A two-year-old boy required surgery after he was poked in the eye while playing with a lulav with his twin brother and suffered damage to his cornea.
A lulav is a closed frond of a date palm tree and is one of the four species used during prayers during the Sukkot holiday, which is being celebrated this week.
Little Yehuda was poked in the eye with a lulav while playing with his brother in a sukkah this week. At first, it appeared that he had not suffered any serious or lasting injury. But the next morning, the toddler woke up with a red eye.
The parents contacted an ophthalmologist at their health fund who quickly sent them to Shaare Zedek Medical Center.
Yehuda underwent surgery to remove the foreign object from his eye, and after a short stay in the hospital, was sent back home.
"By the grace of heaven, our Yehuda is safe and sound now, but it could also have ended differently. I call on parents to pay attention and to remember that even a seemingly safe game can be dangerous, certainly in the hustle and bustle of the holidays when sometimes they don't pay attention. We thank the wonderful medical team that treated Yehuda and wish everyone good health."
Prof. David Zadok, who treated Yehuda, says: "Yehuda came to us with a part [of the lulav] embedded in the cornea of his eye, and immediately went into the operating room. During the operation, the foreign body was removed from his eye, and he is now being released to his home. I urge parents to pay close attention to what gets into their children's eyes, especially when they are outside and small particles of leaves and the like can get into the eye and endanger the vision. Small children don't know how to tell for themselves what happened, so double caution is required here on the part of the parents."