The Night I Was Saved By Elijah the Prophet on the Streets of Jerusalem

A recollection of being lost at night in Jerusalem when I was helped by an anonymous stranger who disappeared before I could thank him.

I was reading a story by Yomna El-Serafy called Once Upon a Kind Stranger, about an anonymous person who helped her when she visited Antlaya, Turkey, and not knowing the language, couldn’t find her way to the hotel from the airport. This called to mind a similar experience I had, when I was in Israel.

I had decided to spend the summer learning at a Yeshiva in Jerusalem. Having anxiety over anything novel, the thought of traveling alone to Israel was a bit daunting. However, those organizing it, were on top of things and sent all the information I would need.

I was then on faculty at a University and classes didn’t end until the day before the summer term at the Yeshiva began. This meant that I would be going later than the other women and would need to travel alone to the house where we were staying. But the person overseeing housing gave me his cell phone number and told me to call when I landed so he could send someone to pick me up.

After I landed I called the number. It wasn’t taking calls. Thinking it was a mistake, I tried again with the same results. By the time I got my luggage, cleared customs and changed some money, I had called at least a dozen times with increasing panic.

“It’s okay,” I told myself. “It’s an International Airport, so there will be people speaking English and I have the address for the house so I can just give it to one of the cab drivers, no big deal.”

I found where the transportation area was, and looked around for the sheroots which are communal taxis, and cheaper than cabs. I began trying to find one heading to where I was going.

If you’ve never been to Israel before, the people there are very direct, very assertive and may sometimes seem a bit short when speaking with you. They don’t play games, they don’t beat around the bush, they just say it like it is so people from other places may have difficulty knowing how to interact with them.

This combined with the hustle and bustle at the airport made it a bit tough to get any of the drivers attention as they made short work of figuring out who needed to go where, pointing them to different drivers. Drivers would come to ask where I was going, I’d show them the address and they would shake their heads and move on to other passengers. It seemed none of them knew where it was.

I began asking others if they knew where the street was but no one did. One driver contacted dispatch but they had no idea where it was either. I called the number, no answer, no message function.

Soon there were few drivers left and it appeared that they were all about finished finding enough passengers going in the same direction and were ready to head off. With the panic starting to rise again, I called the number once more which was still not working, then frantically asked passengers, airport personnel, anyone I could find if they knew where the street was so I could tell a driver. No one did. Finally, one driver asked where I was going and I told him. He said, “Yes, yes, get in.”

Given that no one else knew where it was, and the fact there were few passengers left to take anywhere, I was a bit worried that he was just saying he knew the location to get another fare. But when I asked if he was certain he knew where it was, he replied, “Yes, yes, sure I know.” So I got in with five others and off we went.

My first hint that perhaps he hadn’t been truthful, came when he contacted dispatch to ask about my drop off. They didn’t know. Next he asked the others in the car, none of whom knew either.

“I thought you were familiar with where it was.” I said to which he replied, “We’ll find it, we’ll find it, don’t worry.” I was worried.

He dropped off the first person, rolled down his window and asked passersby for directions. No luck. This was repeated with the next two drop-offs. The fourth person was dropped at a residence and there were few people around so the driver took out his cell and started calling friends to see if he could find anyone who knew anything. Nothing.

The fifth person was dropped at a large hotel, so the driver jumped out and went in. I have no idea how many people he asked but he was gone for half an hour and when he returned he was none the wiser. He asked me if I was sure I had the right location and I told him it was what the Yeshiva had given me. He asked about a contact number and I told him about the problem with the phone. He asked for the number to call himself, and got the same result.

Now I was worried that I’d been given the wrong address or there was a mistake somewhere and that the one I had actually didn’t exist. Seeing I was nervous, he reassured me that someone would know, and cheerily set out for the middle of town where he proceeded to stop at every business and ask every person we passed. Yet after all that we were none the wiser.

By now several hours had passed since I’d left the airport, and it was beginning to get dark. Suddenly, the driver pulled over to the side of the street and said, “I’m going to have to ask you to get out. I have a date and need to get home. But this is a religious section of the city so it should be around here somewhere.”

Say whaaaa? The number of problems with this couldn’t be counted on two hands. Not the least of these was the fact that there were many religious sections of the city so it didn’t stand to reason that this one would automatically be where I’d find the address.

What I wanted to say was, “Are you kidding me? You want to drop me somewhere in the middle of Jerusalem with all my luggage when it’s starting to get dark, I don’t speak enough of the language to communicate and have no idea where I am, where I’m supposed to be going or even if the street exists at all? You said you knew where you were going so you can cancel your date until you figure out how to get me there.

Being less than assertive especially when in a different country where I felt out of my element I basically agreed and even stupidly paid him for the trip. If things weren’t surreal enough, before I got out, he wrote his number on a slip of paper and handed it to me, saying, “If you aren’t able to find it, call and you can stay with me. I’ll probably be home by midnight.”

I wasn’t sure what was more disturbing about this, the fact that he thought I might not ever find where I was going or that the logical solution was for me to stay with a stranger knew nothing about other than he’d scammed me into using him as a driver when he had no idea where I was going and left me alone in the middle of the street somewhere so he could meet his date.

Still, I managed to thank him and he drove off. Ever the optimist I went to try the phone number one more time, only to find that it was now dead. Standing on the sidewalk of a small street, my luggage around me, I felt like crying. It was fully dark by then, I was exhausted after traveling for what by then was almost a full day, I had no phone, knew no one there and had no idea what to do. Even had I decided to pay whatever it cost to stay in a hotel and figure it out in the morning, my phone was dead so I couldn’t call to see about vacancies or request a cab and the streets where I was seemed almost deserted.

I grabbed my luggage and started walking towards what seemed like a residential area. “I’m in Israel, after all,” I reasoned. “Miracles are bound to be more likely to occur here than anywhere else.” Plus, there had to still be some people around that I could ask.

I wandered the neighborhood looking at street signs in the hopes that one of those miracles might be sent my way and I’d happen upon a sign that matched the name of the street I was looking for. As for asking someone, that was a problem. I was, in fact, in a very religious neighborhood. By this time, the only people out were men and it was considered inappropriate for a woman to speak to a man she wasn’t married to or even to look him directly in the eye and vice versa. So although there were men around and they clearly knew by the suitcases I wasn’t from there none of them asked if they could help. After almost two hours at which point I’d seen the same signs three times I knew I was in trouble.

At this point I really was close to tears, and so tired I was ready to drop where I stood. Right then, a noise from above startled me, and looking up I saw a group of men leaving an apartment and coming down some stairs. I guess I had startled them as well, as they hadn’t expected to come upon a woman alone that time of night. I ducked my glance and started to move in the other direction when I heard one of the men telling the others to go on and he’d meet them. Not thinking it had anything to do with me, I focused on finding the main street again which I hadn’t seen since I entered the neighborhood.

Before I knew it, I heard someone beside me. It was the man. He was dressed in traditional orthodox garb; black suite, white button down shirt, black fedora, black shoes, with tzit tzit, specially knotted ritual fringes, hanging from under his jacket.

“Shalom aleichem”, he said in a soft voice. “You are lost?” I guess that much was obvious. Since he was addressing me in English, I guess it was also apparent I wasn’t an Israeli. “Where are you trying to go?”

I told him the address, and before I could say anything further, he grabbed all of my suitcases and started walking. We walked without talking for about 10 minutes with him turning down this alley then that one. He made one last turn and knocked on a door asking the resident if he knew where the address was. This person, the first person he had asked, pointed him in the direction of the street. It turned out to be only a few minutes from where we were at the time.

I later learned that the house was new and needed its own access to the street so they’d also constructed a new alleyway that led to it. The alleyway bore the name of the street I’d been looking for. No one knew where it was because it had only existed for about two weeks.

My good Samaritan walked me directly to the door, stepped back and waited until someone answered and it was clear that I was safe. I informed the person who answered who I was and quickly turned to thank the man who’d helped me. He was gone. He wasn’t just walking away, he was absolutely nowhere to be seen. I hadn’t even gotten his name and could never have found my way back to where it was I’d met up with him to drop him a thank you note.

I stepped inside the house and the person in charge of housing arrangements said they’d been worried as I’d landed hours before and no one had known where I was. I told him about the problem with the phone and after looking at it, he sheepishly admitted he’d forgotten to charge it. Exhausted and feeling like I was practically having an out of body experience after everything that had happened especially the end, I began to think about the man who’d helped me.

I realized that after he’d rung the bell, the door had opened almost immediately and it had only taken a couple of seconds to say who I was before I’d turned to thank him. The house was one of four that surrounded a courtyard and the alleys leading out of the courtyard were all open such that you could see fairly far down them. When I had turned, I’d quickly looked down each or the alleys to try to locate the man who’d come to my rescue, but they were all empty.

I asked the person who had let me in, if he knew the man who had been with me when I got there.

“Was there someone with you?” he’d asked. “I didn’t notice.”

“There was a tall man standing one step away from the door. You couldn’t have missed him,” I replied in disbelief. After the phone fiasco, I wasn’t sure if maybe he wasn’t all there.

“Oh, sorry, I really didn’t see anyone with you. He must have been behind you in the dark.”

I knew when the man stepped back, it had only been a single step and that he was next to me not behind me. I also knew that there was a light above the door and that all four houses had spotlights on that illuminated the courtyard and alleyways.

I wasn’t able to think too much more about it then, since he was showing me around, and getting me settled. Since I was the last one there, all the rooms were taken except a small single room in the basement which turned out to be the bomb shelter. Everyone was apologetic since I suppose they thought their two fancier rooms each with a bathroom were better. But I would have picked my little room over theirs any day as instead of bunking with three or four others, I had a room to myself and it was at least 15 degrees cooler than the rest of the house which had no air-conditioning.

As I lay by myself in the cool air of my room I thought over everything that had happened that night. It seemed as if everything that had occurred, led me to the fateful meeting with my good Samaritan. All of it seemed a bit too bizarre and surreal to have a natural explanation. Even his reaction to me, an orthodox man approaching an orthodox woman at night and sending his friends off then walking with me alone, would normally never be done. Then of course there was his disappearance and the fact that the person who’d answered the door apparently had never even seen him which, this many years later, I still don’t know exactly what to make of.

There is the belief among Jews that Eliyahu HaNavi, Elijah the Prophet, appears to help those who are in distress or in need of help. Stories abound about people who were in some kind of trouble when suddenly a man appeared to help them. Obviously, I can’t know for certain that this was the case for me, but I choose to believe it was. If nothing else, the event primed me to being able to experience Israel at a higher level and exercise a more intense focus on my studies in Yeshiva. Regardless or who the man was, I do know that I was given a miracle after all, that night, just not in the form of a street sign.

Thank you to Yomna El-Serafy for the inspiration for this piece.

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