The Birth of Rivkah
It seemed to be a perfectly normal day in Tel Aviv, but Rivka couldn’t explain the queazy feeling in her stomach. Just when the #5 bus reached its third stop, BOOOM...
Translated by Esther Cameron
Rivkah, a divorced mother of two adult children who had emigrated to the United States, collided head-on with a truck that was driving toward her on the wrong side of the road. Her car was totaled, but by a miracle she herself was not injured. She hired a lawyer to file a lawsuit to recover damages for the accident, and the lawsuit dragged on and on.
Some time afterward she was debating whether to start a business in New York with an Israeli partner. She consulted various fortune-tellers, and each one gave her different advice, so that her perplexity grew. Then she thought to herself: I have consulted all the fortune-tellers and have not received a clear answer from them, perhaps I should go and consult a rabbi?
A friend told her that he knew a rabbi, a tzaddik, whom it would be worthwhile to ask. She went to this rabbi, and instead of asking him whether she should start the business, she asked, “Rabbi, should I go back to Israel?”
“Yes, you should definitely go to Israel. You have an important mission there!”
Rivkah was surprised, both at her question and at his answer.
“Wait a minute, Rabbi,” she objected. “I meant to ask a different question… I wanted to know if I should go into business with an Israeli partner here in New York …”
She began to explain the whole matter. The rabbi interrupted: “No, you did not make a mistake! I answered that question too… Go to Israel now. As I said, you have an important mission to accomplish there … “
“But, honored rabbi, how can I go to Israel now? How can I get an apartment, a job, and everything else?”
“The moment you decide to go to Israel, you will have an apartment and all you need.”
A few days later Rivkah’s case was tried and she was awarded a considerable sum, more than she had expected. Then she remembered the rabbi’s words and decided that the time was ripe for her return to Israel.
Rivkah returned to Israel and got an apartment in Tel Aviv, on Dizengoff Street. She started working as a sales representative for a well-known cosmetics firm. She traveled throughout the country to demonstrate this company’s particular cosmetic techniques.
Although her return to Israel had gone smoothly, she was haunted by an incomprehensible anxiety, which she tried to shake off by talking with her friends. She felt that some misfortune was hovering over her and that her life was in danger. Nine months had passed since her arrival in the country. Nine months of pregnancy, and her uneasiness kept growing.
One Wednesday morning she woke up late. She had a terrible feeling in her stomach about the coming day, but she had to get to work. She hurried down to the busy street, to the bus stop, and after a few minutes boarded the no. 5 bus.
The bus was rather full. There were a few empty seats, but for some reason Rivkah chose to stand beside the rear door, gripping the door handle tightly. Passengers got on and off at the next stop and the one after it. It was a perfectly ordinary day in Tel Aviv, and then, as they were approaching the third stop, there came a terrible sound —-
BOOMMMMMMMMMM
At this point in time the world entered a completely different dimension. The laws of nature were revoked. In an instant a perfectly ordinary bus turned into a burning death trap. The sound of the explosion, which is like nothing else in the world, filled the space of the bus, and after it came a consuming fire, the air was filled with fragments of molten metal flying in all directions. In a thousandth of a second the fates of those who had boarded the no. 5 bus were cut off.
After the terrible, incomprehensible noise, Rivkah felt the push of the tremendous impact. Suddenly she saw a woman in terrible condition flying through the air over her head. She did not understand how she could see the woman flying, and then she realized that she too was flying on a parallel course! As she flew she felt that something invisible was holding her up, and when she landed on the sidewalk she felt as if it was padded, for otherwise the impact alone would have been enough to kill her. After a few fractions of a second that seemed eternal by the human brain, Rivkah found herself stretched out on the sidewalk, eight meters from the burning bus and enveloped in smoke. Splinters of glass lay on her body, but had not gone in.
She got up and began to run with all her might. The only thought that her mind could form was that she had to flee for her life, to run away from the square, and above all not to look back! As she fled, fragments of glass from the windows of the bus, burning ash from the body of the bus, and blood from the crushed bodies, rained down from the heavens and struck her as she ran madly on. She covered her eyes and went on running until she reached a safe place, and then she collapsed.
She was rushed to Ichelov Hospital and underwent a series of tests which showed that she was completely healthy. The drops of blood that soaked her clothes were not hers, and on her body there was not a single scratch! Her body was healthy, but to a certain extent she had lost control of it. She could not speak but could only stammer fragments of words. She was diagnosed as suffering from shock and was given an appointment for the next morning in the psychiatric department.
She returned to her home. Already she knew the results of the terrible attack: twenty passengers were dead, and all the rest had suffered bodily injury, except for her! The terrible sights haunted her, and she could not believe that she was back in her home after passing through such hell. Around her all was quiet except for the traffic noise from the street, but in her ears the bus never stopped exploding, the woman she had seen killed was killed again and again, and again and again she herself was saved. The general horror of the attack combined with her own miraculous preservation, absolute evil and absolute good kept whirling madly, mixed together, in her brain.
She had been saved from the attack, but now she was afraid that the attacker would come to her home to attack her again. She was afraid that they were pursuing her, that even the earth would open to swallow her. She was afraid to sleep alone and telephoned to her son and a woman friend to come and sleep in her apartment. The feeling that she had had before the attack that “they are looking for me” was greatly intensified.
Although her son and her friend calmed her with her words and especially with their presence, she lay in bed wakeful and scared to death. Light came into the room from the emptying street. Suddenly she clearly saw a wave black as ink, with terrifying eyes that shot red fire, coming into her room. The ink swelled and swelled and swelled until it touched her… She made a terrified movement and screamed: “Noooo! I won’t! I won’t go! I don’t want to! Get away from me!”
Rivkah went back to the psychiatric department to ask help, and came out loaded down with sleeping pills. She went home and went to bed. Now, in the middle of the day, still tired from the nightmares of the previous night, she fell asleep immediately. In her dream she saw her dead grandfather and grandmother, who had never appeared to her in her dreams before. They looked like a noble old-fashioned photograph and said to her: “Rivkah, don’t worry, we are with you and we are protecting you in heaven. Everything will be all right, just say hello to your mother for us…”
Upon waking she felt as though she had slept for two thousand years and had now awakened from a long, sweet and comforting sleep. She had received tremendous spiritual strength, and she decided to go back to the place of the attack, which was near her home. The skeleton of the bus had been removed. Beside the sidewalk there remained only the appraisers, a few curiosity-seekers, and flickering memorial candles.
Now that everything was over, one insistent question kept reverberating in her soul: why had she survived while others had lost their arms, their legs, and even their lives? Why had all the other passengers been injured, while she had not gotten even the slightest scratch?
Then she felt that she was not the master of her life. It was not she who had decided whether or not she would survive all that hell without a scratch, when it had been extremely probable that she would be seriously injured or killed. She now understood in her flesh that there was a force immeasurably stronger than she was, and she felt that it was signaling to her with extreme intensity. She understood that she was basically very fragile and had no place to flee to. The attack had caught her unprepared and brought her face to face with death. She now wanted to know what this tremendous force was and what it wanted from her.
Rivkah asked several people what she ought to do, and they advised her to recite the blessing for deliverance in the synagogue on the following Sabbath. It was her first visit to a synagogue. She sat down in the women’s section, and someone gave her a copy of the book of Genesis so that she could follow the weekly Torah reading, which was “Vayyera.” She heard the Torah reader say:
And in came to pass, when they had brought them outside, that he said, Escape for thy life; look not behind thee, neither stay thou in all the plain; escape to the mountain, lest thou be consumed.
A shiver ran over her whole body. She felt as if she were back at the moment of the event in the square. The words corresponded exactly to the inner voice that had told her then to run for her life. After that the fourth aliyah came up, and in the fourth verse it is said:
Then the Lord rained upon Sodom and upon ‘Amora brimstone and fire from the Lord out of heaven; and he overthrew those cities, and all the plain, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and that which grew upon the ground. But his wife looked back from behind him, and she became a pillar of salt.
These three verses were a precise expression of what she had experienced in those terrible moments when she had seen fire and brimstone falling from the sky, and when she had fled without looking back to see what was happening in Dizengoff Square. For a moment she reflected that Dizengoff Square is the Sodom and ‘Amora of our time. The portion “Vayyera” concluded with “And Bethuel begat Rivkah.” After the reading she felt that she had received her life and had been born anew.
When they handed her a siddur, they did not have to explain to her where to read and how to pray. She understood all the prayers at once. The holy words aroused in her an infinite longing, until she began to weep.
In those moments she felt the might of Providence. The fact that the events of Wednesday – the fourth day of the week – appear exactly in the weekly Torah portion and in the fourth aliyah showed her that this was the way she ought to go.
In the following week, a small memorial ceremony was held in Dizengoff Square with Uri Zohar, who spoke about the fact that we need to search our souls and do teshuvah. On the following Sabbath Rivkah was the guest of a religious family in Tel Aviv. She cut her fingernails, changed her mats and felt that she had been reborn in the fiery furnace and had become a new person.
Her terrible and wondrous story began to be publicized, and for a long time Rivkah was invited almost every evening to tell her story in public in almost every city in the land. Then she understood what the rabbi in New York had meant about the important task mission that she was destined to accomplish in the Holy Land.
11/12/2013
WHOA I'm reading this on Dizengoff right now??!!!!
11/12/2013
I'm reading this on Dizengoff right now??!!!!