I feel more than a bit nervous as my husband and I enter the small lobby at Shachal 12 in the Givat Mordechai neighborhood of Jerusalem. “Come,” my husband urges me along, a bottle of wine in hand. “They’re waiting for us.” We walk up the stairs, wondering which apartment belongs to the Gross family. We don’t have to search for too long. As soon as we spot the door covered with banners of every size and color we know we’ve reached the right place. On this glorious Friday morning we’ve come to talk to Shimon and Michal Gross, so that Ami’s readership can get a glimpse of the emunah and bitachon that have sustained this pious couple throughout their recent ordeal. It was only a couple of months ago that a pesticide mishap snuffed out the lives of their two young daughters and put their two sons’ lives on hold for several heartstopping days. Our knock is answered by Michal, whose warm smile graces her beautiful face. “Friedman?” she asks. We nod our heads. “Come inside,” she says pleasantly. Shimon and his six-year-old son Chaim Michael are sitting in the sunlit dining room, along with the principal of the boy’s yeshivah. Seeing us, the principal stands up to leave, but not before planting a kiss on the child’s face. “He visits us every week,” Shimon says. “That’s really nice,” I say. “How can I not?” asks the menahel. “We miss Chaim Michael so much. We can’t wait to have him back.” Chaim Michael smiles from behind the laptop computer on which he is playing a game.
All over the table are pages filled with his artwork, products of the many hours he still spends at home. “This is for you,” I say to Michal as I hand her a homemade chocolate mousse. “Perfect!” she tells me. “We love mousse in this house. This is going to be the first Shabbos since the whole thing happened that we’ll be eating a meal at home. Now we have dessert!” “My pleasure,” I say. I’m glad she’s excited about my choice and hope it really will enhance their Shabbos meal. I know it’s an inadequate gesture, but I wanted to express my admiration for these special people. My husband stays in the dining room to talk to Shimon. Michal leads me further inside the apartment. “What a beautiful place,” I tell her. “Yes,” she says proudly. “We renovated four years ago.” I follow her toward her bedroom. “Here,” she motions with her hand. “This is where we had all the tiny little bugs. The room was infested with them. They were on the floor, on the walls, on everything. Even my clothing.” “Only in this room?” I ask. “Yes.” she says. “They were the size of dust particles. We tried so many ways to get rid of them but nothing helped.” Michal closes the door and moves her hands around the doorframe. “It was very tightly sealed,” she explains. “We slept in the girls’ room and they moved over to the boys’ room for those few nights.” We then walk into the boys’ room, which is furnished with cute little beds and cupboards. “Here is where Yael’s crib was,” she says, and I want to cry.I hold back for her sake. If she’s so strong, how can I break down? “Avigail slept here too.”
Now the room contains only the boys’ furniture, and the stacks of gifts the family received in the hospital. We walk back toward the dining room, where Shimon whispers something to Michal. Chaim Michael is a smart boy and immediately picks up on what’s being said. “I don’t want to go!” he says. “Come,” Michal says to him sweetly. “Let’s go to Savta’s house.” She leaves with him to her mother’s apartment a few houses down the block. “He can’t go back to cheder yet,” Shimon explains. “The medication he was on decreased his lung capacity by about 70 percent, which makes it hard for him to run around and to be active. The scars still haven’t healed completely either.” A week after the two boys were miraculously released from the Schneider Children’s Hospital in Petach Tikvah, Chaim Michael, the older of the two, was readmitted due to breathing difficulties. “Right now,” says Shimon, “he’s on steroids and inhalers that are hopefully doing their job to open up his respiratory passages. We’ll be taking him on Sunday for an ultrasound. G-d willing, we hope to see positive results. Everything is from Hashem.” (That Monday I was in touch with Michal to find out what the tests had revealed.
Unfortunately, the situation hadn’t improved. “Hashem is telling us that we need more tefillos,” was her interpretation.) Our first question to Shimon is the question Jews around the world have been asking ever since hearing of this incomprehensible tragedy. “How do you do it?” Shimon shakes his head quietly. “Everything is from Hashem,” he says finally. “It’s hard to understand how the pesticides got out of the sealed room.” He describes the numerous safeguards that had been put in place; among other measures, the pesticide had been used only in an inner, double-sealed room, and the licensed exterminator had assured them there was no reason to evacuate. Moreover, the baby, who was the worst affected, had spent most of the day outside the home in a daycare center. “The poison spread into the air like a gas,” he explains. “The exterminator was supposed to come on Friday to open the room. He never imagined that such a thing would happen. We asked him so many questions to make sure we were doing it right. Wherever we went, from hospital to hospital, no one ever heard of such a thing before. It was clearly yad Hashem, and we accept it b’ahavah. If it wouldn’t happen this way, Hashem has other ideas. You can’t escape His decree.” Shimon’s display of faith is awe-inspiring.
For a grieving young man in his 20s to say these words with such sincerity makes me proud to be part of the same nation. “When Yosef was taken to Mitzrayim, the Yishmaelim were transporting pleasant spices in their caravans instead of their usual foul-smelling substances. Hashem wanted to remind Yosef that even in the depths of his pain, He was still with him. We felt this all along. We felt Hashem’s presence even in the hardest, most painful moments.” The catastrophe was set in motion that Monday afternoon when the exterminator, who had 30 years of experience, arrived to do the job. He sealed the room and promised to come back on Friday. On Tuesday evening at around ten o’clock, Avigail, the Grosses’ fouryear-old daughter, woke up and vomited. While Michal was washing her in the bathtub, the baby, Yael, woke up as well. “Over the next hour,” Shimon remembers, “all four children threw up several times. We assumed it was a virus but decided to play it safe. I went to get my father-in-law’s car and we drove them to Terem [the emergency room]. They immediately suspected a stomach virus, but we weren’t convinced because the baby hadn’t eaten lunch with us at home, having been in daycare.
No one at the hospital was alarmed. They prescribed something to keep the kids hydrated and something else to stop the vomiting and sent us home. They also told us to schedule an appointment with the physician.” The Grosses arrived home at three in the morning, exhausted and perplexed. The children fell into a fitful sleep. “I was already awake at seven,” recalls Shimon. “I went to the pharmacy and stood at the door, waiting for them to open. I came home after Shacharis at about nine or nine-thirty with the filled prescriptions, and Michal had already made an appointment with our family doctor. It didn’t raise any alarms that the children were still sleeping at that hour; it made sense because we’d been up half the night and they clearly weren’t feeling well.” Because he was also feeling queasy, Shimon decided to take a nap as well. It turned out to be his last peaceful rest for a long, long time. “When I awoke around ten I went to check on the kids. I immediately saw that something wasn’t right with the baby. Her eyes were rolling in her head. I yelled for Michal to come see.” Within a minute and a half, several Hatzalah volunteers on motorcycles were at the Gross home. “We thought she’d choked on her vomit so I tried to do CPR,” adds Michal, having just returned from her mother’s house. She points to the chair I’m sitting on. “I was sitting on that chair. I kept trying for several minutes.” Hatzalah quickly realized that something was wrong with Avigail as well.
Listless as she was, however, she still asked for something to drink as they carried her out. “The chemicals dried them out,” explains Michal. When an upstairs neighbor heard the commotion she came downstairs to offer her help. “You hurry off with the girls,” she suggested, “and I’ll keep an eye on the boys.” “Imagine the hashgachah that we didn’t take her up on her offer!” says Shimon. “We told the paramedics that all of the children had thrown up the night before. There was one Hatzalah guy with a head on his shoulders who said, ‘No, no! Don’t leave them here! All of them have to be checked out!’ I shudder to think what could have happened if we had left them behind.” The whole family was transported to Shaare Zedek in three minutes’ time. “I was in one ambulance with the baby,” says Shimon. “The other three children were in another ambulance with Michal. The boys were still able to sit.” “Did you know then that it was too late for the baby?” I ask. “No,” he tells me. “They were trying to resuscitate her the whole time. They tried everything.” Michal comes in from the kitchen to share her memories of those moments frozen in time. “While we were still in the house I mentioned something about the recent extermination job to the Hatzalah men. Everything took on a sense of urgency after that. I didn’t know just how bleak the situation was, but I do remember thinking that the ambulance was driving a bit too quickly.” Shimon takes out a plastic bag filled with photographs. “These are pictures of the girls,” he tells us. “They were taken in Lithuania this past autumn.
We had gone there on kiruv shlichus with Nefesh Yehudi, an organization that attracts Jews to Yiddishkeit.” We look at their smiling faces, the faces of innocent, happy children. I am struck by their purity. In one photo, Avigail hugs her sister fiercely. The love that exists between them practically jumps out of the two-dimensional portrait, almost as if they knew how intertwined their souls were, how they would meet the same fate only weeks later. I can’t control myself anymore. I start to cry.Shimon goes to bring me a box of tissues. “It’s okay,” he says. “We cry a lot around here. It hits us in sudden waves. One minute we could be sitting and talking happily and the next I find myself crying as if it just happened. We never know when it’ll hit us next, the urge to cry it all out.” He smiles sadly. “The nisayon is especially strong on Shabbos.” The aroma of frying onions wafting in from the kitchen almost makes us forget that this home is not what it used to be. I’m awed at the spirit of this young couple, at their fortitude and resilience. It seems as if nothing in the world can deter them from leading a life of avodas Hashem, even when their hearts are broken. “We think about them all the time,” says Shimon. “Not a minute goes by that we forget our precious daughters. But we accept that this was Hashem’s will, and that we have been given tremendous kochos to withstand this otherwise unbearable challenge.” I can see that my husband is working very hard to control his tears.
Later he tells me that he couldn’t allow himself to cry in front of a bereaved father who was exercising such kabalas ol. “When did you realize how dire the situation was?” my husband asks. “In the hospital,” Shimon answers. “As soon as Avigail arrived her condition began to deteriorate by the second. They were still trying with Yael. Afterwards they told us that they would never continue trying like that with an adult, but children sometimes have a greater chance of survival.” Avigail had already been drifting in and out of consciousness in the ambulance. “There was a young Magen David Adom volunteer who kept tickling her feet to keep her awake,” Michal recalls. “The boys were still sitting nicely on the bench. Only Avigail was lying on the stretcher. When we got to the hospital she was immediately surrounded by about 20 people who started to work on her.” In light of Avigail’s rapid deterioration, the emergency room staff immediately whisked the boys off to the intensive care unit on another floor. “The boys were still talking to me in the emergency room,” she says. “But a minute later they were out of the picture and I was focusing on Avigail. When I saw that they weren’t taking her upstairs I sensed that something was wrong. What were they waiting for? I kept asking the nurses what was going on. At one point I think the head nurse just got fed up with my pestering and told me plainly, ‘It’s over.’”Shimon’s head has been down on the table.
When he raises it I see that his eyes are red. “I asked to see Avigail one last time,” he says, “so they allowed me into the room. She looked so serene, as if she was already in a better place.” “He told me afterwards that he felt her neshamah,” remembers Michal. “We both stood there crying, looking at our daughter who had been dancing with us only the day before. We were so sad that she was gone, but there was also a blessed clarity at the moment that left us feeling tranquil. “It was a tremendous chesed from Hashem that we didn’t know how critical the boys’ condition had become. We couldn’t have handled it then.” In the meantime, the PICU staff was working furiously to save the lives of the two boys. By then the exterminator had already been called down to the hospital to provide details about the chemicals he’d used. A special resuscitation device that’s used during open heart surgery for a maximum of eight hours was rushed from Hadassah Ein Kerem for Avigail’s heart. When they realized, however, that it was already too late for her, they attached it to her brother Michael, whose pattern of decline was rapidly imitating his sisters’. “It’s only because the doctors saw what happened to Avigail and Yael that they were able to intervene and save the boys.
Our daughters saved our sons,” says Shimon bluntly. Michal returns from the kitchen holding a potato. “In this world there are no answers,” she says. “In the next, there are no questions.” “That’s the difference between a believer and a non-believer,” her husband agrees. “A believer has no questions. Nobody should ever know this pain, but Hashem gives a person koach. We don’t ask ‘lamah,’ why? We ask ‘lemah,’ for what? What can we learn from this?” Rav Elimelech Biderman, the world-renowned mashpia of Lelov who visited the Grosses several times during those dark days told them, “To look at the past is kefirah; to look to the future is an obligation.” It was these and similar words of chizuk from gedolim that enabled them to move forward. “We had many important visitors, among them Rav Chananya Chollak of Ezer Mizion and the Vizhnitzer Rebbe. Rebbetzin Finkel, the almanah of Rav Nosson Tzvi, the rosh yeshivah of Mir, where I’m a talmid, said Tehillim all night in Shaare Zedek,” says Shimon. “You know her?” I ask Michal, impressed. She shakes her head. “I didn’t—until then.” On Wednesday night Shimon was also admitted to the hospital after traces of the toxin were detected in his blood. Thankfully, he was discharged the next morning.
Along with the mammoth medical efforts being invested in saving the boys’ lives, at the behest of Rav Chaim Kanievsky, shlita, a group of friends and relatives formed a minyan at the Kosel to add the names Chaim and Refael to Michael and Yitzchak respectively. “We cannot stop thanking Hashem that we had no idea how close our sons were to death at the levayah. My brother-in-law later told me that the doctor on duty at the hospital that day told him she didn’t think they would live through the night.” In fact, one of the doctors quietly asked a family member whether there were two more plots available in the beis hachayim near where the girls would be buried. Indeed, it was a miracle that they survived. “Everything was chutz lederech hateva,” says Shimon, “the death and also the life.” Once the two little girls were laid to rest on Thursday, the Grosses ran immediately to their sons’ bedside. “We made a short stop at my mother’s house,” says Michal, “where we composed ourselves as much as possible. It had been a very long day and the boys had already been transferred to Schneider Hospital in Petach Tikva the previous afternoon. When we arrived they looked lifeless.” Shimon and Michal both admit that seeing their sons like that was the hardest of all. “We were coming from the levayah of our daughters, but this was somehow much more difficult,” says Michal. “It was even harder than knowing that it was over.
At that moment, I had a strong feeling that they would make it. I knew that Hashem only gives us as much as we can handle, and I had no more strength left.” She sighs. “I felt the same way,” Shimon concurs. “When I saw the boys lying there like that I had to take a really deep breath. It seemed as if the doctors were giving up hope. When I looked into Michael’s eyes I saw that his pupils weren’t the same size. We were told that even if they regained consciousness the neurological damage was already done.” Michal opens a file on the computer to show us some photos and video clips that were taken by the hospital staff during those fateful days. Her description of her sons was not an exaggeration. A vertical incision in their chests enabled them to be connected to the devices that were assisting their hearts, and you can see their blood flowing through the pipes of the machine for oxygenation and back into their unresponsive bodies. The room is utterly devoid of human sound. The photo of each boy attached to his bed is the only indication of their former vitality. “We wanted the staff to know who they were working with,” says Michal. “We kept showing them the pictures and saying, ‘These are the boys we knew, and these are the boys we want to see again.’ Everyone was extremely gracious and understanding of our needs.
They were wonderful emissaries who went above and beyond the call of duty. They allowed us to sit at their bedsides at all hours, and we sang to them all the time.” The Grosses spent that first Shabbos in the hospital. Before candle lighting, Michal approached Shimon tearfully. “How many candles should I light?” she asked. “Four or six?” “We need all the light in the world now,” he had replied. “Light six.’” I tell her that my thoughts were with her that night, along with thousands of other women around the world. “I’ll never forget how everyone was davening for you,” I say. “I concentrated on every word like never before,” says Michal. “Vezakeini legadeil. How I wished to raise my daughters into adulthood!” She sighs. “And when it came to the zemiros,” recalls Shimon, “it was very hard not to break down. We asked to be mekabeil the Shabbos mitoch rov simchah. It wasn’t easy to fulfill those words. But even in those difficult moments we saw Hashem’s ‘shivtecha umishantecha.’ He kept patting us on the back with the miracles of our sons.” FOR AN ENTIRE WEEK, the Grosses sat with their sons all day and then traveled back to Yerushalayim to Michal’s parents to sit shivah in the evening. “When we think back to it, all we can do is yawn,” laughs Michal. It was the boys’ constant improvement that kept them going. “The boys’ recovery took place at a miraculous speed,” says their father. “No one, no one, in the medical world thought it would happen so quickly.” The Grosses had been told that the ECMO machine that was keeping their sons alive would work for about two to three weeks, with a slight chance for up to a month; after that they would succumb. Because the staff had no idea how long the poison would continue to affect the body, they couldn’t know if and when any improvement would take place.
Nobody imagined that within six days the boys’ organs would resume working on their own. The first time the boys woke up, their parents said “Shema” with them and “Hamalach Hago’eil.” Michal quickly returns to the computer to show us the emotionladen moment. We watch in awe as both parents stand over Yitzchak’s bed and recite a fervent “Shema”; I only wish I could have a fraction of their kavanah. “Yitzchak’s situation improved first because he weighs more than his brother, even though he’s younger. His body was less affected by the poison. “When the head of the PICU, a woman who outwardly wasn’t religious, came to see the kids after they were already conscious, they happened to be asleep. She told me she wanted to wait until they woke up because she had to see for herself that they were neurologically intact. She couldn’t believe it!” says Michal. “When they woke up and started talking to her she was crying. She kept repeating, ‘I can’t believe it! I can’t believe it! They pulled them back from shamayim.’ It was an unbelievable miracle.” Now that the boys are back at home, the Grosses focus on appreciating the gift of the everyday. “The fact that the girls were taken from us makes us appreciate the boys so much more,” says Shimon. “We appreciate life so much more, not only our good health but also that everything is routine.
Before this tragedy, our lives were seemingly perfect. I was learning, Michal was working, and we had a beautiful family. Then Hashem pressed the ‘reset’ on our computer,” he says with a smile. “It gave us a chance for introspection, like the hisbodedus that’s so popular in Breslov. Before, we were constantly running around, doing, doing, doing, but we needed to stop and think about Hashem’s chesed and how everything in the world goes smoothly. When the boys moved even a pinkie finger, our joy knew no bounds. We never appreciated things like that. We live in a rat race, where people are always chasing iPhones, nice houses, I don’t know what else. We need to stop and reflect on what’s really important.” Michal brings up the ECMO machine as a case in point. “Just think about it. It only works for an average of two weeks. It’s a huge thing, it’s very expensive, and it’s almost impossible to get because there aren’t very many of them around. And what does it do? The job that a heart the size of a fist does for 70, 80, 90 years. Billions of people are walking the Earth oblivious to this gift that’s inside of them.” My husband tells Shimon about the sign that hung in the Mir during those fateful days. “It was a countdown,” he says, “letting us know how many days were left for the ECMO. Underneath was an urgent plea for a taanis dibbur, which took place every morning that week.” “They did that?” Shimon asks, his eyes smiling. “That’s beautiful!” He jots down a few words in the spiral notebook he keeps of divrei chizzuk, which he uses to strengthen himself and others.
During the time they spent with their sons at Schneider they were privy to a world they’d never known before, only underscoring their former blissful ignorance. “We met families who knew nothing else but the hospital, who were silently suffering with crippling, chronic diseases. There was one couple who had waited to be blessed with a child for eight years; they were celebrating his seventh birthday in the oncology ward. One infant had been born with half a heart; the doctors didn’t know how long she would live. How could we not appreciate the miracles with which we’ve been blessed? “Nowadays, people don’t have much menuchas hanefesh,” Shimon says. “Hashem stopped our world in order to open our eyes. Rav Yankel Edelstein explains ‘mechadeish bechol yom maaseh bereishis’ as meaning that instead of keeping the world constantly running, Hashem ‘restarts’ it again every morning so we can appreciate it more.” His eyes light up as he talks of his newfound appreciation for life. “The doctors had no answers for us when we asked if there was anything they could do.
They were clueless. But the moment Hashem wanted, things started moving on their own. We can never take the gift of life for granted.” I am humbled in this man’s presence. As if reading my mind my husband asks, “But how could you have been so strong? The entire Jewish world was broken. All of Yerushalayim was weeping. Wherever you went you felt the sadness. It was like a heavy cloud on everyone’s heart.” “Hashem gave us the kochos,” Shimon reiterates. “Hashem gives, Hashem takes, and we know it’s better for them there. We’re not just saying words. We really believe it, and that’s why we’re able to move on.” Shimon recalls an incident that happened several years ago when a dear friend of Michal lost a baby who had drowned in the bathtub. “When I met her for the first time after the tragedy, I asked how she was managing not to fall apart. ‘Hashem nasan v’Hashem lakach,’ she said. I was taken aback by her conviction. ‘This child was never my possession,’ she told me. ‘I was raising him for Hashem.’ It all came back to me when we lost our own precious daughters. Somehow, when a person loses any other possession, like money, it’s easier to believe.
We tend to think that children ‘belong’ to us. But it’s really all the same—everything comes from Hashem.” THE GROSSES were also strengthened by the tremendous outpouring of empathy and support with which they were inundated. “The Gemara compares klal Yisrael to a palm tree, a tamar. We saw this so clearly then. Jews of all stripes coming together to help us in our time of need. Everyone is from a different branch, but it’s all shtusim when it comes to the heart. It gave us so much strength. Every day we got stacks and stacks of pizza and shawarma. People just had a need to do something for us. “On the same chair that Naftali Bennett sat at the shivah, the av beis din of Yerushalayim, Rav Weiss, sat two hours later. This tragedy united everyone. People came from as far away as Venezuela just to be with us. One person came to Schneider straight from the airport to ask how he could be of help. So many supposedly ‘secular’ people brought us gifts and said Tehillim for us.
Everyone wanted to know if there was anything they could do to help. “On the day after the tragedy, someone told me that a person who was obviously not ‘religious’ called into a radio show and asked which Tehillim he should say.” He laughs. “We came to the conclusion that deep down every Jew is a believer. The whole Sefer Tehillim was recited over 10,000 times thanks to email requests that spread like wildfire.” Michal comes out of the bedroom carrying an oversized bin filled with envelopes of every size and color. “These are only a fraction of the letters we received,” she says. “They came from all over the world, from yeshivos, groups and individuals.”I leaf through the colorful pile of letters in several languages. One envelope contains eight booklets, each from a different grade of a public school in northern Israel. “Each kid wrote about what he’s undertaking as a zechus for the boys.” Most of the students added a personal line at the bottom with their condolences. “I think about you all day,” wrote one little girl. “I’ll be especially thinking of you when I don’t turn on the light on Shabbos.” Michal shows me a booklet that was sent to her by Chana Jenny Weisberg, who maintains a popular website for Jewish mothers, JewishMom.org.
After the tragedy, she asked her blog readers to pen a few words to the Grosses, which she printed out and bound into a heartwarming collection. I snap a picture so I can later send it to Chana Jenny with Michal’s thanks. “It meant so much to me,” she says. “I was touched by how many women around the world had taken the time to let me know they were thinking of us. It gave me tremendous koach to forge ahead. “We’d like to thank everyone publicly for everything they did on our behalf,” she says, “whether it was a tefillah or a kind thought. Anything anyone undertook as a zechus for our family is very much appreciated.” At that moment her five-year-old son Refael Yitzchak returns home from cheder and the two boys run around wildly, enjoying each other’s company. “They’re one year apart?” I ask Michal. “Fourteen months. And Avigail was 14 months younger.” Michal smiles wistfully. “She was such a good child, always happy, always peaceful.” “It’s so hard not to miss her,” says Shimon. “When we first came back to the apartment I couldn’t look out the window when the kids came out to play from the gan across the street. It was so painful to see them walking in a double line and my Avigail wasn’t among them.
More than once the thought crossed my mind: Why can’t she be there? But we keep working on ourselves. We’re not letting go.” I look at my watch and I’m astounded to see that we’ve been talking to the Grosses for four hours. They are incredibly gracious. I know that we cannot possibly express our awe and admiration to them, especially not in a language that isn’t our native tongue. But I hope they can sense it anyway. They are extraordinary role models. “They’re a chiddush in the briah,” my husband says to me on our drive home. “Think about how we react to even the tiniest imposition on our comfort, yet they don’t even feel any anger. There’s no doubt in their hearts that this is how things were meant to be.” I realize that it is the lack of any negative emotions that has so mesmerized us. Not only aren’t the Grosses asking any questions, they’re accepting what happened with love. It is truly inspirational to be in their presence. I cannot think of a high enough pedestal to put them on.