My family was spending the summer of 1985 in the Catskill mountains of upstate New York, when one day, I began to experience pain. Initially, I didn’t think much of it, hoping that it would subside. However, as the days passed and the pain only intensified, I realized that I needed to see a doctor. My brother-in-law, Rabbi Yosef Wilenkin, had also become aware of my discomfort and, being more fluent in English than I was, kindly offered to accompany me to an appointment in the city. I accepted his offer.
After a thorough examination, the doctor quickly determined that my condition was serious. Although he wasn’t a specialist in the field, he knew it was cancer. He immediately referred me to a hospital and recommended I see a particular doctor there for further testing and evaluation.
With my diagnosis, the whole family came back to our home in Crown Heights, and I immediately sat down to write a letter to the Rebbe, informing him of the situation and asking for his blessing. As I was set to be admitted to one of the hospitals in Brooklyn, we received a phone call from the Rebbe’s secretary, Rabbi Binyomin Klein. The Rebbe’s message was clear: “Follow the advice of Dr. Feldman.”
We immediately reached out to Dr. Moshe Feldman, a local physician who was part of the Crown Heights community. As it turned out, Dr. Feldman had connections in Sloan Kettering, the top cancer treatment center in Manhattan, and he referred me there. Clearly, the Rebbe had sensed that Dr. Feldman would be the proper medical channel for my healing.
Before long, I was admitted to the hospital and began undergoing treatment. As you can imagine, I was not in very high spirits. I found it difficult to concentrate, even on my daily Torah studies. After a week or two, my wife wrote a letter to the Rebbe to update him on my condition and, among other things, she mentioned that I was feeling very despondent about the situation.
A short while later, we received an answer. The Rebbe instructed that I make sure to study the daily portions of Rambam (Maimonides’ Mishneh Torah, which the Rebbe had recently divided into a study schedule) and Chitas (an acronym for Chumash, meaning the Five Books of Moses, Tehillim, meaning Psalms, and Tanya, the classic chasidic work by the Alter Rebbe.)
The Rebbe then quoted the verse from Psalms, “The commandments of G-d... gladden the heart,” to say that studying Torah would lift my spirits, and that “all the [positive] benefits that result from [happiness] are obvious.” The Rebbe added that he would pray at the resting place of the Previous Rebbe for my situation to be resolved with “great success” and that I should “report good news.”
On the surface, the Rebbe was addressing my mood, since learning Torah would lift my spirits. But by mentioning those other positive outcomes, along with his blessing for my recovery, I understood that all of those results would come from my meticulously learning the portions of Chitas and Rambam every day.
Needless to say, after receiving such a clear answer, along with the Rebbe’s blessing, my spirits were very much lifted. And, as you can imagine, from that moment on I was able to concentrate fully on my daily Chitas and Rambam. Until today, I make sure to study them every single day.
