This was such a strange conversation for someone who was publicly desecrating Shabbos by traveling in a car on Shabbos kodesh at night, and speaking about how he doesn’t want to desecrate the Shabbos, and that he would even make his commitment a bit longer by starting to keep Shabbos ten minutes earlier.
This just comes to show us the value of effort of every Yid, on his level, to come closer to Hashem. Riding in a car on Shabbos was a terrible aveirah. It was a tragedy, but he did not know anything, and for him this was truly a way of coming closer to Hashem.
Nitzan got out of the car at ten to twelve. He looked around and found a bench. He disconnected his cellphone and sat down. People asked if he needed help, but the help they offered did not suit him. They were willing to take him in their cars or to let him call, but he was being shomer Shabbos! So he said, “Thanks, I’m managing,” and he lay down to sleep on the bench.
That’s how he slept, in the street, as he had no other option. In the morning, at ten o’clock, he turned on his phone, ordered a taxi, and traveled home, R”l.
In the house he was greeted by a strange sight. The family was screaming and crying. At first they simply could not believe they were seeing him. Then they fell upon him as though they hadn’t seen him in years. He stood there, shocked, and asked, “I don’t understand. What’s going on here?”
And then it became clear that he was the sole survivor of a terrible accident, which had taken place the previous night at five to twelve. Five minutes after he got out of the car, the car he had been traveling in was involved in a fatal accident, and all its passengers were killed. In his house they were mourning his death, and here he was, standing right before them, alive and well.
“It shook me up completely,” Nitzan told me on the phone. “I felt how important my shemiras Shabbos is to our Father in Heaven. And between us, I know that what I did is not really called keeping Shabbos. From today on I want to keep Shabbos properly, and in general to keep all the mitzvos. Are you willing to help me?”
Reb Chaim completed the moving story and told me, “Do you see? Even a short time of keeping a mitzvah brings nachas to Hashem, and I believe that even one hour of shemiras halashon is worth a ton.”
