A tragic accident. A lone survivor. How does life go on when your friends have died? How does one mother face the others, when she was on the receiving end of Divine chesed and they, seemingly, of Divine judgment?

The windy, rainy night of November 11, four bar mitzvah boys were traveling home to Mitzpeh Yericho from their yeshivah in Jerusalem. Achiya Churi, Eitan Orenbach, Yishai Kroizer, and Yehoshua Strauss were thrilled when Yishai’s older brother Shlomo, an army officer on leave, came to their yeshivah to give them a lift. It would be faster and drier than taking the bus. But just a few minutes from the town’s gate, the car, as if with a mind of its own, swerved uncontrollably into the opposite lane and was instantly smashed by an oncoming bus. Shlomo and Yishai – two sons of the town’s Rabbi Yehuda Kroizer, and Achiya and Eitan were killed. Only Yehoshua Strauss somehow survived.

Yehoshua, conscious from the time of the accident, was hounded by reporters staked outside his hospital room, eager for his version, who in their initial reports were quick to point to Shlomo, z”l, for speeding or for some other human error that caused the vehicle to swerve. Two days later, he gave an interview to Yediot Ahronot describing how Shlomo was actually extra cautious, to the point where the other boys complained that he was driving too slowly. It was as if the car took on a life of its own, he related. Police examination of the skid marks on the road attested  to this. According the police investigators, Yehoshua’s survival was nothing short of a miracle. He had some broken bones that have since healed, emerging with all his limbs intact. Yet he was in the fatal seat, next to the door that took the impact of the collision. Those next to him were killed instantly.

Three months later, Hindy Strauss is navigating between the profound pain of her friends’ losses and the intense gratitude for the Divine gift of her son’s life. The Kroizers’ rock-strong faith in the face of an Iyov-like tragedy, eloquently expressed in Israeli newspapers and other media, was a balm to a shaken public. Yet she, who was spared the personal loss, has to juggle unsettled feelings of guilt (Why did my son survive when the others perished?), awkwardness (How do I relate to my neighbors who have suffered so deeply?), and joy (My son is alive and healed).

“Amazingly, our biggest source of strength has come from a place I never would have imagined – and never would have believed possible if I did not experience it,” says Hindy. “The morning after the accident and burial of three of the four boys, including the sons of the Kroizers, I got a call from Rabbanit Kroizer, who was on her first day of shivah for her two sons. She wanted to know how Yehoshua was doing, and would not take no for an answer. I told her about his, and our, emotional pain over the horrible loss, told her a little about his physical condition, and then she said, ‘Oh, I just can’t wait to see him back on the yishuv walking around. He has such a great smile – I love how he always greets me.’ Then, she said to wait, the Rav wants to speak to me. Rav Kroizer gets on the phone and says, ‘We’re okay. Don’t worry about us. Hashem has a plan for all of us. Our boys finished their mission in this world. We are so glad that Yehoshua is still with us – I can’t wait to see him, watch him grow, participate in his simchahs as he grows up.’

“This is a level of emunah I didn’t know existed. Without their strength I would be a dysfunctional shmatteh. I always lived life thinking that we are passive and just accept what happens to us. Now I see that people have choices. A person can choose to go on, or choose not to continue. This was a big chiddush for me, that in the face of tragedy people can really get up and say, ‘I’ll continue.’”

Hindy says that profound answers will have to come from somewhere else; her family is just starting the process of figuring out the meaning and the message of what happened.

“We were four families in a carpool and now it’s just us. Every moment is pain. The first day Yehoshua went back to yeshivah I was crying the entire way. I kept looking to the back seat but no one was there.

“You see, both of us have the same question. For them it is, ‘Why did Hashem take these children?’ For us it is, ‘Why did Hashem not take him?’ This is the question for 120 years. The social worker helped me out with this one. She said, ‘Hindy, some questions are dead ends and don’t foster anything positive. Don’t get involved in dead-end questions that will just strip you of all the positive energy you need to heal.’ “So, what do you do with this chesed? Take on extra mitzvos? This is our   challenge now. This chesed is like pure white. One the other hand the tragedy is like pure black. The first few weeks I was a shade of gray as the pain would overshadow the chesed, but then I would feel guilty in the pain because of all the chesed. The beginning of my healing came one morning. I went for a walk, watching the sun come up over the desert, and I cried and cried. I felt so embraced by the depths of sadness, so deep and so final. I was surprised by how long you could actually physically cry. Then I went home. So after I embraced the black, I walked into my house and switched to white. I didn’t want to go back to that shade of gray. I walked up to Yehoshua and hugged him tight.”

Hindy and Steve Strauss made aliyah six years ago from New York, on the very first Nefesh B’Nefesh flight. After living in Jerusalem for two years, they chose Mitzpeh Yericho as an integrated Israeli community with the cohesiveness they didn’t find in the city. It’s that cohesiveness and devotion that is now helping to heal Yehoshua and his family.

“Instead of wanting to hide under a rock when he goes out, instead of everyone pointing at him and saying, ‘He’s the one who survived’, he’s happy to be back home with his friends. It’s all because the families are projecting such love to him. It’s astounding that in their deepest pain they can give over such warmth. They are telling him that he is their consolation.”

At the graveside ceremony following the shivah, Rabbi Kroizer embraced Yehoshua. “It is such a chesed for us that you came,” he said. “It is so good for the neshamos.”

A few days after the accident, Hindy went to make the dreaded shivah calls. As she walked into the Kroizer home, Rabbi Yehudah Kroizer was giving a talk to a group of boys on the porch:

“What happened to us could have been a difficult challenge to our faith, to questioning Hashem’s goodness. But we took all our questions – ‘Why did it happen? Maybe if something were done differently it wouldn’t have happened?’ – and threw them into the Dead Sea which we can see from our window. Whatever you throw into the Dead Sea doesn’t come back. Just like we had no questions when they were born and we accepted them with joy, with the same faith – albeit not with the same joy – we have returned our deposit.”

Hindy proceeded inside to see Shlomit Kroizer.

“As soon as I walked into the room, she stood up and gave me a big hug,” Hindy recalls. “We both stood there crying. Afterwards, she asked me how we were managing. I shrugged my shoulders and made a facial expression which I though said, ‘The best we can under the circumstances.’ She saw right through me and said something like, ‘You’d better get it together or Yehoshua will not heal.’ Then she looked up at the ceiling and said, ‘Hashem asked you? He asked your opinion which of our boys to take?’

“She then explained how Yehoshua’s survival is such a source of comfort to them. The fact that he was sitting on the side of the van that logically should have been the ‘first to go’ spot just reinforces that there are no coincidences in this world. The fact that Yehoshua was able to tell them that their deaths were instant, that they did not suffer, that Shlomo was not speeding and in fact driving slowly, is a great comfort.

“Then I went to the Churis. Their son Achiya was half a year before his bar mitzvah. ‘My son died sinless,’ Chani Churi said, an air of serenity amid the tragedy. ‘His neshamah is in a good place. For us this is an expiation of our sins. But most important, how is Yehoshua?’

“Last I went to the Orenbachs. Baruch, Eitan’s father, told me, ‘When we got the dreadful news, it was so horrible, I’ve come to realize that either we were all going to die with him, or he would live on with us.’

“Miriam, Eitan’s mother, said, ‘Look, what are my choices? Hashem took him and there is nothing I can do about it. I can fall apart, become completely dysfunctional, have all my kids crack up, but what would that accomplish?’ Then she pulled me outside privately. ‘Listen,’ she said, ‘I know how you are feeling – I know if the situation were reversed how I would feel, Shlomit (Kroizer) and I are worried about you.’”

After weeks at home taking care of her convalescing son, Hindy went back to work, but has found herself constantly distracted. Yet she feels hopeful. “I’m hooking onto those special families who have made a choice not to get pulled down, even as time goes on and the pain actually gets worse. Together, our process will, G-d willing, be that much easier.”

%%%SIDEBAR%%%

##TESTING GROUND##

Rabbi Yehuda Kroizer, the spiritual leader of Mitzpeh Yericho, was on his way home the night of the accident, stuck in the traffic jam that built up behind the crash. Never  one to miss an opportunity to help, he got out of his car and walked in the rain to the site of the accident. There, alone in a frenzy of medics and police, he discovered his two sons. Yishai lay lifeless on the pavement; Shlomo’s body was trapped in the wreckage.

“My brain created a mental block over those minutes,” Rabbi Kroizer later told B’Sheva newspaper. “I simply don’t remember.”

Rabbi Kroizer, who for the last twenty years has served as Rosh Yeshivah of HaRa’ayon HaYehudi, spent the shivah strengthening those who came to strengthen him. He wasn’t interested in the technical analysis of the wetness of the road or the condition of the tires. “What difference does it make how the Malach HaMaves does his job?” he repeated. “Hashem took them back because their job here was finished.”

Shlomit Kroizer said that first Shabbos of the shivah was the testing ground for seeing if life could really continue.

“Before candlelighting we ritually washed each other’s hands, and beseeched Hashem for the strength to get through this holy Shabbos. After candlelighting we davened together in the house, a Carlebach-style Kabbalat Shabbat. I think we each felt Hashem enveloping us, the energy of Shabbos enveloping us, giving us hope that somehow we could go on living.”

(Originally featured in Mishpacha Issue 198)