A Family's Return to Faith and the Miracle That Followed

"Until two years ago, we were the most religious secular family you could imagine. We were deeply committed to our secular lifestyle," says Yaron Rubin from Dimona. "Every Shabbat we would barbecue, and on Yom Kippur, I would smoke. I lived without boundaries, completely disconnected from Hashem."

Then, something inside him started to change. "Out of nowhere, I began to think about becoming religious. I don’t even know why. I didn’t know any rabbis. I didn’t listen to Torah classes. I wasn’t going through a crisis. I wasn’t asking Hashem for help with anything. But sometimes I’d wake up in the morning with a deep urge to draw closer to Judaism and by the afternoon it would vanish."

Until one morning, it didn’t disappear. Yaron woke up and simply decided: enough, he was going to live a religious life. "I put on a kippah, laid tefillin, and said the Shema. My wife woke up, saw me, and was frightened. She was sure something terrible had happened to someone."

That same week, Yaron stepped into the neighborhood synagogue for the first time. "Four years earlier, we had moved apartments. We’d been living in a very secular area, but I fell in love with a new house and moved into a religious neighborhood without even noticing it. When I entered the synagogue that Friday, a neighbor I barely knew came right up to me, introduced me to the rabbi of the local kollel (a place where Torah is studied full-time), and asked how he could help. I told him, ‘Look, I’ve been religious for a few hours and I need instructions.’ He smiled and said, ‘No problem.’ He connected me with the kollel rabbi, and I’ve been learning with him regularly ever since. We started with halachot (Jewish laws) and now we’re learning Gemara (Talmud). Not long ago, we even celebrated a siyum masechet, finishing a tractate with a beautiful gathering in my home."

About a year into his journey, Yaron approached the same neighbor again. "I told him, ‘I want to bring holiness into my home. I want a Torah class here.’ He introduced me to Rabbi David Naki, and since then we’ve had a weekly women’s class in our home every Sunday evening."

How did your family respond to your growing connection with Judaism?

"I have three daughters. The oldest and youngest joined me fairly quickly within a month and a half including in the area of modesty. The middle daughter is still finding her way in that regard. My wife also had a hard time letting go of pants for a long time."

All of that changed about a week and a half ago, on a Thursday. "My wife was at her mother’s house in Rishon LeZion when she suddenly called me at 1:00 p.m. and said, ‘I don’t know why, but I feel ready. I want to start dressing modestly. Don’t wait for me to come home,,go to my closet and take out anything that’s not modest—short shirts, pants, throw it all away.’ I wasn’t home at the time, so I called our oldest daughter, Bar, who’s twenty. I told her what Mom had said, and she didn’t hesitate. She emptied three-quarters of the closet, filled three big garbage bags with clothes, and made sure to push them deep into the dumpster so no one would take them."

At 8:00 that evening, Bar called her father and said a friend had just arrived in Be’er Sheva and she wanted to visit her. "I asked when she’d be back. She said around midnight. I told her that was too late and that it’s dangerous to be on the road at that hour and asked her to be home by 10:30 p.m. She agreed."

Ten minutes later, Yaron’s phone rang. It was Bar’s number but a stranger's voice answered. "I’m next to your daughter she’s been in an accident," the man said.

Yaron immediately asked if she could speak, and when the man said yes, he insisted on hearing her voice. "I could hear how shaken she was. She said her hand and face were hurting, and that an ambulance had arrived. I told her to get in and that I was coming."

Yaron called his neighbor Meir Asraf, who immediately figured out where the accident had occurred. He got in his car with his daughter and drove there. Meir’s daughter accompanied Bar to the hospital, while he stayed behind to handle the car.

Meanwhile, Yaron drove from Rishon LeZion toward the Dimona-Be’er Sheva road where the crash had happened. "I experienced kefitzat haderech, the road seemed to shrink beneath me, and I arrived in half an hour." It was only then that he grasped how serious the accident had been.

"In that area, Bedouins sometimes dismantle streetlights to take the copper wiring. They had just taken down a pole and left it lying across the road. Because of the broken light, the area was pitch black. Bar didn’t see the pole until it was too late. She swerved, closed her eyes, and the car flipped three times before finally stopping. I found car parts scattered across 20 meters."

"We witnessed miracles. The first, Bar survived. The second, right after the crash, a religious man happened to pass by. He saw the car rolling and stopped to help. After the car came to a halt, dozens of young Bedouins started approaching, but when they saw him standing there, they backed off. I don’t want to think about what might’ve happened had she been alone, hurt, on that dark road."

At the hospital, they ran a full series of tests on Bar and everything came back clear. "Even the red marks from the airbags vanished by morning," Yaron says. By 4:00 a.m., Bar was home, completely healthy.

"We were in shock for a few days, but that Sunday night, during our regular class, we also held a seudat hoda'ah, a meal giving thanks to Hashem. Rabbi Naki spoke and reminded everyone that just a few hours before the accident, my wife had decided to fully embrace modesty. And it was Bar, the daughter who emptied the closet and helped make that choice real. There’s no doubt in our hearts that her zechut, her spiritual merit protected her. Needless to say, my wife became even more committed to modesty from that day on."