All who are ill. “Hashem, save us! The King will answer us!” What words! Hashem is the King of the entire world and of all the doctors and all the refuos, and He is the One Who saves us and answers us, and here I was about to daven Shemoneh Esrei, to have a personal meeting with the Master of the world, Who can do everything and anything – “Who is like You, the Master of all power!”
That Maariv was for me like Ne’ilah of Yom Kippur, perhaps even more intense. I understood with all my senses and all my bones as one: I am dependent only on the kindness of Shamayim, only on Him, and He is the only Savior. Ein od milvado. I begged Hakadosh Baruch Hu with all my heart to heal me and grant me long life and spare me from that galus in Minnesota. In the meantime, we continued preparing for surgery. My wife started arranging the finances with my health insurance provider. While she was working on the bureaucracy, I was getting weaker and weaker. In Tel Hashomer hospital they started preparing the forms for the surgery, and my heart continued giving warning signs. They were working under pressure and devoted a full week to nonstop preparations, understanding that this was not a matter that could be postponed. It was literally pikuach nefesh.
They set up an appointment for me to have surgery in Minnesota three weeks later, and I continued to daven, with emunah and bitachon that Hakadosh Baruch Hu could do anything.
Less than a week after Chanukah, in the beginning of Teves, I got a call. “Do you have a chair? Sit down.” That’s what they told me, probably afraid for my heart. Who knew what they were going to say? I was alive. What had they discovered there in the X-rays? Who knew what other problems they’d found!
I sat down on the chair and informed them that I was all ears and ready to hear whatever surprising news they had for me. “You’re not going to believe it!” they said, but I believed it, and how. “There is a very wealthy Jew who suffers from something similar to you, and he paid a huge amount of money – ten times more than what you are paying – for the professor to come to Israel. The professor is coming to our hospital for 24 hours. We in the hospital want to learn his unique method, and therefore we will make every effort for the operating room to be available with the anesthesiologist and everything you need so that he’ll be able to operate on you. If he agrees, perhaps you will not need to travel to Minnesota. In the meantime, stop all your arrangements and wait for next Sunday.”
He said “if” and “maybe,” but I held on to this news like a lifesaving rope. Several days of chizuk in emunah and bitachon, tefillah and tzedakah, passed for us. I saw the news as a he’arah from Shamayim, as though a message had been sent to me: Your tefillos have been answered; continue davening.
A day before the professor arrived, I was admitted to the hospital in the hope that the professor would also have time for me. Only once he came did they tell him that there was another patient waiting for him, and he said, “No problem. If there’s time, I’ll operate on him as well.”
The wealthy man’s surgery began toward evening. Six hours passed, and his surgery was complete. There was enough time left for me as well, and the hospital went into high gear. They wanted to take advantage of my surgery in order to learn the method, and they called cardiologists and surgeons from all over the country to come and observe the surgery. Some were allowed into the operating room itself, and some were allowed to view it from another room set aside for this purpose.
A moment before I went in, the professor came over to me. He was a tall, imposing Gentile, truly huge, and he pressed my hand. I felt immediately that he would be a good messenger, because even when he pressed my hand, I could feel the special flexibility in his fingers. At those moments before the anesthesia, I davened to Hashem the whole time to heal me, and to stand at the side of the doctor He’d sent me.
They said the surgery was supposed to take eight hours, but l’maaseh, it took only six hours. The medical staff was thrilled with the whole situation. They left excited by the professor’s exacting work and related that the surgery had been a true “experience.”
It is not pleasant to be the subject of this sort of “experience,” but the thought that the hospital’s interest, along with the professor’s surprising visit, were the reasons that Hashem navigated so that they would want to give me the best possible conditions in order to get through the surgery, brought me to a sense of deep gratitude to the Creator of all worlds, in Whose Hands are all living souls. He is the Healer of all flesh, Who does wonders.
After I woke up I met the professor again. He told me that the surgery had been “very good, very fine.” He did not know how to state the simple truth – that we’d had special siyatta diShmaya.
I was hospitalized in Tel Hashomer for only one week. The family did not fall apart, and business continued as usual. And the main thing – I was zocheh to daven with a minyan, to hear shiurei Torah and Daf Yomi. I was zocheh to live the halachic way of life of a Jew in Eretz Yisrael. For a long while, I continued coming to the hospital regularly for checkups, until they confirmed that everything was fine.
Twenty-five years have passed since then, and my heart continues beating with tremendous thanks to the Creator of refuos, the Master of wonders, Who renews the creation in His goodness each day.
May Hashem continue to help us and send a refuah sheleimah to all the ill people of His nation Yisrael.
