In Which Life Begins on the Mevasseret Bridge

Yesterday afternoon, on my way to dinner, I was, for the first time, a true witness to life's greatest miracles.

A few days ago, I received a phone call from my mom's very good friend Yael, whom she has known since they were 18, asking if I wanted to come have Shabbat dinner with them this week. Of course, I was very happy to do so, so we planned that I would get on a bus from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem around 3:00 on Friday (the buses here stop about an hour before the sabbath, and the sun sets very early these days), and get off one stop before Jerusalem, in Mevasseret, where they live.

The bus stopped at the Mevasseret Bridge, literally a stop in the middle of the highway, around 4:00, and I got out, pulling out my phone so I could call Yaeli and tell her I was there. While I was on the phone with her, a man with a ponytail who was walking a bicycle ran up to me and yelled "do you speak Hebrew??" I motioned to him to please wait a moment, because I was on the phone, but he continued to yell in my ear. I barely heard Yaeli, over the shouting, say that I should climb up the hill to the side of the highway and she'd pick me up in her car at the top. So I closed my phone and turned to the guy, and said "what's the problem??"

His response was, "see the car parked on the shoulder of the highway? The woman in the front seat is halfway through giving birth. We really need your help."

I didn't know what to say or do, but I shrieked and ran over to the car. The mother-to-be, a Haredi (ultra-orthodox) Jewish woman was leaning back as far as she could in the passenger seat, calm and without screaming, while another woman was holding the door of the car, slightly open so she would have air, but mostly shut because of the cold wind. I will spare you all the graphic details, but suffice it to say that there was indeed half a baby already enjoying his first breaths, while the other half was still contained in its previous nine-month abode. What astounded me the most was that the mother wasn't making a single sound. She leaned back, and looked at me when I approached, and said nothing. I think she was completely in shock that this was going on, not to mention her husband, who was outside of the car, spinning around in circles and pleading for help with every person who walked by him.

Since most of the people helping out apparently did NOT speak Hebrew, someone handed me a phone as soon as I got there, and just said the word "ambulance." I took the phone, and spoke with the health representative on the other side of the line, trying to simultaneously follow and translate her instructions about keeping the mother warm, keeping calm until the ambulance gets there, etc... one woman put an apron over the mother's torso, as well, so the baby was obscured from view and wouldn't catch a chill. But then the voice said "now. I need you to take hold of the baby's head and very gently pull."

I'm amazed I didn't faint at that point. I told the invisible voice that I didn't think I could do that... I had never delivered a baby in my life, and didn't trust myself to do it now. The woman told me that this was very urgent, that the mother needed me now... that only I could help. I was about to lose it, when the mother calmly told me from the front of the car "oh, the baby's completely out now. Could you maybe help me wrap him up?"

I told the lady on the phone that the baby was out, and then quickly handed it off to someone else. With some help from the father and the guy with the ponytail, we found a clean, spare shirt in the mother's bag in the backseat of the car, and the ponytail guy and I, together, swaddled the baby (being careful not to choke him on his umbilical cord), just as we heard the ambulance's sirens wailing on the highway. (The ambulance did, at first, come up the highway in the wrong direction, and actually took an exit IN REVERSE, drove in reverse over the bridge, and showed up minutes later on the correct side.) At that point, the paramedics took over, the couple thanked us profusely, and I walked up the hill to go meet Yaeli (who was waiting patiently in her car, after calling me to find out where I was about 10 minutes earlier). I was still overwhelmed, trying desperately to put the images out of my mind so I could just focus on dinner with family friends, but I was also really blown away by what I had just seen, and what I had just done.

I will never forget that moment in my entire life.