Many years ago, England ruled over Jerusalem during the British Mandate. One weekend, they imposed a curfew for Shabbat, and nobody was allowed to leave their homes on that Shabbat. Rabbi Mordechai Sharabi, who was the head of the Yeshivat HaMekubalim and dedicated his entire life to studying Torah and serving Hashem, was not aware of the curfew. On Shabbat, he went out walking to go to synagogue. Suddenly, a British army automobile stopped, and they called out, “Hey, Jew, what are you doing here?” The rabbi suddenly woke up. He took a breath from his deep thoughts and said, “I’m going to synagogue.” But the officers of the British army did not accept his words. Angry that he had left his home, they commanded him to enter the army vehicle so they could take him to the police house. The rabbi, of course, shivered at the thought of desecrating the holy day of Shabbat by going into the automobile. He said, “I’m going to synagogue.” This was the evil way of the British. He started begging them to leave him and allow him to go to synagogue, but the British weren’t interested.
In particular, they saw a respectable rabbi and thought to themselves, “This is a nice fish we got. We’re going to make an example out of him.” When they saw that the rabbi was refusing to enter the vehicle, they called four officers. They were very strong; they picked him up, put him in chains, and put him in the army vehicle. “Go,” said the head of the group, and the driver began to prepare to travel. All of a sudden, from the heavens, something happened involving the respect for Shabbat and the embarrassment of Rabbi Mordechai Sharabi.
As the driver was trying to travel with the vehicle, the officers suddenly heard a loud noise from under it. All of the passengers closed their eyes and jumped from their seats, suspecting that maybe the vehicle had hit a landmine or some kind of bomb. When they opened their eyes, they saw that nothing had happened to them. “What was the source of that noise?” they thought. They asked one another. After a short check, they realized that all four tires had blown up with a loud noise. The head of the group, who had many, many years of experience with the vehicle and its maintenance, thought it was very unusual that the four tires had blown up. He understood it as a punishment for embarrassing the rabbi and forcing him to go into the vehicle.
Immediately, the head of the group went over to Rabbi Mordechai Sharabi and asked him for forgiveness for causing him pain and suffering. He commanded two of the officers to escort the rabbi to his destination. He figured that if he did not send him with an escort, another vehicle would stop the rabbi, and another vehicle would be damaged in honor of the holy rabbi. It would be a shame for that to happen again. With tremendous respect, the rabbi was taken off the vehicle, and two officers escorted him to his final destination in order to protect him from any future harm.