By Rabbi Chaim Hillel Matusof, Shliach to Toulouse, France

The day after Purim, I got a call from a friend in Paris. The five-year-old son of a family who lives an hour from me was dangerously ill in the hospital, and he asked me to call them and visit.

I told him, I know them very well. The mother is Jewish, but unfortunately married a non-Jewish man who’s a Jew-hater. He’s the main anti-Israel activist in Toulouse, and he’s part of the “Free Palestine” group.

I was the mohel for this child who’s now sick. The father only agreed to the bris because he loved his wife — she told him that if he wouldn’t allow a bris for the child, she’d leave him.

The bris was supposed to be in the Chabad school in the city. When I gave the security company that guards our school the list of people coming to the bris, they told me they absolutely would not let this man into the school. “We know him very well, and he’s a real danger to the students.”

After some back and forth, they agreed to let him in if they searched him first and he left his phone outside, so he couldn’t film the place.

After the bris, I asked the mother to sign the baby up for Tzivos Hashem and buy him a letter in the Children’s Sefer Torah. The father started yelling at me: “Thank you very much! It’s enough that I let you do a bris. Leave me alone with all your nonsense. I don’t want any connection with you from now on, and I’m definitely not registering him in a Torah being written in ‘Eretz Yisrael’!”

That was the background. So I told my friend from Paris to check with them — if they want to see me, I’ll go visit right away.

He got back to me and said the child’s condition was very serious. They were completely broken and were asking me to come.

Of course, I drove to the hospital immediately. Before going in, I spoke to the doctors treating him, since I also serve as the hospital chaplain. They explained that he was in total organ failure, and I should hurry in to say the final prayer that’s said with a person in that situation.

I walked into the room where the child was lying. It was horrifying — he looked like there was no life left in him.

I did what my dear uncle, the famous shliach Rabbi Shmuel Azimov A”H taught me to do: Torah, Tefillah, and Tzedakah.

I put a few coins in the child’s hand and, using his hand, dropped them into the tzedakah box I brought. I said a few of the verses the Rebbe instructed children to say, a chapter of Tehillim, and the daily Rambam.

Afterwards, I asked the mother if she had used the forms to buy the child a letter in the Torah. The father immediately cut in again: “Leave me alone with this stuff. I told you already, leave me with all your things.”

The mother jumped in and said that, given the child’s condition, the doctors couldn’t do anything. She did want to do it — maybe it would help. She said the forms were at home, so I told her I’d send her a new one right away. Before I left, I told them my phone is on 24/7 and if they need me for anything, G-d forbid, they should call.

I went down to my car, put on a gartel, wrote a pan to the Rebbe, and sent it to the Ohel.

Then I sent her the form.

From there, I went to a weekly shiur I give to a group of guys. In the middle of the shiur, I saw my phone ringing — it was her number. I didn’t pick up because I don’t interrupt a shiur. But she called several times. After the shiur, I saw she’d sent a video. When I opened it, I was stunned: the child was sitting up in bed, talking to his parents.

I called them, and the mother said an open miracle had happened. Right after she registered him in the Torah, he woke up, sat up, and started talking.

Two days later, she told me they were being discharged from the hospital and going home. Baruch Hashem!

I asked her that she and her daughter thank Hashem for the miracles by starting to light Shabbos candles. She promised she would, and said she hadn’t lit in over twenty years. Since then, she lights every Erev Shabbos.

Before Pesach, I sent them shmurah matzah and a Haggadah. Right before Yom Tov, she sent me a video of their Seder table — matzah, wine, and the Haggadah. She made a Pesach Seder with her children.

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