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“I’m a mother of 6 kids, and a nurse in the ER at Shaarei Tzedek. I was working the night shift one night when we got the call that there was a young man coming in after a horrible car accident. We did our prep but when he came through the door on the stretcher I completely lost my ability to think. It was my husband.
We lost Tzvi that night. We all miss him so much. Even though I work every long shift I can get, I’d be lying if I said we aren’t struggling to get by financially. I have a child with major medical needs and I’m not able to afford getting her the help she needs. I never thought in a million years that I’d be on my own like this, and the fear of what will be is with me all the time…”- Fraida, 29*

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“When I was in high school both of my parents were killed in a car crash. Losing both of my parents so suddenly in one night was very traumatic for me. The image of seeing their crushed car, and all the blood…It haunts me to this very day. I miss them so much and I don’t think the pain of losing them will ever go away. Today I wish more than ever that my parents were alive because I am getting married in just three weeks…- Shevy F.*

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Rav Reuven Elbaz is not easily phased. 
But when this Bais Yaakov girl told him her story, he was moved to tears.
Shevy F.* was just fourteen years old when her entire life closed in on her– Her parents were immediately killed in a terrible car accident.
“Losing both of my parents so suddenly in one night was very traumatic for me,” shares Shevy, now twenty years old.
“The image of seeing their crushed car, and all the blood…It haunts me to this very day. I miss them so much and I don’t think the pain of losing them will ever go away.”

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My name is Eli. I’m three years old and that means I have a yarmulke and peyos, because I’m a big boy.
That’s what my mommy told me when she had to leave to go sleep somewhere else so she could have medicine and doctors all the time… that I’m a big boy.
Last week my Abba took me to a strange kind of party. Everyone was crying  and talking about Mommy and how nice she was.
Somebody was sleeping inside of a tallis.
When is she coming home?
Abba keeps crying and crying. It’s cold but I don’t have a big warm coat like I did when I was two, and the heater doesn’t go on at night. A lot of things are different now.
Is this what it means to be a big boy?
–

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Huge shockwaves rippled through a Jerusalem Beis Yaakov girls’ school this month, after it was revealed that 28-year-old teacher Mrs. Miriam Brim had been silently battling cancer. Mrs. Brim was a beloved teacher, who dedicated her spare time to help students and prepare lessons. Even fellow faculty members had no idea that she had been undergoing treatments for nearly two years.
It was only when Mrs. Brim collapsed that it became clear something was very wrong. Her final decline was brutally rapid: The same month that she was hospitalized, she passed away. Her students were inconsolable to hear the news after a month of praying for her recovery. No one imagined her situation could have possibly been so serious.

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A tragedy occurred in Petach Tikva recently when a young father of three in his forties passed away after a short battle with cancer. Shai Pachino a’’h was the beloved father of three children and valued member of his community, known by all for his warmth, love of chesed, and constant smile. Family members who attended say that his levaya was completely heartbreaking.
“Seeing his 12-year-old twin girls sobbing over his grave was the saddest thing I have ever seen,” one of them shared.
“You can’t erase that from your memory.”

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To everyone else, it looked like another happy Bat Mitzvah celebration. The Pachima twins donned beautiful matching white dresses as they smiled for photos on the night of their party, posing with their mother, father, and older brother. But veiled beneath the happy smiles, each member of the Pachima family could not help but wonder the same exact thing– Would this be the last simcha they shared together as a family?
Their Daddy, Shai, had been diagnosed with intestinal cancer over three years earlier.After a few difficult months of chemotherapy Shai went into remission. But two years later, he was hit again, and this time, with liver cancer. The doctors didn’t sugarcoat when they told Shai and his family the harsh truth:

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4 A.M.
Stein crept his hand over to the glock in his back holster, making sure it was loaded.  The noise that he heard could have been anything, but parks at nighttime in this area were notorious for dangerous criminal exchanges. Slowly, he opened the car door, stalking closer to the source of movement. As he got closer, he squinted his eyes, trying to work out what he was looking at in the faint moonlight.
When he saw what it was, his heart dropped all the way to his stomach.
Two little kids huddled together on the slide, shivering and trying to keep warm.

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A powerful video was released this morning of Rav Nissan Kaplan shlit”a, revered rosh yeshiva, gadol ba’Torah, and maggid shiur in the Mir Yeshiva.
In the video, Rav Kaplan emphatically tells over a powerful story about a family who he respects deeply. The following are excerpts from that story. The entire video can be seen here.

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Every year, a growing number of community members partake in the unique one-day segulah of hosting a seudah le’ilu nishmas the great Bas Ayin, Harav Avraham Dov Auerbach of Ovritch, on his yahrtzeit.
Stories abound of the miraculous yeshuos experienced by many. Harav Elimelech Biderman hosts a large communal seudah annually where he shares a stream of stories demonstrating the incredible power of this segulah.
This year, you can perform this segulah too and combine it with the incredible power of Bikur Cholim. If feeding any Yid on this day carries such immense power, how much greater is it when you can feed the needy and the sick!