Welcome to the Daily Holy Story. During the Six-Day War of Israel, all the students at the Mir Yeshiva had to go into the shelter, along with all the neighboring homes. The artillery from Jordan was pouring metal upon Jerusalem and upon the yeshiva. The pillars of the shelter were shaking, and all the people in the shelter cried out, Shema Yisrael (Hear, O Israel)! They cried out, Hashem Hu HaElokim (The Lord, He is God).
When the war was over, Rabbi Chaim Shmuelevitz, the Rosh Yeshiva of the Mir, turned to his students and told them, “You all think that it was the Shema Yisrael, the Hashem Hu HaElokim. The deep prayers of all the students are what saved us. But I’m going to tell you that wasn’t the case.” “Not far away from me in the shelter sat a woman who lived in the neighborhood of the Mir Yeshiva. She was an agunah, a woman alone for 20 years, where her husband left her and refused to give her a get (Jewish divorce document). You can imagine what pain and suffering this woman went through. There was no way to describe how she might have felt in that shelter. And all of a sudden, as the artillery of Jordan was pouring down, the metal was banging and shaking the very foundations of the shelter, I could hear her saying in her breath, ‘Ribbono Shel Olam, Master of the Universe, I promise you, I forgive anybody who did anything wrong to me. And I also forgive my husband, who for 20 years refused to give me a get. Oh, please, Hashem, just like I forgive everybody that did anything bad to me, please forgive the Jewish people. Please save them from this terrible war.’”
Rav Chaim Shmuelevitz said, “I am sure that it was that woman’s prayer that saved us, and not the Shema Yisrael, and not the Hashem Hu HaElokim.” Have a wonderful, wonderful day.