Rabbi M.L., shlit”a, relates:
I grew up on a secular kibbutz. Hakadosh Baruch Hu showed me compassion, and I discovered the truth. I did teshuvah and left my wayward brothers behind. I daven for them that they too will recognize and fulfill the Torah.
A few months ago, a friend from the kibbutz called and asked me to get him tefillin, but not to tell anyone that he was donning tefillin and saying Shema. I am sure that these steps toward Yiddishkeit stood by him to save him.
On the Shabbos of Simchas Torah, he got up at 6:30 in the morning to the sound of the air-raid siren. A moment later a rocket fell near his home and the house was instantly dark; the electricity was cut off. All the electronic devices, including the refrigerator, stopped working, and he realized that his life was in danger.
He is a diabetic and must have insulin injections with him. Insulin needs refrigeration, and since he didn’t know when the problem would be fixed, he needed to find someone who had a refrigerator who could host him.
He hurried to the home of a friend, where everything was still in working order. A few seconds later a rocket fell in his friend’s courtyard as well. The friend, who had only recently completed renovations on his magnificent home, watched as the front wall blew up. This was a special wall made completely of glass, and it cracked with a huge crash, its shards spreading everywhere. While the interior of the house remained stable, the outside was a picture of total destruction.
The sounds of war, shooting, and screams rent the air. They went to the sealed room and locked themselves inside. Afterward it became clear that two things that had seemed to be terrible tragedies were in actuality what saved them: First – my friend’s diabetes. Because it was urgent for him to find a working refrigerator for his insulin, he hurried to his friend’s home. The rocket that landed near his home caused him to leave it, and thus he was saved from the terrorists who later burst into his home and found it empty.
Second, the exterior wall of his friend’s home blew up dramatically, and the glass shards spread over a large expanse, giving the impression that the entire home was destroyed. Seeing the exploded wall, the terrorists assumed that the house had already been “taken care of” on the inside as well, and they skipped over it. Their lives were saved.
Not knowing what was going on outside, they stayed in the sealed room, and not until 18 hours later did soldiers come to save them. My friend is still pinching himself, overtaken with emotion at the fact that he is actually alive. They were literally in the inferno and were saved, b’chasdei Shamayim.
