The Wounded Soldier Who Lost Both Legs: "The Tzitzit Vest Saved My Life"

12 years ago, Yinon Cohen was severely injured. His life was miraculously saved, but he lost both of his legs. Still, if you see him today, you'd be surprised to see a religious and happy man, married and a father, a civics teacher who gives lectures, standing on his legs, running, swimming, and even skydiving and skiing.

"Of course, I will never forget that day," he tells Chabad emissary Shlomo Rigel, who brought his story. "It was eight months after I enlisted, when the platoon sergeant called us into one of the classrooms to get to know the RPG better and how it operates. He stood in the middle of the room with the rocket placed on an adjusted tripod while we all sat around him in a semicircle and I stood directly opposite him."

24 soldiers were in the classroom when the commander loaded the rocket with the appropriate warhead and accidentally pressed the trigger. The powerful explosion shook the training setup and injured everyone in the room: Yinon and another fighter were seriously injured, four other soldiers moderately, nine lightly, and nine others went into shock.

"It happened within seconds," Yinon recalls. Initially, there was a deafening explosion, a fireball enveloped the room, and then I felt something piercing me and slicing me in half. My body flew to the right while my legs flew to the left. It turned out that the rocket flew towards me, hit me, and partially exploded. Fortunately, due to the short distance, the rocket didn't fully explode; otherwise, there would probably have been at least ten fatalities on the spot. I was injured by the partial explosion of the warhead and the fins that cut into me. There was silence for a few seconds, and then screams of horror from all directions. Everyone was calling for help," he recounts.

"One of the soldiers who came to rescue others from the inferno approached me and, seeing my condition, thought I was dead and preferred to help other soldiers. I felt insane pain throughout my body and had a sensation as if my legs were on fire," he shares his experiences from the terrible accident.

"Had I Stayed Seated, I Would Have Taken the Rocket Directly to the Face"

Yinon recounts how close he was to death. "Since this activity took place after exhausting days of training and marches, I fell asleep in the middle of the exercise. The commander woke me several times and finally got angry and asked me to stand while everyone else was sitting," recounts Yinon.

"People can't understand it," he says. "But for me, it's really a miracle. If I had stayed sitting, I would have taken the rocket directly to the face and upper body and wouldn't be here today."

"It's a miracle," he continues to explain, "because despite my severe injury, I live and breathe. I have built a home. I eat, sleep, travel from place to place, and of course, try to do what is required of me as a Jew and serve Hashem."

Yinon lay between life and death for a day, and the day after the accident, on Friday night, he opened his eyes. His parents, their eyes worn from crying, stood by his bed. The first thing he said to them was, 'Thank Hashem that at least I'm alive.'

"My parents were so moved to hear those words, that those moments will never leave me. My father immediately performed the *Kiddush* of Shabbat night, which for him was an act of gratitude to Hashem for leaving me in this world," Yinon recounts.

"I Recovered Because of Two Reasons: Faith and Yossi Hochman"

Along with the joy of being alive, Yinon began the real battle of his life: rehabilitation. The rehabilitation was long and complicated, including physical and psychological therapy. In a short period, Yinon underwent no less than 35 surgeries due to many infections that formed in the wounds.

Adapting psychologically to the new situation was harder than the surgeries. "I understood that my legs were amputated, but I couldn't bear to look and see exactly what had happened to me," he says. "Until then, I had never met someone without legs and didn't have the mental strength to take that step. Only after a month did I peek at my foot stumps and understand what I was going to deal with."

Many visitors who had experienced amputations helped Yinon face the new reality head-on. "The truth is, those people, with all their good intentions, didn’t really encourage me," Yinon recounts. "Because none of them were without both legs, they managed to function with the amputation of only one limb. I was sure that unlike them, I would never be able to function as an ordinary person."

"Ultimately," he says, "I recovered for two reasons. The first and main reason is faith. In such a desperate situation, no one in the world can truly help you. People can talk, comfort, and encourage, but someone who hasn’t experienced it can’t truly enter into it. In the end, it’s just me and Hashem. That was the only thing I could truly lean on."

Yinon Cohen, today

Yinon continues to describe the faith journey he underwent: "I talked to Him a lot, and despite the anger and pain I had, I knew that ultimately I believe in Him and I know that despite all the pain, He brought me to this situation for reasons I cannot know, and He will lift me out from my situation.

"I knew that the limits He gave me, He would also give me the strength to deal with them later on. This faith was the secret of my rehabilitation. At the same time, I also understood that depression and sadness would only drag me down, and if I really wanted to rehabilitate myself, I must not deal with self-pity," Yinon says.

"All that was left for me in those hard moments," he says, "was just to talk to Hashem and simply cling to Him, because there is nothing else to cling to. Without strong faith, I wouldn’t have been able to get through it at all."

Yinon talks about Yossi Hochman: "Another reason that helped me was the visit of a dear man named Yossi Hochman," he says. "Yossi came to visit me, and while talking, he suddenly 'took off' his two legs and revealed to me that he had gone through leg amputation himself. When I heard Yossi's story, which included a terrorist attack on his family where his wife and two daughters were killed, I realized I was in a much easier situation because I was surrounded by a warm and loving family."

"That was the moment I decided that if Yossi - who lost everything dear to him - moved forward and remarried, then this business was 'small potatoes' for me," Yinon recounts.

"An Equally Difficult Experience Was Facing People's Glares"

For many long months, Yinon tried to adapt to prosthetics. "It was a period of ups and downs. A small step forward and then a long retreat, but I knew that if I surrendered to the current and let it sweep me away, I would not be able to recover and I would lose the battle of my life."

An equally difficult experience was dealing with the stares of passersby. When Yinon's sister first took him out of the medical center, he asked to 'turn invisible' to avoid the pitying looks of people.

"With a simple analysis of the situation, I realized that I had two choices. Either to wither in the room and suffer between four walls or to go everywhere I want, as I am, and let the people around me deal with my disability," Yinon says.

After a long period of training, Yinon managed to walk with the prosthetics that were mechanically fitted to him, but then the wounds reopened and started to bleed. The bleeding was caused by the fact that the amputation from the explosion created 'hills and valleys' in the amputated areas, and the prosthetics couldn't fit as they should...

Yinon is a true fighter, and the fact that his sister, who was always with him, was supposed to get married two and a half months later drove him to push himself to the maximum once again.

Although nobody gave it a chance, Yinon managed to make the impossible happen by the wedding: he arrived at the canopy on both legs. "To this day, my family jokes that I stole the show from my sister and her husband at their wedding. People stood and cried, stood and clapped for many minutes. No eye was left dry from pain and joy."

"The *Tzitzit* Vest Protected My Life. I Was Only Injured Below the Knees"

At this point, Yinon wants to pause the sequence and tell an interesting anecdote related to the injury. "There were a lot of guys in the battalion who mocked me because I never removed the *tzitzit* from my body for a moment. I always had to explain that, for me, the *tzitzit* is the best vest."

Yinon mentions that "Before the army, I didn't strictly observe it because I felt I was doing it for my parents, but in the army, I realized on my own that if the *tzitzit* is meant to remind a Jew of the 613 commandments, I must be a good Jew and wear it every day."

Yinon talks about the many questions directed at him after the severe injury: "After I was injured, everyone asked the same question: how could it be that you, the righteous one, who always wears the 'vest' of tzitzit, prays three times a day without compromise, got hit the hardest? My answer was clear: 'If not for the mitzvot and prayers that stood by my side, I wouldn’t have survived the injury.'"

Yinon explains emotionally: "This is the truth. The upper part of my body, where the *tzitzit* was, was not injured at all. Only below the knees, where the tzitzit strings end... I was injured. For me, it’s a big miracle. The *tzitzit* did its job and protected me."

"At the Emotional Wedding, Dozens of Disabled IDF Veterans Danced in Wheelchairs"

Just before you feel sorry for Yinon, he wants to emphasize that he is truly happy. "Every morning I say with joy and true love to Hashem 'I thank you, living and everlasting King, for returning my soul to me with compassion, abundant is your faithfulness.' Despite my injury, I know better than anyone what it's like to be on the edge of death and how much one should thank the Creator of the world that He continues to believe in me and puts my soul back in this world every morning anew."

Yinon adds and emphasizes that he doesn't envy anyone. "I've discovered tremendous inner strength, and I can do almost anything. Nothing limits me. I do what everyone else does, just in a different way."

This moving story also has a heartwarming 'happy ending': Yinon married Merav and is a happy father. Merav does not suffer from any disability, but nevertheless, when she met Yinon and saw who he really is, she agreed to marry him.

"It wasn’t easy, and her parents almost blocked this match, but from heaven, we were meant for each other. Merav accepted me as I am, mainly because of my personality. I always told my parents that unlike others, whoever chooses me as a husband will do so because of my personality and not for other reasons. This, of course, shows that she is a great personality herself."

The wedding itself was naturally very emotional and was attended by many doctors who accompanied him alongside members of the Knesset, ministers, and, of course, his company comrades. One of the highlights of the wedding was when dozens of disabled IDF veterans, who became Yinon’s friends over the years, danced with him and the young couple with their wheelchairs...

Yinon Cohen in the army

The final chapter in the saga of suffering was post-wedding: the young couple moved to live in New York for about a year to find the precise and perfect prosthetics that would allow him to function without injuries and pain in the stumps. After much effort and an investment of $150,000 donated by three organizations, he received three new types of prosthetics adapted as needed.

"I returned to being the pre-injury Yinon: running, swimming, skiing, playing soccer and basketball, and, of course, functioning daily without any sign of the severe injury," he says.

The most exciting moment for him in this whole story was when he managed to run again after 12 years: "I cried like a baby. I just couldn’t stop my tears of excitement. Suddenly I found myself running again, and the wind caressed my face. It was a defining moment."

"By the way," he notes, "if any of the readers see me on the street, I'm sure they won't be able to connect me to the guy in the story, the one without the two legs."

"Everyone Needs to Discover Their Inner Strengths"

The Cohen family lives today in Moshav Maor, slightly south of Hadera, and Yinon shares his story in lectures he gives around the country. "The most important thing for me in the lectures is to convey the message of discovering one's internal faith, both in the Creator and in oneself. Everyone needs to discover the inner strengths they have."

Yinon has acquired an optimistic and humorous outlook, and he finds the bright side in everything. "In winter, I don't suffer from cold in the feet," he says with a half-smile, "and if I know that in the morning I have to go to a new meeting, I can 'prepare the legs in advance by putting on socks and shoes before bedtime.'"

The main message Yinon conveys in his lectures is clear: "I have no doubt that the situation I'm in today, literally, comes from not giving up. Always pray and ask Hashem to give you strength, and at the same time, never despair. Always look forward and see the light at the end of the tunnel. That light is definitely there, even if the road is a bit longer than you thought," he says.

"If at the time of the injury someone had told me, my parents, the doctors, or my company friends that I would marry a woman who doesn’t suffer from any disability and that I would stand on my legs, do any sport I want, and have everything I need to support and provide for my family, no one would have believed it," he clarifies. "Start believing in yourselves and the great divine power within each of you. The limitation is only in the mind, and those who break through it can reach anywhere."