Saved En Route to Wedding

By Menachem Cohen, COL reporter in Israel

When the Tilles family left to a wedding of a family member in Tiberius on Monday, they didn’t imagine the drama and miracle it would involve.

They traveled on Israel’s Route 90, the world’s lowest road that stretches from Metula and the northern Lebanon border to Eilat and the southern border with Egypt.

With their two infant children asleep, Yehuda Tilles and his wife Sheina drove the Toyota carefully through the heavy rain.

But then the car lost control as the brakes suddenly stopped responding, hitting the road’s side railing and tumbling down two meters to a nearby valley.

“It all took a few seconds,” Yehuda Tilles, a resident of Kfar Chabad and activist at the Tefillin booth at the Kotel, recalled.

“The car flew from side to side and then there was a terrifying silence. the kids were up a few seconds later and started crying.”

Behind them, by Hashgacha pratis, was driving Naftali Asulin, a security officer who deals with car crash victims.

Asulin and his wife ran over to Tilles’ car. When he heard the children crying he was relieved.

“I don’t believe you all came out alive,” he told them. “I was sure someone must have been killed.”

Asulin drove the Tilles family to the wedding hall in his jeep, where they met up with participants who had no idea what the couple had been through to come.

“He was sent to us from above,” Yehuda said about Naftali. “I feel like Hashem gave us our lives back.”

The crash happened on the 20th of Kislev, the day when Chabad celebrates the redemption of the Alter Rebbe from Russian prison.

“From now on Kislev 20 will be our personal redemption holiday,” Tilles said.