insisted that everything was fine.

"I have a brother named Dvir," two-year-old Eshel chimed in, as only little children can. Dalya was shocked to hear the unusual name of her beloved son, and walked up the two rows to where Eshel's parents were sitting. She saw a baby in his carriage, and apologizing, she asked, "If you don't mind me asking, how old is your baby and when was he born?"

The baby's mother replied, "He was born right after the war in Gaza."

Dalya swallowed hard. "Please tell me, why did you choose to name him Dvir?"

Baby Dvir's mother began to explain. "When I was at the end of my pregnancy, the doctors suspected the fetus may have a very serious birth defect. Since it was the end of the pregnancy, there was little the doctors could do and I just had to wait and see how things would turn out.

When I went home that night, the news reported that the first casualty in the war was a soldier named Dvir. I was so saddened by this news that I decided to make a deal with G-d. 'If you give me a healthy son,' I said in my prayer, 'I promise to name him Dvir, in memory of the soldier that was killed.'"

Dalya, the mother of Dvir, stood with her mouth open. She tried to speak but she couldn't. After a long silence, she said quietly, "I am Dvir's mother."

The young parents didn't believe her. She repeated, "Yes, it's true. I am Dvir's mother. My name is Dalya Aminalov, from Pisgat Zeev."

With a sudden inspiration, Baby Dvir's mother handed Dalya the baby and said, "Dvir wants to give you a hug."

Dalya held the little baby boy in her arms and looked into his angelic face. The emotion she felt at that moment was overwhelming. She had asked for a hug from Dvir - and she could truly feel his warm and loving embrace from the World of Truth.
(©2013. Printed with permission from Rabbi Baruch Lederman, author of Shulweek www.kehillastorah.org.)