Bentzi isn’t really cynical. In fact, he shares some special memories. “When I think back, my first memories all surround the special atmosphere at home, with lots of volunteers or babysitters always coming in and out. And also lots of neighbors. I can’t remember a moment where no one was around.”

Yosef: “I mainly remember the four of us being dressed in the same outfits and being the focus of attention of the whole neighborhood. Every Purim, all the other kids would knock on our door bringing mishloach manot because they wanted to see our costumes.” He turns to his brothers. “Do you remember the costume of ‘Be bold as a leopard, light as an eagle, swift as a deer, and strong as a lion’? And the year we dressed up as Rav Elyashiv, Rav Ovadiah, Rav Shach, and the Gerrer Rebbe?”

Yishai: “My earliest memory is of visiting Mrs. Esther Tachnovsky, who used to volunteer at Shaare Zedek, where she took care of us as newborns. She’s already in her nineties, but when we were little, she was constantly with us and was a great help to our mother. She’s like our savta.”

Shlomo: “When I think about growing up, the first thing that comes to mind is bedtime — the talks and discussions, and also the nightly arguing about who was going to sleep in the top bunk.”

Time for the Park

Her boys are now young adults, but Yael can still connect to those years when there was no day or night, when life, as she says not ungratefully, “was a daily struggle for survival. I think that throughout that first year we didn’t even manage to call the babies by their names. It was ‘bring him to me’ or ‘put him in his crib’ or ‘give him a bottle’. Feeding them was never-ending. By the time we finished feeding the fourth child, the first one was already hungry again. Plus, we had another three little ones to care for at the same time.

“One day when I had the whole crew outside in the park, a lady came over to me and said, ‘You know, I don’t think you have to be afraid of ayin hara. No one wants your headache!’ I just smiled. Sure it was a challenge, but a huge brachah as well.”

During the first three years, there was a rotation of volunteers every day. “They didn’t leave us for a minute,” Yael remembers. “And the neighbors — I’m forever grateful to them. When a neighbor would come in to borrow eggs or sugar, she’d leave with the sugar in one hand and one of the boys in the other. Honestly, it wasn’t easy for me to accept all that help. In a way I felt like I was losing my grip on the privacy of my home, as volunteers would always be coming and going — but looking back, it’s the only way I survived. And for the kids, it was totally their normal. Whenever there was a knock on the door, they’d ask, ‘Mommy, are they taking us to the park?’ ”

And the help didn’t end once the children could walk to the park on their own. It seemed like the entire country was keeping tabs on “their” quads. “One woman, who wasn’t even religious, heard about their upcoming bar mitzvah and decided to sponsor a pair of tefillin for each boy. And there was a lady from Rechovot who called to tell us she was buying each of them winter coats. A chesed organization called One Soul in Am Yisrael donated furniture for the children’s room. My close friend Noa Attia ordered us a special quadruplet carriage. And my upstairs neighbor Yaffa Deri [wife of Shas head Rabbi Aryeh Deri] was a real lifesaver. She was always sending her daughters down to help us. I remember one night my husband and I were plopped on the sofa, totally exhausted, when the Deri girls came in to take the quads out for a walk. ‘When should we bring them back home?’ they asked. My husband, through slitted eyes, mumbled, ‘In time for their bar mitzvah…’ ”

The boys smirk, but they’re also sentimental. “Our mother had this chart where she logged every time we were fed, when we burped, when we were changed. One year while cleaning for Pesach, we found that timetable, and it suddenly dawned on us how extremely difficult it must have been to raise us. We decided to hang up that old chart in our room. It was like a wake-up call for gratitude on our part.”

No More Complaints

“We had so many, so many miracles,” Yael comments as she thinks back to the early years. “It’s written that a person is not cognizant of his own miracles, and maybe we weren’t grateful enough. You know, during the pregnancy the doctors had been very pessimistic, saying that there was no way the babies would reach their due date, and that it was likely not all of them would survive. Yet they were born close to term, weighing about four pounds each. And although three of them had to be put into incubators, they all developed nicely, without complications, and in three weeks we were back home with all of them.”

But then, when the little fellows were already a year old and it seemed like life would finally return to some type of routine, Hashem had other plans.

“We went to spend Shabbat with my sister-in-law in Raanana.” Yael remembers. “We needed a break, a change of scenery. On Shabbat morning Yosef started feeling sick. He was running a high fever and Tylenol wasn’t helping. Then he started having spasms. We called an ambulance, but he lost consciousness on the way to the hospital. He was put into the ICU and I remember walking through the hospital corridors like a zombie, crying and praying, ‘Hashem, Master of the Universe, I promise that I will never, ever complain about anything again, no matter what challenges You send me!’ I looked back on the past year — how wonderful it was to get up at night for four healthy babies. I couldn’t understand how I ever dared to complain.”

For two days Yosef lay unconscious. “But then when he finally opened his eyes, I was in shock. This was not the child I had known before; the look in his eyes was so different and strange! He barely noticed me, made no eye contact with me. I said to the doctor: ‘You know, Yosef was able to clap his hands. Why doesn’t he clap his hands now?’ And then I stopped. I said to myself: A minute ago you begged Hashem only to let Yosef live, and now you also want him to clap his hands?

“Then,” Yael continues, “I asked the doctor, tears in my eyes, ‘Will he be able to walk? Will he be able to talk? What‘s going to be with him?’ The doctor‘s answer was only three short words, but three words that gave me so much hope. He said: ‘I don’t know.’ For me, it was as if all the opportunities were given to us. If the doctor didn’t know, it meant that maybe the damage wasn’t irreversible, that there was still hope, that we could still change the situation through tefillah.”

Yosef was hospitalized for three months, while the other children were divided up between relatives and friends. “When we finally came back home, I made a loud and clear resolution: Yosef is going to be no different from his brothers. It was so important for all of us, because it’s really what gave Yosef back his life. At birth he was the biggest of them, and later he was the fastest to develop. He was the first to crawl and the first to start saying words. And suddenly, it all changed.

“We underwent a long, difficult period of treatments. He had hydrotherapy, horseback-riding therapy, speech therapy, and everything else that was offered. Yet the greatest therapy was having his brothers — they were really the ones who pushed his progress. They challenged him to keep up with them, and at the same time supported him and encouraged him to keep trying. When they crawled and he didn’t, they would simply climb on top of him. When they spoke and he didn’t, he didn’t get what he wanted, so he had to make the effort and talk. Eventually he managed to bridge all the gaps. He attended Gartner’s Talmud Torah for children with slight special needs, and a feeder school to Yeshivah Meisharin, where he’s learning today.”

Yosef nods his head and smiles. “It’s hard for me to concentrate for a long time, and I can’t sit and study the whole day like my brothers. But my dream is that when we’re all married, they’ll sit and learn Torah and I’ll work and support them.”

Separate but Equal

Right after the quadruplets’ upsheren at age three, the Mizrachis brought them to Rav Elyashiv ztz”l for a brachah as well as an eitzah: should they all attend the same cheder, or should they attend four different schools? The Rav’s answer was definitive: separate chadarim, in order to avoid jealousy. It was also decided that none of them would attend the cheder where Rav Yechezkel Mizrachi taught.

That was the first time the boys were separated, and it was a bit of a shock for the little guys. “I guess we were disappointed,” says Bentzi, “but then we realized our lives had become even more exciting. We each had our own friends, and each of us enjoyed the special status of a quadruplet. Afternoons we were all together and took turns inviting friends from cheder. Believe me, we were never bored.”

Even though each of them studied in a different cheder, Shabbos was a cherished time when they all studied together with Rav Yechezkel, what Yosef calls “amazing, unforgettable hours.”

The boys had a quadruple bar mitzvah, but Yael nevertheless made sure each one got his due special attention.

“I want to tell you something special about our mother,” says Bentzi. “She went shopping with each of us separately, although it meant multiplying the time and effort by four. She could have saved herself a huge headache by taking us altogether. But she wanted to have each child choose his own clothing from the store of his choice, and at the end of each shopping trip, she would take each one out for pizza and ice cream and quality personal time.”

The bar mitzvah was five years ago, and turned into its own media event. “There were lots of news reporters and photographers there, and I went up to one of them thinking he was hired by our family, so I asked him to take a picture of me with my classmates. I didn’t realize that he was hired by a news agency, until we heard that that picture went viral.”

Foursome Forever

“You know,” says Yael, “ever since the quads were born, I’ve seen how Hashem gives us new challenges time and again. Having them in the incubators was a challenge, going through the first year was another challenge, and there were challenges at every stage in their growing up.”

Yael hasn’t kept those challenges to herself, though. “I realized early on that having a large family and at the same time being a happy mother fascinated many nonreligious people. Many of them would call me and ask, ‘How do you do it? How can one woman raise 11 children, including quadruplets and a set of twins in the mix? How do you manage to fit them all into one bedroom?’ I thought this could be a springboard to show the beauty of a Torah family. So I decided to open our home so that others could be inspired.

“I’ve had some very powerful responses. Some women have called me and said: ‘We’ve decided to follow your example and have more children.’ One woman told me, ‘You should know, I’m totally antireligious, yet my son became a baal teshuvah. At first I was devastated; I thought I’d lost him forever. But seeing your happy family despite the challenges, I started to understand what attracted him to a Torah life.’ ”

The boys are now in their second year of yeshivah gedolah — and their second year of real separation. “It was emotionally stressful for them to be away from home and away from each other,” says Yael. “They were so used to sleeping together in one room. Now I see how well-adjusted they are, and our nachas is infinite, knowing each one is in the best place for him to grow in his Torah learning.”

They haven’t given up on being a foursome, though. Every Erev Shabbos they do a conference call, where all four can share their successes and challenges, just like they used to at night before falling asleep together.

What will the next stage of their lives look like?

“When we were young, we had a dream to get married on the same day, in the same hall… Anyway, we’re still young, and now our immediate goal is to grow in Torah and shteig while we can.”

(Originally featurd in Mishpacha, Issue 635)