By Rabbi Yechiel Spero
Rabbi Hillel Paley
Rabbi Hillel Paley has shared with the world his beautiful music. His famous songs are household names, often sung at kumzitzes, not only in Eretz Yisrael but around the world. Reb Hillel has a distinctive look. With his hat, jacket, and tie, he looks more like a rebbi or mashgiach than a singer. And that’s with good reason. His kumzitzes are not just a collection of songs sung to the accompaniment of a guitar, but inspiring, uplifting events, filled with chizuk and melodies that reach deep down into each and every neshamah present.
A Tragic Egged Bus Accident
In the summer of 2023, he told a personal story, one dear to his heart, making the kumzitz at which he shared it one of his most stirring events yet. It looked like a terror attack, only it wasn’t. On August 11, 2022, a driver of an Egged bus pulled over to the side of the road and put his bus in park. He wanted to check out something in his bus. However, for some reason, the brake didn’t hold.
Tragedy ensued, as the bus rolled off on its own, swerving into a storefront. Mrs. Shoshana Glustein and two of her daughters were killed in the crash, and others were injured. One young woman, twenty-one years old and married just six months, was crushed under the weight of the bus. For weeks, the newlywed girl, Batsheva, fought for her life, slipping in and out of consciousness.
During the entire time, her husband, Chaim, sat by her bedside. Until one day, she opened her eyes. It had been such a long journey, but now she was alive — and she was going to live. Soon after she woke up, Batsheva looked down at her legs and realized what had happened. In an effort to save her life, the doctors were forced to amputate her feet. Batsheva, who had her entire life ahead of her, now had to face the reality that she would never walk on her own two feet again.
The Young Woman was Reb Hillel’s Daughter-in-Law
This young woman, Reb Hillel shared at the kumzitz, is his daughter-in-law. And she and Chaim, his son, worked their hardest to embrace the challenge and to grow from it. One conversation, which took place shortly after Batsheva emerged from the coma, captures the essence of who they are. And who we are, as well.
Batsheva asked her husband a question. “Tell me the truth. If you would have known beforehand that this was going to happen to me, would you have married me anyway?” Chaim, a young avreich, didn’t want to pay mere lip service. His wife had a real question, and he wanted to give her a real answer. This is not a question for which he had been prepped in school, not a question whose answer can be looked up in a sefer.
A Most Unusual Response from His Heart
The response had to come from deep inside his heart, and it did. This is what he said. “If someone would have asked me when I was single, ‘Would you be willing to meet a girl with no feet?’ then, in all honesty, I would have said no. There’s no reason in the world that I would have chosen a wife who cannot walk on her own two feet.
“But there’s a big difference here. Had this happened before our chasunah, then it would have happened to you. However, after the wedding, it happened to us,” Chaim continued, “and it happened to me.
“Beforehand, our marriage was an ordinary marriage. It was no different from anyone else’s. But now that this happened to us, ani koreit itach brit chadashah, I am sealing a new bond with you, entering into a new marriage with you, one in which we will have a special and unique connection.”
Reprinted from the Parshas Kedoshim 5784 edition of At the ArtScroll Shabbos Table. Excerpted from the ArtScroll book – “Now That’s a Story.”
