The Glowing Blue Door
There was no logical way that Yossi could have escaped from that underwater cave. He had no oxygen left, but a six-minute ascent to the surface still awaited him…
Translated by Esther Cameron
Light at The End of The Cave, Part 2
Yossi did not know what it was uttered the cry nor whom he was addressing. The cry came from a completely hidden place, from the depths of his soul. He felt how the cry split the ceiling of the cave, shattering it into a thousand pieces..The cry shot up through the wall of water, shoving all obstacles aside, until it pierced the heavens and came to the supreme height. He felt that the secret chords of his heart had burst too, and that his heart was bleeding.
And then he felt as though a mysterious hand seized his head and turned it about one hundred and fifty degrees to the right. He heard someone calling to him in an inaudible voice: Look! Look!About twenty feet away, Yossi saw the blue door miraculously illuminated in a moon-like glow.
About half a minute remained until the last drop of oxygen would be finished.
They were scraping the bottom of the barrel. Yossi seized the hands of his companions, pointed in the direction of the door of the cave, and the three of them flew toward its swift as arrows with a terrified flapping of fins.
They were out of the cave, but the oxygen was completely finished. Yossi’s eyes were wide open, and his heart beat wildly. They had gotten out of the cave by a miracle, but they were still eighty feet underwater, without a drop of air.
When a person finds himself at that depth, the capability of his internal organs is reduced in proportion to the pressure. A lung which is about a foot long functions like a lung that is only six inches long. The lungs need the same amount of air, and they need to get it in a reduced form. That is the function of the regulator, which directs the air according to the state of the body and the depth. The diver has two regulators, one on the oxygen tank and the second inside the mouth, and through these he breathes. On both sides there are valves from which the bubbles issue.
When a diver ascends quickly, the lung expands and so does the air that it contains. The air in the lung expands three times faster than the lung itself, tearing it apart! In other words: a rapid ascent in an emergency because of a lack of oxygen is simply a choice of dying above rather than below…
Nonetheless there is an emergency measure to be taken in such cases. You have to spit out the regulator, place your two fists over your lungs, and press with all your strength in order to squeeze all the air out of the lungs while ascending.
They now found themselves without regulators for breathing, eighty feet below the surface. Besides the pressure in the lungs there is another problem. A normal ascent from such a depth lasts six minutes, but now how long could they hold their breath? At most a minute.
Again Yossi cries out voicelessly:
M-A-S-T-E-R O-F T-H-E U-N-I-V-E-R-S-E S-A-V-E U-S T-H-I-S T-I-M-E T-O-O
He felt a tremendous pressure on his lungs while ascending. They were completely squeezed out. He continued to press his chest with all his strength, climbing higher and higher, feeling that he was going to burst…
And then at last he was on the surface with his two friends, safe and sound. The infinite sky gaped before their wide open eyes, and they breathed air… air… air…
After they had gulped like drunkards the invisible, simple and most precious substance on earth, and had calmed down a bit, Chazi exclaimed: “Some trick!”
Yossi could not regard the double miracle as nothing more than a lucky chance. The incident shook him to the depth of his soul. Something unexplained had thrust itself into his heart. Just as in the underwater cave, he discovered that his heart had many windings and recesses. Something had revealed itself to him, beyond any doubt. He felt that it was a miracle from heaven, but he did not feel any necessity of changing his way of life and continued to function as usual, even diving now and then.
About two months later a friend, newly arrived from America, listened with enthusiasm to the diving stories of Yossi and his friends. He asked if he could accompany them for a short weekend of diving in Eilat. He did not know how to dive; he just wanted to be on the surface of the water while they were driving.
The experienced company knew the shores of Eilat well, by night and by day, but nevertheless decided to go to the site of the diving school “AquaSport”, where a ship had been sunk to a depth of sixty feet. In the course of years the ship had become encrusted with corals and had turned into a spectacular diving location.
The four divers equipped themselves for a photographic dive to the ship. Their friend grew enthusiastic at seeing them put on their diving gear. It was very cold and they went down in diving suits. Yossi found a particularly good position for photographing, and then…
Suddenly he felt something like the explosion of a grenade at his back. His left leg was paralyzed instantly. He felt as though ants were crawling on his leg, he felt hellish pain, he pulled at his regulator and signaled to his companions in sign language that he had run into a very dangerous situation.
His companions quickly swam up to him and began to ascend with him. His left leg was not moving at all, and only his right leg was functioning. Yossi could hardly breathe; the terrible pain caused him to bite the regulator. When they arrived on the surface, his comrades dragged him to a bed. They tried to relieve the pain of his back and leg with massage and tranquilizers, but without success. The pain continued unrelieved.
After the pain had subsided somewhat, Yossi suggested to his comrades that they continue on their vacation and return by plane. He would take the car and drive back to his home in Rechovot. They tried to talk him out of it, saying that in his uncertain medical condition he was taking a chance, but he claimed that he was feeling better and insisted on leaving them.
It took Yossi a quarter of an hour to get into the car. Somehow he seated himself in a contorted position, said goodbye to his worried friends, put the car in gear, stepped on the gas, and zoomed off for the North. On the way he thought of stopping at some station like Ein Yahav, but he realized that if he got out of the car he would never be able to get back into it, so he continued driving fast until he reached Rechovot. After stopping, he barely managed to get out of the car and totter painfully toward his house.
Then began a period of tests. He went to the clinic, and then to the hospital, and they discovered that he had slipped a disk, which had injured the nerve leading to the left leg. He would have to have back surgery.
Yossi did not know how to process the rapid succession of events. He asked if it would be possible to avoid the surgery, but they explained to him that if he could not use his leg it would atrophy, and so it was necessary to operate. Having no choice, he agreed.
Before the operation one of his friends, a former pilot who had become a baal teshuvah, suggested that he send the tefillin he had received at his bar mitzvah to be checked. Yossi sent them to an expert tefillin checker. The expert returned them and told him that he had fixed them. He added that if the tefillin were intended for one-time use at his son’s bar mitzvah, they would be all right for that, but if he wanted to put them on regularly himself, he ought to get a better pair. Yossi asked how much the examination would cost, and the expert replied: “Nothing. I did it for a mitzvah. If you wish, you can put something in the tzeddakah box over there…”
Yossi was impressed by this response; he put a donation in the tzeddakah box and went down the stairs, limping on his right leg. Moved by this gesture, he decided to put the tefillin on the next day.
When he left his home after the Sabbath to check into the hospital, he took the tefillin with him. On Sunday morning they woke him up to anesthetize him for the surgery. Yossi put on the tefillin and felt inwardly calmed. When they wheeled him into the operating room, he felt, without understanding, that there was someone with him on the bed, keeping watch over him.
He woke a few hours later in great pain, but they told him that the operation had gone well. After ten days in the hospital they decided to release him. The doctor told him that for the next three months he must not sit but only stand or lie down. They taught him how to shift directly from a reclining to a standing posture.
Yossi went home. His wife arranged a comfortable place for him beside the television set and brought home many videotapes to amuse him for the next few months. He had never liked to be glued to the television set, but now he had no choice. His life had stopped, and he had to accept it. His wife continued to go to work as a teacher, his children went to kindergarten or a school, and Yossi remained alone with nothing to do.
He began to put on tefillin every morning without understanding why. Every day he read psalms. From the recesses of his heart, from the place whence that cry had issued in the underwater cave, some penetrating questions of identity began to awaken.
The first signal had not caused him to return. Now the second had arrived.
To be continued.
7/23/2009
This is too good to be true This story is so wild it is hard to believe it is true! To live such miracles! Really unbelievable.
7/23/2009
This story is so wild it is hard to believe it is true! To live such miracles! Really unbelievable.