From Darkness to Light: How a Wounded Soldier Found Hope

An unusual phone call once came to the home of coach Rabbi Yosef Chaim Bolton. On the line was the mother of a soldier who had been severely wounded in combat and tragically lost both of his legs. With a trembling voice, she asked:

“Because of his condition, he keeps falling into deep despair. This time it’s already been two months. Maybe you could speak to him and give him some encouragement?”

Within an hour and a half, Rabbi Bolton was at the soldier’s home. At first, the young man refused to even speak. “After about fifteen minutes, he asked me to come into his room,” recalls Bolton. “I went in, pulled out my laptop, played a video of my son Mendel, and left the room. A few minutes later, I heard the sound of weeping. His mother went in to him, and after ten minutes I entered again.”

At that point, the soldier burst into tears and asked: “Is that your son?” Bolton nodded: “Yes. I have two sons with special needs.”

Still overwhelmed by what he had just seen, the soldier looked Bolton in the eye and said: “That video… it broke me. To see the strength of your soul, your wife, and your righteous son — it’s overwhelming.”

“It Ate Me Up Inside”

In that emotional moment, Bolton opened his heart: “When my first son was born with special needs, I was young, full of energy, a fighter who feared nothing. Ten years later, when we realized that my second son also had cerebral palsy, I asked God: Why me? Why again? Why now? What about my other children, already carrying the burden of one brother, and now another? It ate me up inside. And yet with all these questions, I still had to live, work, and function.”

His perspective changed completely one evening at the tomb of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai. There, a friend who knew Bolton from childhood, suddenly grasped his hand and said: “I have enormous admiration for you. Let me tell you something I’ve never told anyone. When word spread in the village about your first son, I turned to my wife and said: How much pain can God give to one child? I was talking about you. I felt so sorry for you. But now I see you lecturing teachers and parents, giving them strength. And I want you to know that whenever life feels hard for me (and it’s hard to even say that in front of you), I immediately think of you and go out to help someone else.”

Coach Yosef Chaim Bolton

A Spark of Light in the Darkness

Back with the soldier, Bolton looked at him with sincerity and said:

“After everything I’ve been through, God gives me the strength to carry more than most. In life we always have a choice to either collapse in anger over the hardships we face — when we focus on the bad, our mind finds it everywhere, or to choose to love ourselves, to embrace who we are, and to recognize that we are God’s one-of-a-kind masterpiece.”

He continued: “You’re sitting here in this room, in darkness, in emotional and physical pain. But you must rise! Stand on your emotional legs, because today they are your greatest strength. My son Mendel, until age four or five, moved only with his hands. He developed powerful arms because of it. Your emotional legs are now stronger than anything. Stand tall, because before God, you are of great stature and importance. Just as a father loves to see his child smile, so does God love to see you smile.”

At this point, the soldier broke down in tears again. When he finally calmed, he lifted his head and asked softly: “If I put on tefillin, will it help me?”

Bolton replied gently: “That’s between you and your Creator. I can’t tell you for sure what will help. But it’s an opening for hope, and sometimes even the smallest spark is enough to ignite a great fire.”