Lately, I have been giving a lot more thought to the subject of miracles. Considering what I so recently went through, I don’t think many of you will find that surprising. Having a stroke, and surviving it, and having all my faculties returned to me in a matter of hours rather than months or years, can certainly focus one’s thoughts toward the miraculous.
How much the more so with my being a rabbi – a member of the clergy who has spent many years serving congregations – and as such, has accompanied many a congregant along the long and arduous road of return that typically follows falling victim to a stroke. Indeed, providing comfort and solace to stroke victims has been one of the more difficult tasks in my rabbinate, and I expect that is just as true for other clergy, regardless of their faith identities. After all, when people have lost in an instant so many physical abilities that we tend to take for granted, and then are faced with the grueling task of recapturing those abilities, in the smallest of incremental achievements over the longest periods of time, it doesn’t take long for them to view a faith leader’s words of encouragement, and hope as sounding shallow as their own efforts to recover seem increasingly futile. And who can blame them? As clergy, we not only observe the growing frustration and the spiritual and emotional agony of congregants who have fallen victim to strokes, but we, in our own sense of powerlessness – in our inability to do much more than offer words of encouragement which seem empty in the face of their painfully slow and miniscule progress – feel their pain and frustration as well.
Having accompanied so many others along that excruciating journey, how could I not but recognize the miraculous when I found myself one morning in the grips of a stroke, yet a day and a half later I was able to leave the hospital with all, or most, of my abilities restored? I tell you, that morning, when the stroke hit, and I was holding myself up over the bathroom sink by my arms, for my legs had failed me, and I was waiting for my wife to come home and the ambulance to arrive, I truly felt that this was the end; that I would not see the light at the end of that tunnel. At that moment, I was the embodiment of the prayer from the morning service which states: “Praise to You, Adonai our God, who formed the human body with skill, creating the bodies many pathways and openings. It is well known before Your throne of glory that if one of them be wrongly opened or closed, it would be impossible to endure and stand before you.” Yet here, this Shabbat, I stand before you. I have not the slightest doubt but that it was a miracle.
Now one can easily argue that it wasn’t a miracle. That it was science; medical science. The drug that was responsible for my recovery – the tPA Drip – was first introduced in 1996. If it is administered within 3 hours after the onset of a stroke, it can quickly work to dissolve the blood clot which caused the stroke, eliminating it before there is permanent damage to the brain. But when you think about, if you are not already a patient in a hospital, 3 hours is not a lot of time to work with. A lot has to happen before the drug is administered. In my own case, the diagnosis was that the stroke hit the back of my brain. But if they were to administer the drug in time, they did not have the time to do the testing necessary to determine whether or not there was any bleeding in my brain. For if there was bleeding, the drug would only make the situation worse, perhaps kill me. My wife and I decided that in spite of the risks, they should administer the drug and leave the rest to God. Considering how dire the result could have been, that I not only survived but recovered was but another miracle. Going in, no doctor could guarantee that outcome. It wasn’t just science. It was a miracle.
But if any doubt of the miraculous still lingered. That doubt was about to be washed away. After my release from the hospital, though most of my faculties had been restored, there were some lingering effects. The top of my head always felt numb. I continually had 3 separate headaches, simultaneously; one in the back of my head, around where the clot had been, another along the carotid artery in my neck, where an ultrasound had been conducted to determine any blockage, and one in the front of head, in the area of my forehead. All hurting at the same time and never going away. It was strange, since from childhood I used to have headaches regularly, but sometime in the late 80’s they just stopped and never returned. Now I had 3 of them all at one time. It was Yom Kippur afternoon – 19 days since the onset of the stroke. I was worshipping at the synagogue in Davenport. It was time for silent prayer, and I silently prayed in earnest, thanking God for my salvation, and asking God for strength. For if the way I had been feeling, with the numbness and the headaches, was to be my new normal, considering what the outcome could have been, I was more than ready to accept it. I only wanted God to give me the strength to live with it. It was while I was deep into that prayer that my prayer was suddenly interrupted by what I can only describe as a strong pop that I felt in my head. It was as if I could actually hear it as well as feel it. No sooner did it occur than the numbness and the headaches started to quickly fade. By the end of the service, they were completely gone. Now there could be other explanations for what I experienced. In fact, I shared the experience with my doctor, who had nothing to say in explanation of it. Still there could be other explanations, but I am convinced that the pop I experienced, and the relief I felt, were in answer to my prayer. Miracle number 3.
One can ask: Were any of these experiences really miracles or are there rational explanations for each and every one of them? It’s a fair question. But there is a fundamental problem with the question itself. It operates under the premise that reason and miracles must exist on two separate plains. That they cannot exist side-by-side. And that is not necessarily true. Something can be both miraculous and rational at the very same time. Being able to explain how a miracle occurred does not make it any less of a miracle. For what makes a miracle a miracle is not that it defies explanation but rather that how it occurs, when it occurs, and the circumstances in which it occurs produces a sense of awe and wonder. For this one moment, the forces of the universe came together in such a way as to produce a result which was unexpected, surprising, and in its own way, a very special gift. The fact that we can parse it and explain how it happened is besides the point. The fact that it did happen, in the way that it happened is the essence of the miracle itself.
When I was a rabbi in Lincoln, Nebraska, there was this elderly couple who belonged to my congregation – Paula & George. One day George collapsed and was taken to the intensive care unit of the hospital. He lay there in a coma, with the monitors showing very little brain function. He lay in that bed in the fetal position. I sat with Paula as she met with the team of doctors who explained to her that he lay there in the fetal position because his brain was not getting enough oxygen to function, and that the monitor was showing that he was basically brain dead. Therefore they counseled her to allow him to pass away naturally by giving the order not to resuscitate him should he go into cardiac arrest. To my surprised, she refused. All of us in the room, with the exception of Paula, were convinced that he would linger until he died. We were wrong. Several days later, he awoke, eventually left the hospital, and lived for another two years. While his recovery can be explained medically, it was against all the odds. It was a miracle.
It was but a month or two after I arrived in Iowa that on one Summer Sunday afternoon, I received a call from one of the local hospitals, telling me that a congregant was very close to death and they thought I should come as soon as possible. So I did. I had been doing yard work but I didn’t take the time to change my clothes, lest she pass before I arrived. I walked into her room and there she was, laying still on the bed. Suddenly, to my surprise and the surprise of the nurse, she sat up, looked at me and said, “Hello Rabbi. I am so glad to see you.” She, too, recovered and left the hospital. A miracle.
In 1948, the United Nations passed its Partition Plan, dividing Palestine into 2 states; one Jewish and the other Arab. The entire Arab world rejected the plan and mustered its forces to invade the fledgling State of Israel, promising to drive all its Jews into the sea. The army of the newborn Jewish State was greatly outnumbered and outgunned by the combined armies of the Arab world. The rest of the world sat back, expecting to swoop up whatever Jews survived the Arab onslaught. But when the smoke cleared, the State of Israel not only survived but was victorious. A miracle. As did the Maccabees 2100 years earlier, they, too, evoked of us the proclamation, “Nes Gadol Haya Sham – A great miracle happened there!”
Miracles occur all the time, and they don’t need to be on as grand a scale as any of these. But we miss them. We miss them because our eyes and our ears and our minds are closed to them. There is a story about two old friends meeting on 5th Avenue in New York City, just as all the business offices were letting out. The sidewalks were filled with people and street was fill with cars, and the racket they produce was intense. Now these two friends hadn’t seen each other in many years. So they fought the crowd in order to embrace each other in the moment. Just as they were embracing, one friend said to the other, “Don’t you hear it?” “Hear what?” the other replied. “Don’t you hear that little bird caught in that bush in that window box over there?” Well, the other friend looked and that window box was a good 15 to 20 yards away. “How can you hear a little bird that far away in all this noise?” he asked. “I’ll show you,” his friend replied. They walked to the window box and the one friend pushed aside the branches and low and behold, a little bird flew out. In astonishment, the other friend exclaimed, “I can’t believe you heard that bird! You must have Superman hearing.” “Not really,” the first friend replied. “Let me show you.” With that, he stuck his hand into his pocket and pulled out a quarter. He then dropped it on the sidewalk and no sooner did it hit the ground then a whole group of people just stopped in their tracks, turned around and looked. “You see,” said the friend, “it all depends upon what you are listening for.”
It all depends upon what we are listening for and what we are looking for. As long as we close our minds to the possibility of the miraculous, we will never witness it. But once we open our minds to that possibility, our world will abound with miracles. And we will be the better for it. Our lives will be so enriched by the miracles we encounter, for with them comes hope rather than despair. For in them we will experience a God who cares and is actively involved in our lives. It is Jewish tradition, that immediately upon waking up in the morning, we say a prayer of thanksgiving to God for granting us the miracle of another day of life. We begin each day by acknowledging the many miracles that surround us. In so doing God becomes all the more real to us, and not just some three-letter theoretical word we invoke in ritual moments but ignore in the course of daily living.
We should not require a moment of dire crisis to encounter the miraculous in our lives, but rather we can actively seek it out.
Archive for the ‘Health Challenges’ category
Miracles: A Reflection
November 9, 2019Daily Dayenu
May 10, 2011At this year’s Congregational Seder, while we were singing and reciting “Dayenu,” I could not help but be struck by the spiritual confluence of 3 events which took place within the last few months: my surgery and subsequent illness, my congregation’s celebration of its 150th anniversary, and Passover.
The message of the “Dayenu” is summed up by its title, for the translation of dayenu is “It would have been enough for us.” The text takes us through the story of the Exodus and breaks it down into each of the blessings our people experienced in the course of that event. Recounting each of those blessings, we respond by saying “Dayenu!” – if this had been the only blessing which we experienced then “it would have been enough for us.” But of course, each of those blessings was not the only one from which our people benefited. The story of the Exodus is one of blessing upon blessing upon blessing. However, even as we retell the story, we seem to take those manifold blessings for granted. Therefore the task of “Dayenu” is to recount each individual blessing, and in so doing, reveal to us the magnificent tapestry of blessings which constitute the true miracle of Passover.
The Exodus was not the only time when we have experienced blessing upon blessing upon blessing. More often than we appreciate, our lives are a tapestry of blessings. We live among miracles but do not always recognize them. This brings me back to my congregation’s 150th anniversary and to my recent illness.
The fact that Temple Emanuel of Davenport, Iowa has survived and prospered for 150 years is the direct result of a long chain of blessings. There have been so many dayenu moments in the history of our congregation and there have been so many dayenu people – both laity and clergy – who have made that history and our very existence possible. Each of these moments and each of these people was a special gift – a blessing – for our congregation. Each one brought to us their own brand of miracle. Indeed, it was their collective miracles which made us the congregation we are today. But whether or not we realize it, the blessings and the miracles continue today. They are to be found in so many of the people who give and do so much and who labor to keep our congregation alive, vibrant and meaningful. These are our current dayenu people and they are busy continuing to create our dayenu moments.
As for my illness, it has awakened within me a sense of the dayenu in the course of daily living. There is an old joke about a doctor coming out of surgery, informing the family that the operation was successful but the patient died. These days I resonate with that joke for my surgery was successful but I almost died from post surgical blood clots. Indeed, I would be dead today had it not been for my coincidentally going to the Mayo Clinic for my 6-week post surgical follow-up. After experiencing my symptoms and being instructed by the physician’s assistant in my pulmonologist’s office that all I needed to do was depend more on my asthma medications, it was the doctors at the Mayo Clinic who quickly picked up on the seriousness of my life threatening condition and hospitalized me. There is nothing like a near death experience to help one to appreciate the fragility and impermanence of our lives! We tend to live our lives as if there will always be a tomorrow when the harsh reality is that there is no guarantee that there will be a tomorrow. Today – this very moment – may be all that we have left. If we find ourselves awakening in the morning, we should recognize that we have been blessed with the gift of another day. In fact, in our Jewish tradition, there is a prayer we are supposed to offer upon awakening – “Modeh ani lifanecha, Melech chai v’kayam, shehechezarta bi nishmati b’chemla. Rabbah emunatecha – I give thanks before You, everlasting Sovereign, for You have returned my soul to me. Great is Your faithfulness.” Every morning is a dayenu moment. Life is far shorter than we choose to believe. All our moments are precious, for any one of them could be our last. It is up to us to choose whether we treasure them – whether we embrace them with the appreciation of a dayenu – or we squander them. Likewise, when it comes to illness and the other trying times in our lives, we are quick to discover who are our dayenu people; who are those people whose concern and caring bring into our darkest moments the brilliant miracle of a healing of the spirit. There are too many people who we take for granted; too many people who we think of in terms of “What have you done for me lately.” Yet the fact that they populate our lives and fill it with their love and concern, and their eager willingness to help and comfort, is most certainly deserving of a heartfelt dayenu; a dayenu for each and every one of them. They each are a blessing which we should never take for granted.
May each and every one of us come to appreciate the dayenu moments and the dayenu people in our lives!
One Lung Living
June 15, 2010I am a sufferer from asthma. However, with the proper medication, I usually have been able to keep it under control. However, this past winter I suffered from an upper respiratory infection which my primary care physician strove to knock out with prednisone and a serious antibiotic. When all was said and done, the coughing was far more under control but I never really recovered from the shortness of breath. For months, I attributed that shortness of breath to my asthma, which I thought had somehow just gotten out of control.
When I finally did have an appointment with my pulmonologist, he suggested that since it had been a year since my last breath test, I should take another. Much to both of our surprise, the test indicated that my breathing capacity was half of what it was a year ago. So he listened to my lungs and grew concerned that there was far less breath noise coming from the left lung than the right. So began more serious tests. An x-ray revealed that the left side of my diaphragm was elevated up against the lung, which appeared significantly reduced. Something called a sniff test – which uses a fluoroscope, which I have not seen since the 50’s – clearly showed that the left side of the diaphragm is paralyzed. Why? We are still seeking that answer. Thank God, the most common cause – cancer – has been ruled out.
In the meantime, I basically have needed to get on with my life, primarily using only one of my lungs. Obviously, it has made a difference. I tire more easily. Indeed, I perpetually feel weary. And it does not take that much to make me breathless. Walking uphill, even with the slightest of inclines, is a chore. A short flight of stairs leaves me utterly winded. My gait is slower and walking while talking – on cell phone or in person – has become quite the challenge.
As I write this, I am on one of my mini-sabbaticals. Months ago, I had been invited by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, in Washington, D.C., to attend a two-week seminar for university faculty teaching the Holocaust. With my oldest child, Shira, living in the D.C. area, and with my commitment to Holocaust education, I have been eagerly looking forward to this experience. Well, with the onset of this lung problem, it was questionable as to whether or not I could handle all the walking and book schlepping that would be required of me, not to mention the infamous D.C. summer heat and humidity. Anticipating what lie ahead, I was on the fence – yearning to immerse myself in the seminar experience yet fearful that my body would betray me. Friends questioned the wisdom of my going ahead with these plans. But when I asked my pulmonologist, he told me that I would regret passing up such an opportunity. Therefore, as long as I took it slow and listened to my body, I should go for it. So I did!
I write this article having finished the two-week program, on the night before I return to the Quad Cities. Physically speaking, this has not been an easy two weeks. Even though I was born and raised in the ultimate city – New York – still, living in a small city such as Davenport, where one drives everywhere they wish to go, it is easy to forget how labor intensive it is to travel by public transportation. The walks to and from the Metro (the D.C. subway system), with a backpack filled with papers and books slung over my shoulder, in the heat and humidity which even mark the Washington mornings, were in and of themselves exhausting, and breathtaking (but not in the “My, how beautiful!” sense of the word). Invariably, by the time I reached the classroom at the Museum, I was soaked in sweat. And if that were not challenge enough, anyone who knows the D.C. Metro system, knows that it runs deep underground, with major escalators transporting passengers to and fro. However, as those who know the system can attest, those escalators are often non-functioning. With one lung working, I quickly found that a dead down escalator was no fun, but manageable. A dead up escalator, on the other hand… But when all was said and done, the very fact that I enter these words into my keyboard is testimony to the fact that I have survived.
As with most of the challenges of our lives, embedded in their difficulties are important life lessons. This challenge was no exception. There is much I have learned from my Washington experience, out of the classroom as well as within it.
First I have learned that it can be all too easy to surrender to our challenges. We can permit them to overwhelm us and immobilize us even before we attempt to confront them. “This will be too much for me!” we say as we convince ourselves to step back and aside. We play it safe and by so doing, we avoid the pain that comes with facing the difficulty head on. But we also avoid the multiple benefits of moving forward with our lives. I could have passed on the seminar, staying safe and secure in my home in Davenport; never expending myself beyond the slightest huff or puff. I most certainly would have been more comfortable. But there would have been so much more that I would have denied myself. First of all, there would have been the seminar, which was great! Great teachers. Great colleagues and new friends. Great new insights into a subject that really moves me. Then there would have been the quality time I spent with Shira; the weekday dinners and the weekend outings. On the last 5 days, Gail and Helene joined us. What a special time the four of us shared; something which we do not get the opportunity to do that often any more. Then there was Washington itself. I never tire of this city. There is so much to do here, and especially to learn. Every visit is a growth experience. I could have taken the easy way out and stayed safe at home, but then I would have missed all of these wonderful experiences. The benefits were most certainly worth the physical price I had to pay.
Second, I learned that there is a difference between listening to my body and surrendering to it. My body has been telling me to slow down – not stop! So I have had to learn to slow down. My gait these days is definitely slower. It is more of a meander than a march. Yet I can still move forward without completely losing my breath as long as I can accept that slower pace and as long as I give myself more time to get where I am going. Even so, it was somewhere between ironic and comic that I found that while walking the streets of Washington, at this much slower pace, still there were those people – able bodied people – who walked even slower than I; they had two good working lungs (or so I assumed) but still I outpaced them! Slower does not necessarily mean last, but even if it does, it is the getting to where you are going that counts.
All this has made me reconsider how much so many of us push ourselves. We are driven, but in truth it is also we who are the drivers. And where does it get us? More often than not, to the very same place we would wind up if we simply slowed down and chose not to tear our bodies and our lives apart in the getting there. All the time, people say “What’s the hurry?” but how many of them really mean it? Yet that is really one of the most important questions of our lives. “What is our hurry?” Why must we transform our lives into races? If only we would choose to slow down, we might find a heck of a lot more to enjoy along the way. And God knows, neither our bodies nor our souls would need to suffer the wear and tear of it all.
Third, and perhaps most important of all, we must learn to play with the hand that has been dealt us. I do not know what caused the left side of my diaphragm to stop functioning. So far, the doctors do not know either. Is it something I did or is it just a freak happenstance? Admittedly, I cannot say the same about my obesity (and I think about that a lot these days), but about my lung right now I can say it. Of course I want to repair the damage but it may not be reparable. If it isn’t, I will have to learn to live with it. I will have to figure out how best to treat it; how far I can take it and how can I avoid doing further damage. But that does not mean that my life as I know it has come to an end. I cannot cry over it. I just have to move forward with it. And I most certainly cannot give up seeking a means to repair it. When conventional medical treatment runs its course, I will turn to non-conventional treatment. I will do this for as long as such a pursuit does NOT interfere with my living as full a life as I can, in the moment. What I mean by that is that I will not surrender my life to the quest for a cure, but will continue that quest as long as it enhances my life and does not detract from it.
For the important thing about life is actually living it. Not just enduring it or expending it, but living it; making the moments and the minutes and the hours and the days and the weeks and the months and the years matter. As a rabbi, one of my most painful duties is trying to offer comfort to those elderly congregants who have become so afflicted that while they maintain a biological life, they have lost any semblance of a quality of life. Having had the privilege of serving my congregation for 25 years, I have enjoyed knowing these individuals in the fullness of their lives. But now, to watch them transformed into empty breathing, heart beating shells, simply breaks my own heart. That is not a fate I wish for myself or anyone I love. Yet as I spend time with such people, they teach me still – in their silence and their vacant stares, they teach me. They teach me that I must make the most of my life while I still have the ability to do so, for when that ability is gone, it is gone. All that will remain will be the mark I have left on those whose lives I have touched – hopefully in more positive than negative ways – while I was still capable of being a vibrant actor upon this stage. When it comes to that type of living, no malady such as a bum lung is going to get in my way. I will not let it. Rather, I choose to play the hand that’s been dealt me and carry on as best I can, given the circumstances.
I know not what the future holds for me but this I do know. I will choose to make the most of whatever I have, challenges not withstanding. That is what living a full life is all about. If it has taken the loss of the use of one of my lungs to drive home that lesson for me, then so be it. I am grateful for the insight.