Rabbi Grossman’s Night in the Egyptian Cemetery

In a moving column published in BeKehila, Rabbi Yitzchak Dovid Grossman shares a personal story of divine protection. It took place in a Jewish cemetery in Egypt, not long after the Yom Kippur War.

It was the first flight to Egypt following the war. Rabbi Grossman had one goal: to pray at the grave of Rabbi Yaakov Abuhatzeira, a great Sephardic sage and ancestor of the Baba Sali, buried in the city of Damanhur. After an emotional visit and heartfelt prayers at the holy site, Rabbi Grossman turned to the local people and asked if there were any other important Jewish graves in Egypt worth visiting.

An elderly Egyptian told him about the grave of Rabbi Chaim Kapusi in Cairo, known affectionately by Jews as “Rabbi Chaim the Miracle Worker.” Rabbi Chaim was a close disciple of the holy Arizal. His life was filled with spiritual power, and one story in particular left a deep impression. At one point, Rabbi Chaim lost his eyesight. Rumors began to spread that he had accepted a bribe, based on the Torah verse, “for bribery blinds the eyes of the wise.”

Rabbi Chaim went to the Aron Kodesh, the Holy Ark, and cried out in prayer: “If I have taken a bribe, may I remain blind forever. But if I am innocent, let me see again.” Immediately, his vision returned.

Inspired by the story, Rabbi Grossman asked his driver to take him to Kabarat al-Yahud, the Jewish cemetery in Cairo.

When they arrived, he stepped out and saw a large field scattered with graves, many marked with Stars of David. It was clear he had reached a Jewish cemetery but where was Rabbi Chaim Kapusi buried?

“I looked right and left,” Rabbi Grossman later wrote. “Then I saw, up ahead, what looked like a small hill with a simple structure on top. I figured it must be the tent built over the tzaddik’s grave.”

He hurried toward it. The building had no doors, just four open walls and seemed quiet and still. As he reached the entrance and was about to walk in, something strange happened.

“I felt an invisible force pull me back hard,” he recalled. “I turned around in shock, but no one was there. I broke out in goosebumps. My whole body shook. I was standing alone in the middle of a dark cemetery, and something or someone had just grabbed me.”

Shaken, he looked inside the structure. To his horror, he saw that the floor dropped into a deep water pit, tens of meters deep. It was a village well. He had been one step away from falling in and no one would have known where to find him.

“I stood there frozen,” Rabbi Grossman wrote. “I could have drowned, disappeared in a moment. But Hashem saved me. I began crying and singing, ‘Give thanks to Hashem for He is good, His kindness is forever.’ I thought of Korach, who was swallowed by the earth, and I wondered: was it because of my faith in the tzaddik that an invisible hand from Heaven held me back?”

Overcome with emotion, he raised his voice in the stillness of the cemetery.

“Rabbi Chaim Kapusi,” he said, “I believe the righteous, even after death, are still considered alive. I know you can hear me. I’ve made a great effort to come here. If you want me to reach your grave, please perform a miracle. If not I’ll pray from right here, and I believe you’ll hear me.”

Just then, in the distance, Rabbi Grossman noticed flashing lights. An Egyptian military jeep pulled up near the cemetery and questioned the taxi driver, asking why he had brought someone there so late at night.

The driver explained that his passenger was an Israeli sheikh looking for a holy grave.

The soldiers gestured for them to follow. Rabbi Grossman, unsure what would happen next, whispered prayers to Hashem for protection.

They drove for several minutes. Then, in the middle of a residential courtyard, the jeep stopped. The soldiers pointed to a small grave and said, “This is the grave of the righteous one.”

Rabbi Grossman bent over the tombstone and began to say Tehillim, Psalms aloud. His heartfelt cries filled the night. One by one, local residents gathered to watch the scene unfold: an Israeli religious figure standing at a little-known grave in Cairo, praying with intensity and tears.

Afterward, he quickly returned to the taxi and rushed to the airport barely making his flight.

“I almost didn’t make it,” Rabbi Grossman later wrote. “But Hashem protected me, through my faith in Him and in His righteous ones. I went looking for a grave and I found a miracle.”