The Prayer at the Cemetery in Casablanca

Rav David Hanania Pinto relates that he once traveled with his father through Morocco for two months. He arranged the whole journey and watched over his father's health, since Rav Moshe Aharon suffered from severe diabetes. He saw how his father received everyone, rich or poor, with equal consideration.

One morning Rav Moshe Aharon woke the family very early and asked to be taken at once to the cemetery in Casablanca, to daven at the kever of his father, Rav Chaim Pinto. Rav David suggested going after Shacharis, but his father answered, "If we wait until after davening, it will be too late." Nobody dared to argue. At the kever he raised his arms, wept freely, and blessed the royal family, the Moroccan people and all Jews scattered around the world. Then he blessed his son Avrohom. Rav David was surprised, because his father normally blessed the family in order, beginning with his wife and continuing from the oldest child to the youngest, and Avrohom would have been the eighth.

They were the guests of Mr. Mardochee Knafo, and had barely returned from the cemetery when a man told Rav David that a call had come from Israel by way of France. About half an hour earlier, Avrohom had been in a serious road accident in which three people had died, and Avrohom himself was badly hurt. Rav David phoned his mother in Ashdod, who confirmed that Avrohom was hovering between life and death and asked that her husband and son return as soon as possible. Rav David, though used to such things, was astonished at the ruach hakodesh (divine inspiration) that had let his father sense the disaster and daven for his son at the kever of Rav Chaim Pinto before it happened. When he told his father, Rav Moshe Aharon said with a sad smile, "I knew it, my son. A serious decree was upon your brother. That is why I rose so early to daven. Only part of my prayer was accepted, since three people died. We must stay here by the kever of Rav Chaim Pinto until the decree is lifted from him and he begins to recover. If we leave, his life will be in danger."

Rav David's mother kept complaining that her husband had not yet come home, for the doctors had given Avrohom no hope. One morning Rav Moshe Aharon told Rav David that, Hashem willing, they would return to Israel the following Thursday. Rav David told his mother that the decree would be lifted from Avrohom by Thursday and that they would return the next day, but she could not believe it. On that Thursday, Rav David later learned, a large butterfly flew into Avrohom's hospital room and passed over the length of his body. When it flew over his head, he woke from a coma that had lasted almost two months, during which he had undergone several major operations, and asked for something to drink. From that day he began to recover. His mother held no grudge against her husband for having left her to face such a difficult time alone.

Rav David writes that it was then that he saw with his own eyes how his father's sincere and confident prayers could produce real miracles.