Tzitzit dyed in Murex snail dye — and soaked in blood

Jerusalem, March 9, 2002. Yishai, then 17, was with friends on a Motzei Shabbat, playing his guitar.

At 10:30 a powerful explosion shook Rechov Ibn Giboral. Outside, people were running up and down Rambam Street. Yishai was a volunteer with Magen David Adom. He ran out to help. The smell of burning wires, plastic and flesh grew stronger as he approached the Moment Cafe. He was used to working as part of an ambulance crew, but this time he arrived before the ambulances.

He leaned over one young person, but there was no breath. Another young woman was lying nearby. He saw her flinch. Blood gushed from her leg. At the scene of the mayhem without even a tourniquet, he tried to come up with an idea to stop the bleeding. Yishai was wearing a tallit katan. He stripped off his white Shabbos shirt and removed the tallit katan garment. Together with a man named Yaron, he turned the tzitzit into a tourniquet. Wrapped tightly around the young woman’s leg, the cotton fabric and the wool tzitzit turned bright red. Moments later the ambulances arrived.

When Yishai got home, his clothes were soaked with blood. “I don’t have my tzitzit,” he told his mother. She was surprised. Yishai’s tzitzit were techelet. He never went anywhere without them.

Across town, orthopedic surgeon Moshe Lifschitz rushed the young woman into the operating room. Her leg bones were shattered and her femoral artery was torn in two places. He found the blue tzitzit strings, tied like a tourniquet around her leg.

The name of the wounded woman in the operating room was Efrat. Someone who knew Efrat later asked the surgeon: “So Yishai saved her leg?”

“No,” he replied. “I saved her leg. Yishai saved her life.”

I just came across the above story recently. Many years have gone by, but in any case, if someone knows how to contact him, tell Yishai we would be honored to provide him with a replacement tallis katan with techelet tzitzit, free of charge.

I served as a medic in the IDF, and often imagined myself facing a situation like this.

Jerusalem is a small town. My wife’s high school friend was sitting at that cafe on that fateful night. She wasn’t as lucky as Efrat. She was buried the next day. Limor bas Tziporah Hy”d.