R’ Rafael Levin, Shmuel Tamir, and the Tefillos Behind the Story

During the efforts to prevent the passage of permissive abortion legislation in Israel, a meeting was arranged with Justice Minister Shmuel Tamir.

Among those who went to speak with him were R’ Yechiel Michel Stern and R’ Rafael Levin, the son of Harav Aryeh Levin. Shmuel Tamir had been associated with the pre-state underground, whose members had held Harav Aryeh Levin—the devoted “rav of the prisoners”—in particular affection and respect.

In the days leading up to the meeting, R’ Rafael urged the members of the delegation to daven intensely. Their mission carried tremendous weight, he told them, and they needed siyata d’Shmaya for their words to succeed.

When they entered Tamir’s office and R’ Rafael introduced himself, the minister’s face lit up.

“R’ Aryeh Levin was our rav,” he said warmly.

R’ Rafael asked permission to relate something that had happened many years earlier.

A young couple had once come to his father. The woman was expecting a child, but the couple were facing pressures that led them to consider an abortion. Harav Aryeh Levin sat with them, spoke to them and persuaded them to allow the child to be born.

R’ Rafael looked directly at Shmuel Tamir.

“Do you know who that child was?” he asked.

“That child was you.”

Tamir was stunned. In the presence of the rabbanim, he telephoned his mother and asked whether the story was true. She confirmed its basic details.

The story touched him deeply. He told the delegation that he would change his position and work against the proposed measure.

After they left the meeting, R’ Yechiel Michel Stern turned to R’ Rafael.

“You already knew that you had such a powerful story to tell him,” he asked. “Why, then, were you so insistent that we daven?”

R’ Rafael answered that without the tefillos, the story itself would have accomplished nothing.

It was the tefillos that enabled the story to enter his heart.