Without the Rav, My Father Would Have Died on the Operating Table

May it be the will of Hashem that there be joy and great healing for all of the Jewish people. Alas, we see that the Jewish people are going through a difficult period, to the point where certain illnesses are defined as a literal epidemic. How much life changes when a close and beloved family member is forced to deal with such news, Heaven forbid.

[audio mp3="https://www.shuvubanimint.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Sharon-Mizrachi.mp3" autoplay="true"][/audio]

"My father has been a heart patient for 12 years," Sharon Mizrachi shares his strengthening story with us. "The situation deteriorated so much that five years ago, during Passover, he was hospitalized at Tel Hashomer for over a year. He stayed there all week and was only allowed to leave for the Sabbaths. I remember that period as difficult; every time, it was truly hard for my father to return to the hospital. Although we would visit him during the week, when we turned to leave, he would have tears in his eyes, and it broke our hearts to see the sadness and the great suffering he was going through."

"My father is young, only in his early fifties, and his heart was already functioning at only 15 percent," Sharon notes with a choked voice, so that we might understand. "There is an entire halachic debate regarding organ donation, so the possibility of a transplant in Israel was slim for us. We prayed a lot and hoped to Hashem that He would save us. Throughout all this time, many countries came up as options to perform the surgery, but they fell through as quickly as they appeared. And then came the miracle, the first in a chain of miracles that visited us."

"Suddenly, we learned that Colombia was a real possibility for us. However, the surgery was still a matter of life and death, and we had just heard that a young man of 24 who underwent the surgery in Israel passed away after his body rejected the heart. It was clear to me that my father had to visit the tzaddik of the generation before we decided on such a move. Therefore, I made an effort and took out a loan for a pidyon nefesh (redemption of the soul) for my father, and that is how we entered to see the Rav. My father was afraid of two things. After waiting and suffering so much, he was afraid the Rav would tell him not to go to Colombia for the surgery. On the other hand, he was afraid of the surgery itself, because we knew that the chances of success through natural means were not high. It reached the point where my mother had to sign that in the event, Heaven forbid, the surgery did not succeed, we would have no claims."

Sharon's voice changes as he describes the moments of the long-awaited meeting with the Rav shlit"a. "When we entered into the holy presence, the occasion was very moving. The Rav shlit"a had just finished a chalakah hair-cutting ceremony for a happy child who had reached the age of three, and he immediately turned to my father. 'How long I have waited for you; here, I have prepared a prayer for your healing.' The Rav showered him with great love, while holding his hand and stroking his face. My father simply could not speak, so I helped him and told the Rav shlit"a about his difficult condition, while asking him to decree in the Heavens that my father would come out of the surgery whole, in the sense of 'a tzaddik decrees and Hashem fulfills.' As soon as the Rav shlit"a heard this, he turned to his attendant who was in the room and said to him, 'You see this man? When he returns from Colombia, he is coming straight to me.' The words worked magic on my father, may he live, and when he heard this, a great weight was lifted from his heart and his fear was greatly eased. Since then, he has become very attached to the Rav with great love."

"My father, may he live, waited in the city of Medellin in Colombia for three months for the surgery, where the heart of a 35-year-old non-Jew was transplanted into him. However, even there, we needed great miracles. The surgery itself was difficult, and in addition, the two days following the surgery were critical. During this time, the body must accept a foreign object, and we were on high alert for what would come next. Indeed, during my father's stay in the intensive care unit, his body swelled to massive proportions, up to a level of nine out of ten. My father, may he live, was literally on his deathbed. It reached the point where the non-Jewish professor who was treating my father turned to my mother in English and told her to strengthen herself in the recitation of Psalms."

"My mother shed tears like the sea there and increased her prayers, but I know that the Rav shlit"a performed great salvations for us. Another moment, and my father, Heaven forbid, would not have been among the living. And suddenly, a day later, the index dropped from nine to two, and my beloved father was saved. To understand the magnitude of Divine Providence: before my father entered surgery, they asked my mother, 'If something happens to your husband, Heaven forbid, in what way do you want him to be sent to Israel?' And indeed, a few days after my father returned to Israel, an American woman passed away there."

"I must tell you about another miracle we had," Sharon notes. "The funding for the surgery reached $300,000, a vast fortune by any account. From Heaven, it was orchestrated that the insurance my father had taken out only a few months earlier covered the costs. So we saw how necessary the pidyon was, and who knows what would have happened to my father without it."

"Since then, there is not a day that my wife and I do not perform hitbodedut and pray for the healing of the Rav shlit"a. We light candles for his success and recite the Tikkun HaKlali several times a day. Words cannot describe what we experienced. We feel that the light of the Rav has entered our lives, to the point that in all our conversations with each other and with friends, we mention and strengthen our connection with him. Since then, I have heard many lessons from the Rav shlit"a, and thus I found myself strengthening myself greatly in the study of the holy Gemara."

There is a concealment regarding the Rav shlit"a; if we understood how much we lack him, the entire Jewish people would be holding massive assemblies.