A Woman’s Luck – Part 1

Part 1 of 2

I want to tell you about one of the greatest miracles that I’ve experienced in my life and it happened very recently. The miracle took place through three women here in Israel who Hashem brought together to save the life of my autistic son, Yossie. I am only at liberty to tell you the identity of one of the women and that’s my wife, Sarah.

Parents of special-needs adults, who will never be able to care for themselves, share a very deep anxiety about how their son or daughter will survive after they, the parents, leave this world. Sarah and I were agonizing over this even when Yossie was three years old and still not talking. Before we knew anything about emuna, we were horrified and frightened by all of the stories we heard about people like our son who are eventually sent into institutions and group facilities. We were told that most of these places were cold, degrading places that just warehoused “handicapped” people for a profit. Even worse than our fears of Yossie being sentenced to live in a loveless warehouse was our fear that he would be easy prey for sick predators who seek employment in these places with the evil intent of abusing people like our son to their hearts content.  

One day when Yossie was 23, Sarah approached him and said: “You know Yossie, your father and I aren’t always going to be here and someday you’re going to have to live in a home.”

He said: “No, No I don’t want to live in a home!”

“But Yossie, someday your father and I are going to die and you’ll need to have a place to live.”

Yossie silently walked away from my wife – but six months later seemingly out of nowhere he blurted out: “Okay, mommy you can put me in a home if you need to.”

Sarah and I continued to worry about finding Yossie a place to live. We thought that even if we could find a clean and decent home for him, his caretakers would never appreciate him and love him as much as we did. Looking back it’s obvious that we really weren’t thinking very realistically. How in the world could anybody love him as much as we do? Who could possibly cherish him and commit to giving him whatever he needs for the rest of his life like his own parents could?  The truth is that it made no sense to think that way; our dream of passing the baton of love onto a group home for Yossie was a complete fantasy – and that’s what makes this story so amazing.

The story begins eight years ago when the Ballen family moved to Israel. Good friends of ours from New York, Leah and her husband Eli (names changed), had already been living in Israel for five years but Eli still hadn’t found a job in his field which is very specialized. Leah, who is in the health field, was their primary breadwinner while Eli tried his best to help out working as a part-time janitor. They struggled immensely.

Leah had a client called Rachel whom she saw weekly and got to speaking to her about things other than their work together. It turned out that Rachel has a son who is autistic and twenty years ago she and her husband set up a group home for autistic men so that her son could live there with other autistic men and a staff of para-professionals who supervise them and care for their needs.  Leah called Sarah right away thinking that this might be it – a good home for Yossie to live in.

At that time, we weren’t emotionally ready to let go of our Yossie and so we just held onto the phone number for some day in the future. We also weren’t sure how we would make it financially since the State of Israel provided us with a generous amount of money in order to take care of Yossie. If he moved out, all of that money would go to the group home. Clearly, this was going to take a lot of emuna…

Sometime after Leah found a potential home for Yossie, Sarah saw an advertisement for a job doing medical billing; just like Leah had thought of Sara regarding Yossie, Sarah now thought of Leah – this was a potential job for Eli.

Sarah called and encouraged Eli, who by this time was feelings hopeless and depressed, and practically begged him to apply for the job; Eli applied but he was told that he was overqualified for the job. Nevertheless, somehow Eli’s resume was passed on to another company that needed a person with Eli’s exact qualifications. When that company saw what Eli could do they grabbed Eli and started him at a salary of 25,000 shekels a month. That’s an enormous salary for anyone living in Israel, especially someone who is aging, hasn’t worked in ten years and is deep in debt.

Why now after all those years did Eli merit such a gift of money from Hashem? And what happened to our son, Yossie?

See the miraculous conclusion of this story and my interpretation of it’s meaning in next week’s article…