After one of my recent shared Vayimaen videos, my office assistant sent me an email. A man from overseas had phoned the office, urgently emphasizing that he wished to speak to me. “It’s extremely important,” she said.
As soon as I dialed his number and the man picked up the phone, he began to choke up with emotion. “Naftali,” he finally got out, between his breaths, “I just want to thank you and the people behind Vayimaen for saving my daughter’s life.” I was taken aback, as he began to recount what had transpired the other day.
“It had been a particularly difficult and draining day at work. I finally wrapped things up and was about to head out, when I was overcome by a moment of weakness. I began to click on something I knew I shouldn’t, when suddenly the imagery your portrayed in one of your previous Vayimaen videos flashed before my eyes. It was of a bull tied to a tree by a shoelace. The bull, now fully grown and developed, is certainly much stronger than the shoelace, and yet it has been habituated to believe it cannot break loose. At that moment, I walked straight to the plug of my computer and yanked it out, instantly running out of the office, knowing that if I would linger around any longer, I would fall.”
“That is incredible,” I said. “You embodied the very essence of Vayimaen and Vayanas Ha’chutzah. You were just like Yosef HaTzaddik who fled outside to escape the wife of Potiphar.”
“But that’s only the beginning of the story,” he went on. “My house is about twelve minutes away from my office. But as I pulled onto my street, to my horror, I noticed five Hatzalah vehicles in front of my house. My heart dropped. Something was very wrong. I rushed inside, only to see my daughter collapsed in the foyer, surrounded by multiple Hatzalah team members. They were attempting to resuscitate her. I looked around and saw my wife and other children, sitting and standing in different corners, their eyes stricken with tears as they mumbled words of Tehillim. They were scared, and so was I. My wife was inconsolable, unable to bear the sight of our daughter, who had underwent a seizure, fallen backwards, banged her head and stopped breathing.”
“Baruch Hashem, Hatzalah managed to revive her. But what I later patched together, after inquiring of the details from my family and the members of Hatzalah, shook me to my core. The exact minute that they had initially got back her pulse was when I pulled out the plug at my computer at my office. And that’s why I wanted to call you. To thank you. That imagery you painted for me with the bull tied to a tree on a shoelace saved my daughter’s life.”
“This moment may very well shape the rest of your life forever,” I finally said.
After letting the man’s words sink in for a few moments, I went on to ask. “Let me ask you one thing. If, chas v’shalom, you would have succumbed to your yetzer hara and then returned home, only to find the unthinkable—your daughter had not made it—what would you have done?” “I’d never be able to forgive myself,” he said. “I would forever blame myself and wouldn’t know how to live with what I had done.”
“I thought you would say that,” I responded. “And let me tell you, you’d be wrong. The Torah tells us, ‘Lo yum’su banim al avos—Children will not perish due to the iniquities of their father’ (Devarim 24:16). So allow me to offer another perspective. I do not have ruach ha’kodesh, but I believe this to be so.
“At the moment you stood in your office, there must have been a debate going on in Shamayim. Your daughter’s time to return her soul to Heaven had arrived, and the Malach HaMaves (Angel of Death) was about to be dispatched to carry out his bidding. But before he could, the Malach Refael stood up and interceded. “She is young. She isn’t yet married and she hasn’t brought children into the world. How can her time be up?”
“The Satan, though, was unconvinced. “Her judgment is final. Nothing more can be done. Her time is up.” But the Malach Rafael didn’t give up. “Let me find a zechus (merit) that will give her more time on earth.” The problem was that nothing could be found with which to grant her extra life. Until the Malach Rafael said, “I know what we can do. What if we give her father a test, an extremely difficult test? If he passes that, it will accrue to his daughter as a merit and that will be enough to give her more years.”
“It was at that moment that you were faced with a tremendous struggle. But you didn’t give in and falter. Instead, you stood up, pulled the plug, and fled the office. And in doing so, you gave your daughter her life.”
“You must never forget that moment,” I told the father. “It was through you and your own overcoming of an unbelievably overwhelming struggle which granted your daughter the zechus she needed. As she grows older and is eventually walked by you down to her chuppah, and she builds her own family, and you watch your grandchildren and experience the nachas of her family, remember. Remember what you have done, and let it continue to affect you and change you.”
We never know the power of what one moment can do, what effects it can have, what lives it can change. And sometimes, what lives it can save.
