Exactly a year ago, on a sunny fall Sunday of October 6, Israel Prize winner Professor David Kazhdan was on the last stretch of a 44-mile bike route together with his son Eli Kazhdan — CityBook CEO and former ministerial aide. Father and son had been riding together for years, and this morning’s route from Jerusalem to Beit Shemesh and back was just a practice for an upcoming 50-mile cycling competition. Sunday morning is always a good time for bikers, when traffic is relatively accommodating. The duo had already pumped up the miles-long mountain that snakes from the Beit Shemesh valley to the capital and were heading home, when Eli — riding about 50 yards ahead of his father — heard a crash and the grating sound of twisting metal.

“I knew instinctively what had happened, and a quick glance over my shoulder told the whole grisly story: My father lay unconscious and contorted on the concrete next to his mangled bike.”

No vehicle remained on the scene to take responsibility. But police later located the driver of the hit-and-run semitrailer — an employee of a moving company — who claimed he continued driving because he didn’t notice the professor pedaling ahead of him even as he knocked him off his bike to the side of the road.

Professor Kazhdan was soon whisked off by ambulance to Hadassah Ein Kerem Hospital’s trauma center, where doctors began fighting for his life but — with a shattered pelvis, multiple leg fractures, and a severely wounded back — didn’t give much hope for the 67-year-old mathematical genius’ chances of survival.

One year later, Professor Kazhdan may not be running marathons, climbing mountains, or even pedaling down the block, but after nearly a year of paralysis, he’s begun to hobble along on his own two feet, defying the dire predictions of therapists and physicians. It’s his tenacity, determination, and will of steel — qualities that helped him survive the Russia of the KGB, embrace a life of Torah and mitzvos, and rebuild his life in the US and then in Israel — that helped him rally again, this time in what’s been the most difficult test of his life.

Brain Trust

Minutes after the accident, the media was already abuzz with the news that the Hebrew University mathematics professor and Israel Prize laureate was critically injured in a hit-and-run. Meanwhile at Hadassah, the doctors were trying to stabilize him. “He is in very serious condition and the medical team is continuing its efforts to save his life,” announced the hospital spokesman that night.

Professor Kazhdan himself doesn’t remember a thing of the accident. He lost consciousness as soon as the truck hit him, and he woke up nine days later.

“When I awoke I tried to understand what was going on,” he tells Mishpacha a year later, sitting in his study of floor-to-ceiling bookcases with his walker at his side. “I realized of course that I was in the hospital. But it took me a month to really internalize that I’d been seriously injured in an accident.”

His family, however, knew every breath was a fight for life and kept a round-the-clock vigil. Kazhdan, who is considered one of the leading mathematicians in the world today, had sustained severe injuries to his limbs, his legs, his back, and his ribs. Yet when he finally woke up and learned of the severity of his injuries and his paralysis, he didn’t recoil.

“I preferred not to know too much,” he says. “When I realized what had happened I decided not to ask too many questions. If the doctors would tell me something, I listened. I am not a doctor and I didn’t want to overload myself with painful information.”

His main consolation was the realization that his head had not been affected. “It took two months, but I could finally rest assured that my brain was intact,” he smiles. “And that’s the main thing. Because without my head, I would be finished. As long as my brain still worked I knew I’d make it.”

Up to the Summit

For Professor Kazhdan — who received the prestigious Israel Prize in 2012 in recognition of his important contributions to group theory — a cornerstone of modern mathematics with applications in physics, quantum theory and computer science — the coveted award was one more testimony to how far his own life had journeyed.

Professor David Kazhdan was born in Moscow as, Dmitry Aleksandrovich Kazhdan and although his family was Jewish, he considered that fact quite irrelevant to his life — as religion, he believed, was a holdover from the middle ages. From the time he was a child, Dmitri’s phenomenal memory became renowned in the academic world, as did his ability analyze complex mathematical subjects. He was a teenager when he began studying at the University of Moscow, where he earned his doctorate at age 23 and was then hired as a professor.

But then he surprised himself and actually began to research the roots of his religion, embarking on a path to teshuvah. The catalyst? His close friend converted to Christianity, and it got him thinking that maybe faith wasn’t so archaic after all.

What happens when a professor in a prestigious Soviet university begins exploring his Jewish roots under the eyes of the KGB?

“At the central shul in Moscow on Archipova Street, there were two Shabbos Shacharis minyanim and in between them, I would deliver a Torah shiur in whatever I’d already learned.” And, he recalls, the KGB agents who were permanent guests at the shul occasionally tried to canvass him to their ranks. “One known informant came over to me and suggested we go learn in a distant yeshivah for three years, promising that upon my return, he would make sure that I’d be appointed the rav of Moscow.”