Between Two Worlds: A Yom Kippur Miracle

The extraordinary story of Anat Yahalom, a young soldier who was critically wounded during the Yom Kippur War, experienced clinical death, and miraculously survived to tell her story. “I remember my soul leaving my body. I felt like I was floating between two worlds, but I refused to give up on life,” Anat begins, in a heartfelt interview with journalist Oshrat Kotler.

Just this week, Anat received a special award for excellence in rehabilitation from Israel’s Ministry of Defense. The award recognized her long and difficult journey from the terrifying moment of her injury on Yom Kippur to the daily challenges she overcame in recovery.

Anat doesn’t recall every detail of the injury itself. What she does remember is being evacuated under heavy fire on an armored personnel carrier to the battalion’s field clinic. From the moment she was evacuated until the time she reached the emergency room at Tel Hashomer Hospital, Anat underwent two resuscitations.

“I felt like I was floating between two worlds,” she recalls. “I remember my soul leaving my body and rising toward the heavens. I was alone, turning from my stomach to my back, and I could see the devastation all around me.”

She describes a strange calm, “a kind of floating, peaceful surrender.” But then, suddenly, she had a powerful vision: her friends and parents standing around her grave. That moment woke something deep inside her, and she began to scream not in her own voice, but as if someone else was calling out from within: “Get me out of here!”

Only moments later, she was brought back. About the miracle that saved her, Anat says just one thing: “Hashem saw me and returned me to life.”