The Cigarette Miracle
| December 31, 2024Hashem has many ways of helping His people — and we have no way of knowing how much He treasures every effort
The Background
My good friend Rabbi Yehuda Freilich told me this story at a wedding a few months after the war broke out on October 7, 2023.
I
have the zechus of giving a shiur to a group of sincere individuals, mostly native Israelis of Sephardic descent who are proudly Jewish and looking to grow in their Yiddishkeit. When they invited me to a festive seudah marking the hilula (yahrtzeit) of the Abir Yaakov, Rav Yaakov Abuchatzeira, I knew to expect a special event.
The decor was splendid and there was an impressive array of delicious food arranged with artistic flair. After we found our seats, I was schmoozing with one of my talmidim when he noticed a young man of army age, in good shape, across the room.
“You should talk to that man,” my talmid said. “He’s alive because of a miracle. I’ll bring him over.”
He crossed the hall and the two men exchanged a few words before coming over. My talmid introduced me to Idan (not his real name).
“My friend tells me you experienced a miracle,” I said to Idan. “Can you tell me about it?”
Idan sat and began his story.
“You’ve probably seen the gigantic D9 bulldozers the army uses to smash down buildings, right? I drive one of those D9s. It’s two and a half times the height of a normal army jeep. I sit by myself in there, nobody else with me. It’s not easy driving that thing by yourself for 12 hours straight, but that’s the job.
“Recently, I was in the bulldozer, alone and bored, and I started craving a cigarette. I know smoking is terrible, but at that moment, I was going out of my mind, and I felt like a cigarette would get me through the day — but I managed to hold off.”
“Why?” I asked. “Why not just have a cigarette?”
“Because it was Shabbat.”
I looked at him with new respect.
“I told myself I could have a cigarette — but not just yet,” Idan continued. “I knew that if I just said no to my yetzer hara, point-blank, he would give me a really hard time. So I told him yes, but I pushed him off for an hour, and I busied myself with my job.
“At the end of the hour, I told myself that since I had gotten that far, I might as well wait another hour, and so it went the whole day. Somehow I got through the day without smoking. I don’t know how I did it.”
I was going to congratulate Idan on his shrewd strategy for dealing with the yetzer hara, but he continued.
“I got into my D9 the next morning and drove out to the battlefield. A few hours in, I decided to take that long-awaited cigarette break. I took out a cigarette and put it in my mouth. I stooped to light my smoke, and at that exact second, a terrorist fired an RPG at my D9.”
I was spellbound. An RPG is a portable anti-tank missile that could easily penetrate the armor of a D9.
“The RPG went right through the side of my D9, just over my bent head, and crashed out the other side.”
He could see my incredulity. He took out his phone.
“Here’s the video.”
It was a short clip: Idan’s massive D9, the terrorist firing the RPG, the missile impact, and a cloud of smoke.
“That was supposed to be me,” Idan said. “But the missile went over my head. I have only one way of looking at what happened: middah k’neged middah. I stopped myself from smoking on Shabbos, and the next day Hashem saved my life. With a cigarette, of all things.”
“Harbeh shluchim l’Makom,” I murmured. Hashem has many ways of helping His people — and we have no way of knowing how much He treasures every effort.
(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1943)
Oops! We could not locate your form.