Dr. Jack Cohen
Saving You, Saving Me
כי ד' אלקיכם ההלך עמכם
For Hashem, your G-d, is the One who goes with you… (Devarim 20:4)
Allow me to share with you the words of a girl who related the following:
I have wanted to tell this story for some time now because I believe many people will learn from it. My parents are fine, religious Jews who raised us, their children, very well. Our home is in Jerusalem, and growing up, we were a dream family. All of my brothers went to the best yeshivot and my sisters went to the best bais yaakovs. But then, one of my brothers, Dovie, started going off the derech. He began associating with questionable friends. He then started staying at home all too often. “Why is Dovie home at 11 o’clock in the morning?” we wondered. “He should be in a classroom in yeshiva!” He started changing the way he dressed and the way he spoke. Eventually his whole conduct was not that of a frum Jewish boy. He changed completely.
My parents tried to reach out to him, and my mother prayed day and night. She went to rabbis, lit extra candles, and went all over Israel to various graves of righteous people to pray for him. My parents also thought long and hard about the effect he would have on the rest of us, his twelve other siblings. It was hard to watch our parents struggle, but we admired them and their decision to love Dovie and keep him in the house. Never did he feel that he didn’t belong.
Time went by as everyone adjusted to the idea that there was an off the derech child in our house. All the neighbors knew it. But any worries we had about how he would effect our shidduchim disappeared. It was not a problem. My older sister got engaged to one of the best yeshiva boys, and after that I got engaged. I’d like to send this as a message of encouragement to families dealing with similar situations. If you have a child in the house who is going off the derech, do not worry that they are going to hurt the marriage prospects of the other children. Families are not necessarily labeled by the actions of one child.
On July 2, 2008, Dovie was walking down Jaffa Road in Jerusalem. He was 18 years old at the time and had dropped out of yeshiva. Suddenly, he saw something very strange. A tractor trailer which was wildly making its way down the street rammed right into a bus stop at full speed. The tractor had been hijacked by an Arab. My brother thought at first that maybe it was an accident, though he saw how the driver kept on going, ramming into a bus and turning it over. It was pandemonium. My brother couldn’t believe his eyes. The driver, though, continued on his rampage. My brother wanted to warn the other cars on the road to quickly move away, but it seemed useless. It looked like a battlefield in war.
Then my brother noticed something which made him stop cold. A few feet away was a woman trapped in her car, surrounded by multiple crushed cars on all four sides. The tractor was making its way right at her, yet she couldn’t get out of the car. My brother noticed the woman lean to the back seat of her car and grab something. It was her baby who had been strapped in the baby seat. Frantically, the woman threw the baby out the window to my brother, who caught it and ran from the area as fast as he could. As my brother darted away, he heard the sound of crushed metal as the tractor made its way towards the car the woman remained in, flattening it like a sardine can.
My brother could not afford to stop running. Breathless and terrified, he finally found a police officer who instructed him to wait in a police car until everything was cleared. He stayed with the baby, holding it tightly. The police located the driver of the tractor, and put an end to his rampage.
It was quite a while until the police returned to find my brother still sitting with the baby. “Where would you like us to drop you off now?” they asked him. My brother, an eighteen-year-old boy who just risked his life to save a baby and witnessed a traumatic event, insisted on being taken home.
The policemen complied with his wishes and returned him home. “Ima,” he announced, “I have a baby!” Holding up the child, he related what had just occurred. The incident was so recent that news of it had not fully circulated around Jerusalem. My mother sent me to the store to buy everything the baby needed, after which we washed him and put him to bed. We couldn’t believe our ears when we later heard of the tragedy on the news.
“We should call the police,” my mother recommended. “The father of the baby must be looking for him!” My father went on to call the police station in Jerusalem and see if any inquiries had been made about a baby, but there were none. Social Services showed up at our house soon after, though they told us to hold on to the baby until the family was found or other arrangements were made. The next day, the identity of the mother was discovered. She was a Jewish Russian immigrant whose husband was not Jewish. The father had returned to Russia after the baby was born, and no other family relatives of the baby remained except for the mother’s elderly mother.
For an entire week, Dovie did not leave the baby’s side. He would feed him, play with him and try to make him laugh. Dovie became very attached to the little boy. At the end of the week, Social Services returned and reported that the grandmother was ready to take the baby. Yet, my brother stood there protesting, wishing he could take care of him longer. My brother, though, turned the baby over to the care of the grandmother.
But, rather quickly, the grandmother realized that it wasn’t all too easy to care for such a young child. It had been many years since she raised a toddler. Social Services were once again contacted and informed that it would be in the baby’s best interest to find a new home with parents, where he could be raised in a healthy, caring and wholesome environment.
As soon as Dovie heard that the baby was up for adoption, he jumped at the opportunity. “Can I adopt the baby?” he asked. “Dovie,” he was told, “that is very sweet, but we cannot let a relatively young and unmarried boy like you adopt a baby.” “I’ll get married,” Dovie said, “and I’ll provide him with a good home.” “That’s not possible,” Social Services said, “because the baby needs a home right now.” But my brother wouldn’t give up. “My mother can help take care of him until then!” After asking my mother if such an arrangement could be made, my mother said, “Dovie, don’t think it is going to be easy to raise a child. You cannot wake up at two in the afternoon and go to sleep at four in the morning. And I don’t think your friends are good role models. Raising a child is not like raising a dog. He is a real child and needs real attention and guidance.”
Dovie told my mother, “Mommy, I will go back to yeshiva and get up every morning and pray. I will learn Torah and make myself into an upstanding mentch as long as we are willing to adopt this baby. I need to do this. I will not let him be abandoned.” For the next two years, he raised the baby as a real son.
Dovie slowly began wearing respectful clothing as he used to and made his teachers proud. And every evening after learning, he would come home to the little boy. He began teaching him Modeh Ani, how to wash his hands and many other practices.
When Dovie turned twenty, he began shidduchim. But it wasn’t easy, as every time he went out and mentioned that he had a son, the girl would be shocked. Many of the girls were moved by the courageous story, but were uninterested in marring a boy who came with a two-year-old child. Not many girls were willing to become a mother to a two-year-old child, and some didn’t seem to be a good match for the baby.
Finally, though, the one in a million eishet chayil came into his life. She was a wonderful and deep girl who thought the baby was the best thing about my brother. She fell in love with him and with the baby, and with that, they got married.
After this all unfolded, my brother realized that the baby was the means which brought him back to Hashem and Judaism. And despite being worried that as a twenty-year-old boy with an adopted baby he would never find a shidduch, he found the perfect wife.
In life, there is hope for everyone. It is five years since my brother first met the baby and two and a half years since he got married, and he now has a growing family along with the little adopted boy. Dovie’s family looks like any other religious family, but they know the true story behind it all.
Every year we celebrate the miracle which occurred. But, in truth, it is a double miracle. “Everyone thinks I saved this child,” Dovie has said, “but, in truth, I know deep down inside that this child saved me.”
