A moving story, which was allowed to be published only after the passing of the Maran Rabbeinu Yosef Shalom Elyashiv zt"l, told from the boy's father, who was saved from a terrible and difficult decree, and makes every Jewish heart jump.
The great and rare miracle, as defined by the father, the yeshiva student of Elad, occurred a few years ago, after the horrific accident that the family members suffered on the way out of Elad in a collision between the family car and a truck. All the family members were injured to varying degrees, and their lives were not in danger, except for the eldest son, then nine and a half years old, who was critically wounded and was caught between life and death. He was the first to be taken to the hospital and rushed to the operating room. After a complex head operation, while still unconscious, he was hospitalized in the intensive care unit with a completely pessimistic outlook. The greatest experts admitted that they are unable to save, and that if a reasonable miracle does not occur, there is reason to fear that the child will not wake up at all, or due to the fatal injury, he will remain disabled for life with irreversible brain damage.
The father, who was the only one who was not injured in the accident, ran tirelessly among the Gedolei Yisrael to breach the gates of heaven to cancel the harsh decree on his son. One of the good emissaries, a friend from the neighborhood whose father is a resident of Ramot who is known for his elegant tefillin houses, volunteered to run towards him to ask for the blessing of Maran Rabbeinu zt"l, who was in constant contact with his father and regularly ordered tefillin from him. While the boy was lying with his head wrapped in bandages and his body still without response, the friend hurried to organize a quick meeting with the Rebbe to beg him to pray for him and bless him for a complete refuah. What was surprising to hear was the instruction of Maran Rabbeinu zt"l, who immediately asked him to organize for the injured child tefillin of the head that they would dedicate to his Bar Mitzvah. On his instructions, the tefillin house was quickly organized. Still in its raw form, without final processing and coloring, and immediately taken to the intensive care unit, "The friend came to me agitated with a bag of tefillin on which he had prescribed for the child's medicine and said that this was a segula that Rabbi Elyashiv wanted to send to my son's hospitality" – the father tells us in an excited voice – '
These were difficult days in which we were torn between the gloomy opinions of the doctors and our hopes as believing Jews that even a sharp sword is placed on the neck of a man who will not despair of mercy. We placed the holy bag on my son's head and felt very encouraged by the turnaround. The professor in the department argued with me that my child had no chance of waking up, and I was imbued with faith and convinced him that within days the great miracle was going to happen. A week later, the child was already on his feet without any harm, and the doctor stood up and admitted that nothing else could explain the dramatic upheaval except a miracle. A few days after he woke up and the anesthetics stopped having an effect, my son was already arguing with me about the last lesson in the Talmud and 'holding his head' on everything that was happening. There was no trace of anything going on in his head. It was hard to believe that only days before the diagnosis, there was talk of a very severe brain injury, which would leave its impressions in any case. The boy functioned as one of the human beings, and his memory was at its peak. It was clear to us that we had merited the supernatural miracle, but we couldn't tell everyone." – The father admits. Maran Rabbeinu asked not to publish the story, and until the end of his life, the story was known only to a few people close to him and family members.
The great Gaon Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky, shlita, who heard the story from his father, responded at the time by quoting the words of the midrash: "I did not create a head except for tefillin," and added the logic behind the miracle: "If there are tefillin, there is a reason to have a head." Later it turned out that the family members were privileged to be among the only segula to whom Maran zt"l gave them the special segula. "There were three other children with head injuries before us who were saved thanks to her, and we were the fourth and last time in his story," the father testifies.
