Who Opens the Eyes of the Blind | Rabbi Shlomo Landau & Eli Podolsky

You know, Vayimaen features prominent Rabbonim, community leaders, and many people who speak about the concept of Shmiras HaEinayim, of Kedushah. But the truth is that it's not only Rabbonim, and it's not only performers and high-level businessmen that have seen incredible stories when it comes to Shmiras HaEinayim. It’s also Balebatim, simple people, and even Yeshiva Bochurim. Here is an incredible story about one such Yeshiva Bochur. Hi, everybody. My name is Eli Podolsky, or Eliyahu Podolsky, as my family knows me. My parents live in Toronto, I live in Monsey and I just left Yeshiva in Israel. The Monday before Purim, I was doing plumbing in Israel. I’ve been doing plumbing for almost six years. I was working for a contractor, and he gave me some guys to help me, some employees. And I was on my knees and I was working on a radiator, and he's handing me a tool, and as he's handing me a tool, he knocks over this blue bottle and it splatters in my eyes. And then he tells me it's hydrochloric acid. It’s an acid for cleaning after construction, it's for unclogging pipes for plumbing, it basically eats anything it touches. You don't want that in your eyes. I run to wash my eyes. By that time, my eyes are burning, they're going nuts. I rush to the hospital, which was an hour away, and they start washing my eyes out with, like, tons of stuff, and it's hurting more and it's getting worse and I can't see and my head is hurting. Everything is going crazy because of my eyes. Anyways, the doctor says: Your eyes are very damaged, it's a miracle they didn't melt, but you need to watch your eyes for the next 24 hours. If it gets worse, come back. If not, you see a specialist in a week. Okay, no problem. The very next day, he's having problems with his eyes, and his Rebbe tells him, You got to go back to the hospital. We go to the hospital and they look at my eyes and they say: We can't do anything now. Here are all these medicines and here are special glasses. You take these drops every day. You can't look at the sun because, you know, the protective layer in your eye is damaged. In a week, you go to a specialist and they check. Eli wasn't so comfortable going to an Israeli specialist. He's an American kid. And Eli decided that he's going back to the United States to see an eye specialist in Monsey. So a week later, I make an appointment for Doctor Lederman in Monsey. I'm on the flight, I'm thinking, What can I do to save my eyes? And he realizes he needs to push himself in a way that he hasn't done so before. He needs to go out of his comfort level, if he wants HaKadosh Baruch Hu to take notice. Finally, I decide I'm going to tell Hashem like this, I am going to delete an app called TikTok from my phone, which I use for entertainment sometimes. It's my last social media app I have on my phone. I haven't had other social media for a long time. And in the merit of that, hopefully, You’ll save my eyes. I delete the app. The next day, I go to Doctor Lederman. He looks in my eyes and he tells me, Son, based on all the paperwork you got, based on the meds you have, based on what happened, you should be blind with no eyeballs. But there's a miracle. Your eyes are perfectly healed and they are fine. The lesson I learned from this is I went out of my comfort zone and it was really, really hard for me, and in return, Hashem said: You know what? You're doing this for me, you're going above טבע, I’m going to go above טבע for you, and I'm going to heal your eyes. Let's understand, it doesn't make a difference who we are, a Yeshiva Bochur, a plumber, a Balebos, we all struggle with the same things. And we all have our own baseline of Nisayon. When we push ourselves into places that we're not comfortable to, and we show HaKadosh Baruch Hu that we're investing the effort, then HaKadosh Baruch Hu reciprocates in the most wonderful and amazing way.