He Cried All Night, Not Knowing Whose Life He Saved

This touching story appeared in the weekly "Tiv HaParasha" bulletin on Parshat Va’era, but its message is timeless. One Friday night, a tragic fire broke out on a U.S. Navy ship in the middle of the sea. The flames were so intense that helicopters couldn’t even approach to rescue those aboard. Over 3,000 American soldiers were trapped in the inferno, and most of them did not survive.

The disaster was visible from far away, including to the students of “Beit Midrash Elyon,” a yeshiva in the United States. Rabbi Yisrael Chaim Kaplan, the spiritual guide (mashgiach) of the yeshiva, came to give his usual words of inspiration during the third Shabbat meal, known as seudah shlishit. He looked at his students and asked, “Did you hear about the fire that broke out on the ship?”

The students nodded. “Yes,” they answered. “But what could we do? We had no way to help…”

The rabbi looked at them, surprised. “Let me tell you what I did,” he said softly but firmly. “I didn’t close my eyes all night. I cried, I begged Hashem, and I poured out my heart with Psalms, just in case… perhaps there was even one Jew on that ship. And maybe, just maybe, that Jew would be saved in the merit of my prayers. And maybe that person would one day marry, and raise a child, and that child would come back to Torah, and from that child would come generations of Jews who serve Hashem.”

Years passed. No one imagined what would come next.

At a joyous sheva brachot (a celebratory meal after a Jewish wedding), the father of the groom happened to share a story. “I survived a terrible fire on a Navy ship,” he said. “And after I was rescued, I risked my life again by going back to save my brother.”

A guest overheard and asked: “Was that the fire that happened on a Friday night, when over 3,000 soldiers were trapped?”

“Yes,” the father replied.

The guest stood up and, with emotion, shared what he had witnessed years earlier—how the mashgiach had stayed up that entire Shabbat night, crying and saying Tehillim (Psalms), hoping to save even one Jewish soul. “You never know what a single Jew’s prayer can accomplish,” he said.

One of the groom’s relatives was deeply moved. He later shared, “I decided in my heart that when I have a son, I will name him after Rabbi Yisrael Chaim Kaplan, because I feel an overwhelming debt of gratitude. If not for his prayers that night, my father might not have survived. And if my father hadn’t survived… I wouldn’t be here.”

When his son’s brit milah (circumcision) arrived, he faced a dilemma. It was also the yahrzeit (anniversary of passing) of another great rabbi, Rabbi Chaim Shmuelevitz, who had been his family’s main Torah teacher. “I thought maybe I would name this child after Rabbi Shmuelevitz and wait to name a future child after Rabbi Kaplan. But then I realized—they were both named Chaim!”

He ultimately named his son after Rabbi Kaplan, the one whose prayers helped save his father’s life. “I felt that gratitude must come first,” he said. “If I had asked Rabbi Shmuelevitz himself, I believe he would have agreed.”

His father, upon hearing this, wept. “That’s exactly what Rabbi Chaim would have said.”