The Deal That We Made
As told to Rabbi Nachman Seltzer
Courtesy of Inyan Magazine
Who will ever forget the day the towers came down; the sight of the World Trade Center crumbling into a billion glowing ashes? I don’t think it’s even possible to forget that sight. Truthfully, I wouldn’t want to forget what I saw that day, because 9/11 was the catalyst for what our life has become – a life I am truly proud of.
Back then, we lived in a small town in New Jersey. From the windows of our home, we had a clear view of the twin towers soaring gracefully over the Manhattan skyline. On the day they fell, I was awakened to the fact that nothing is safe, and nothing is sacred.
My wife had been wanting to move for years – both of us saw our future in Eretz Yisrael, but seeing the towers fall brought that desire up to the surface. Misplaced fear had kept us from going until then, but our home was no longer the safe haven we’d imagined it to be, so there was nothing holding us back.
“Miriam,” I told my wife as we stared out the window, gaping at the newly-formed hole in the New York skyline, “we are moving to Israel.”
“When?” she asked.
“As soon as possible.”
She knew exactly what I meant. “Okay,” she simply replied.
It wasn’t nearly as easy as we made it sound, but we were determined to turn our dream into a reality. We plunged into the details with a finality that bespoke our seriousness about our decision, and soon enough we were among the first Nefesh B’Nefesh olim in Eretz Yisrael. We exited the old terminal at Ben Gurion Airport, where we kissed the ground, and then entered the waiting van. Before we knew it, we were on the highway, all systems go, with my wife and little daughter holding on for dear life.
Forty minutes later we were pulling up outside our new home, which was in a brand new neighborhood that was still on the process of being built. Every day was an adventure as we acclimated to our new surroundings and every night a dream as we looked up at the sky and admired the millions of stars to be seen in every direction. Since the neighborhood was still new, there weren’t many shuls, and everyone davened amicably in the same shul. Quite honestly, we loved our new life.
Our son was born on September 11, one year to the day since the towers fell. We considered him the greatest gift in the world and thanked Hashem endlessly. A few nights after his bris, my wife and I went for a walk, pushing the carriage and marveling at the newness that filled our lives.
“Miriam,” I said, “I feel like Avi is a gift from Hashem, a matanah to us, for being brave enough to see what needed to be seen and for having the courage to actually follow through with what we believed.”
“Yisroel,” she replied, “I could not agree with you more.”
Three months later, my wife took Avi to the neighborhood Tipat Chalav (well-baby clinic) for a routine checkup.
“Mrs. Stern,” said the nurse, “I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but Avi can’t seen to focus on anything and his head should have already grown larger than this. Think you’re going to have to take him to the doctor to be checked out.”
The next time Miriam took the kids to the doctor, almost as an afterthought, she told him what the nurse at Tipat Chalav had said. The doctor measured Avi’s head and sent us to a neurologist. The neurologist sent Avi for a CT scan, which showed that he had lost oxygen during birth and was suffering from cerebral palsy.
“There are numerous levels of palsy,” he explained, “ranging from people who are high-functioning and self-sufficient to people who are completely dependent on others; we will only know as Avi grows older how affected he is. In the meantime, there is much you will have to learn in order to raise him according to his needs.”
As you can imagine, we had a million and one questions. The doctors gave us all the time in the world, explaining everything and helping us deal with the shock in a sensitive and empathetic way. Miriam and I began reading every book we could find on cerebral palsy, until we had become thoroughly educated on our son’s condition. For the time being, we would have to take things day by day.
It was a very challenging time, and the most difficult part was that we had always imagined that the parent of a special child has a unique connection with the Ribbono shel Olam. But suddenly, it seemed as if the opposite were true. My wife began having a hard time davening, and we were so stressed out by our situation that we began watching random shows just to disconnect from reality. We felt terrible about doing this, but the stress was so strong that we allowed ourselves to give in to the yetzer hora.
It was a very confusing time in our lives. Instead of drawing us closer to Hashem, why was Avi’s presence in our lives pulling us farther and farther away?
I had thought that I was handing the situation pretty well, and it was only my wife who was having difficulty dealing with things. But when I said as much to a friend, he was incredulous. “Yisroel,” he said, “how can you say that you’re doing fine? Over the last year, you’ve gained a hundred pounds!”
Time moved along and we got into something of a routine. Avi began attending a gan for special children in Yerushalayim at a very young age, which included various forms of individualized therapy. Our home settled into a semblance of normalcy.
When Avi was about three years old, our next daughter was born, my wife and daughter arrived home from the hospital and we began planning a Kiddush for the following Shabbos. Relatives flew in from the States and our home became a beehive of activity as neighbors dropped off cakes and kugels and we attempted to conform to an entirely new type of nightly schedule.
Things were gearing up for a really festive celebration. I was thinking of going all-out: a few types of herring; chulent; kugel; the works. On Thursday morning, I was in the middle of purchasing cases of soda when Miriam called.
“Yisroel?”
“Yes?”
“Avi just threw up.”
“Something unusual?”
“It certainly looks that way to me.”
I reached home five minutes later, and, taking the new baby and Avi with us, we drove over to the local clinic, where Avi threw up again. The doctor took one look at Avi and told us to drive straight to the hospital.
“Can we stop at home for a few things first?”
“No; go now.”
We went.
At the time, Avi had been doing fairly well. He was able to walk using a specially designed walker. He loved his special gan, was able to speak about ten words, and was a happy, affectionate kid who freely dispensed kisses and lit up our lives to an extreme degree. From one second to the next we were en route to the hospital. Avi kept touching his head and the doctors wanted to do a blood test. Miriam warned them to expect Avi to fight with all his might, but instead of fighting he lay there limp, completely apathetic. Something was terribly wrong!
The doctors told us that it was either pneumonia or bacterial meningitis. That was very scary to hear, since the only thing we knew about bacterial meningitis was that a person could deteriorate very quickly. Avi was being monitored in the emergency room, his condition somewhat stabilized, when Avi’s ganenet came to the hospital and told us to go home.
“I’ll stay here with Avi; you go home and get whatever you need for a potentially long stay.”
We agreed.
I went to get the car and was pulling up in front of the hospital, where my wife was supposed to be waiting for me, when the ganenet came running over, panic-stricken.
“Mr. Stern!”
“What is it?”
“Go back to the hospital immediately!”
“What happened?”
“Just go. I’ll park the car.”
I handed over the keys and raced back to Avi’s curtained-off area in the emergency room.
“What happened?” I asked my wife.
“Avi began having a seizure right after you left. Baruch Hashem, we were still here when it happened!”
Hours passed as Avi went under the medical microscope. We waited tensely among a host of jittery parents with sleep-deprived eyes and coffee cups in their hands. People in the hospital witnessed what was going on and began saying Tehillim. Patients grabbed siddurim and everyone who heard the news began davening with all their hearts for the cute little boy who was lying helpless and unresponsive. Avi was moved to another area, sedated to stop the seizures, and then, with the doctors unwilling to wait until a diagnosis was confirmed, began receiving antibiotics to treat the meningitis.
That was Thursday afternoon.
Things remained status quo all afternoon. We alternated being with our newborn baby daughter outside in the waiting area and sitting at Avi’s bedside. At midnight, I was watching Avi while Miriam was outside with the baby when Avi stopped breathing. Beeping emanated from machines as I ran to my wife unsure what to do. At that moment, a good friend suddenly showed up.
“I’ll watch the baby,” Reuven told us. “Both of you have to be with Avi right now.”
The next thing we knew, the medical team closed off the curtain around Avi and began to attempt resuscitation. Afterwards, when Avi was again stable, the doctors explained that the medicine Ave had been given to stop the seizures can sometimes cause a person to stop breathing. (Good thing we didn’t know that little tidbit of information before we allowed the medication to be administered.)
All this was too much action for the ER, and Avi was moved over to the pediatric ICU. At 3 a.m., we sat beside Avi’s bed, helplessly watching his frail body being pumped with IV fluids and various medications. It was not an easy sight to behold.
The doctors told us they were going to have to do a spinal tap to confirm their diagnosis, and it couldn’t be done until Shabbos. We would have to miss our baby’s Kiddush, but what can you do? I went home to get some things and to welcome my patents to Eretz Yisrael.
“Enjoy the Kiddush,” I told them. Then I turned around and retraced my path to the hospital.
Finally, the doctors arrived at a diagnosis.
“Avi has contracted bacterial meningitis,” they said.
“How bad is it?”
The head of the pediatric ICU seemed to be finding it difficult to meet my eyes.
“Mr. Stern…”
“Talk to me, doctor.”
“Look, nobody can ever really know how things are going to turn out. There are over 100 strains of bacteria that can cause meningitis, and Avi has one of the toughest to fight: pneumococcal. We have increased his antibiotics, and now all we can do is wait for him to hopefully awake from his coma.”
“Doctor,” Miriam asked, “I’m afraid that if he comes out of the coma, he will come out as a vegetable. He already had one trauma to his brain – his cerebral palsy, and now he is enduring a second one.”
“Look, we are doing all we can,” the doctor replied. “If he makes it through, we have no way of knowing how he will come out.”
“Have you ever head of a child with cerebral palsy who also contracted bacterial meningitis?” I asked.
“While obviously one does not negate the other, I conferred with my colleague, the head of infectious disease in this hospital,” the doctor admitted, “and neither of us has ever come across a similar case in all our years practicing medicine.”
That Shabbos, the extended Stern family celebrated our newborn baby’s Kiddush, while we, the parents, and even the bas simcha herself, were unable to take part in the simcha.
I gave the matter a lot of thought, then turned to my wife and said, “Miriam, we’ve just been handed the most shocking news imaginable. Our immediate reaction is that we want to cry, but it’s Shabbos now, and we are not going to cry on Shabbos. Instead, we are going to sing zemiros, right here in the hospital. I also want to point out that the way the doctor phrased his diagnosis leaves us much room for hope.”
“What do you mean?”
“The doctor said that Avi’s illness can swing either way and I’m taking that to mean that right now the decree is not sealed in heaven – we can still change everything! We need to get the entire world to start davening for Avi. We need to plan. But not on Shabbos. Right now, we sing!”
It was probably one of the most uplifting Shabbosos of our lives.
Of course, the second Havdalah was made, I was galvanized into action, I started a whole email campaign from the hospital to get people to daven for us, and before we knew it, we were receiving chizuk calls from around the world. Emergency davening sessions were scheduled at our shul for both men and women that very Motzoei Shabbos. We were doing our best – or were we?
Late Motzoei Shabbos I went to see a leading posek in Yerushalayim. Avi had still not come out of his coma and everything was still up in the air. I called him from the hospital, gave him a brief rundown of the situation, and told him that I needed to see him immediately. When we met, he welcomed me into his home and listened patiently as I explained everything.
“Reb Yisroel,” he said at last, his eyes heavy with the sorrow of my revelations, “Hashem likes and appreciates it when His children make deals with Him. This would be a good time to make a deal with Hashem.”
“What kind of a deal?”
“You tell me. What’s one area that you feel you could improve in spirituality? Do you have a television in your home?”
“Chas v’shalom,” I replied, somewhat indignant at the very thought that I would be the owner of a television. But then I had to reconsider the matter, because truthfully, there were plenty of times when we had downloaded things onto our computer to watch. We did this as an escape from the stress of our everyday life. We knew it was wrong – we had always known it was wrong – but we didn’t know how else to deal with everything going on around us. The posek said nothing; he merely waited for me to make up my mind.
“Okay,” I said at last. “There is one thing.” And I told him about the shows.
When I finished, the posek looked directly at me. “I want to tell you something, Reb Yisroel.”
I waited.
“Kedushah cannot rest in a place filled with tumah… it’s either one or the other.”
“I hear you.”
“Well, then, make a deal with Hashem. Write a contract. You will stop watching the shows if Hashem heals your son.”
“This is something that people do?”
“More than you know, Reb Yisroel. More than you know.”
I called Miriam from the car to give her some warning of the decision we were going to have to make. Neither of us had wanted to bring the outside world into our home – it had simply happened due to circumstance, yet I also knew that committing to stop cold turkey would be extremely difficult for both of us. I found Miriam sitting outside Avi’s room.
“I’ll make any change you want,” she said. “Just do me a favor and leave the TV shows alone.”
“Honestly, that’s the one thing we really need to change.”
Miriam got up from her seat and went to Avi’s bedside. But it hurt too much to look at him. He was attached to what seemed like millions of wires and tubes, while countless machines beeped and warbled nearby. He was bloated and pasty and after what seemed like and eternity but was really no longer than a few minutes, she had to turn away. Then it was my turn to wait at Avi’s bedside as my wife struggled with the decision to give up the coping mechanism she had come to rely upon, however wrong it may have been. She returned ten minutes later, a resolute expression on her face.
“I’m willing to make the deal that the posek suggested,” she said.
“Go on,” I told her, sensing that there was more.
“But the deal needs to be contingent on one thing.”
“What’s that?”
“That there will be a one hundred percent recovery. Avi should return to the way he was before he got meningitis.”
I was dumbfounded by her words.
“Didn’t you hear what the doctor said to us about nobody fully recovering from this type of meningitis?”
“The posek said that Hashem likes it when His children make deals with Him. I am willing to make a deal. But it has to be one hundred percent recovery.”
Seeing that she was adamant, I removed a piece of paper from my pocket and scrawled a contract between us and Hashem, with room for two signatures on the bottom of the page, making the deal contingent on a recovery of no less than one hundred percent. It was still Motzoei Shabbos when Miriam and I both signed the document.
On Sunday, Avi began to breathe a little on his own. The doctors told us that they would take him off the respirator if he kept improving. His ganenet came to visit him and sang “yadayim lemalah” (hands in the air). Avi’s eyes were still closed, but Miriam saw him try to raise his hands while she sang. He was defying medical science.
They moved him out of the ICU Monday morning, after weaning him off the respirator. Shortly after, Avi opened his eyes.
On Tuesday, a medical clown paused at the door to Avi’s room. Miriam was about to tell him not to bother, but then she thought better of it and stepped out of the way. He entered the room and started doing some shtick with a music box. Avi smiled. The clown did a few other things and Avi laughed. Miriam couldn’t begin to explain to the clown what had just happened; how miraculous it was.
He’s still not rolling over, Hashem, was her next thought.
On Wednesday, he rolled over. He doctors were cautiously noncommittal.
“Thank you for everything, Hashem,” Miriam constantly whispered, directing her thoughts upwards, “but Avi still doesn’t recognize his own name!”
He responded to his name on Thursday.
Avi proceeded to recover from his illness at an astounding rate. The doctors were emphatic that they had never seen anything like this in their collective medical careers. For a kid with cerebral palsy and meningitis to make such and incredible recovery – it was astounding!
The doctors did a CT scan soon after and, chasdei Hashem, there was no additional damage to Avi’s brain. He had reverted to the way he had been before he’s contracted meningitis. Hashem had fully fulfilled his part of the deal.
By the time two weeks had passed, the doctors told us there was no reason to keep Avi in the hospital any longer, and that we were free to take him home. Based on the tests they had done for him in the past and his current test results, we had witnessed a complete recovery. It was an open miracle.
And so we returned home with Avi in our arms – minus every trace of meningitis. Hashem had kept His part of the deal, and not only had we kept ours, but we found ourselves becoming closer to the Ribbono shel Olam than ever before. Keeping our end of the deal improved our lives in many ways. I cannot even tell you how thankful we were that we had accepted it upon ourselves.
Six months later, Miriam had the zechus of meeting Rebbitzin Batsheva Kanievsky, a”h, when the Rebbitzin came to speak at a camp for special-needs kids. Miriam had been standing outside with Avi and they met in the hallway. Rebbitzin Kanievsky shook her hand for a long time and gave Miriam a long brachah, along with a huge dose of chizuk. One statement in particular stood out.
“A child like this is a kamei’a, an amulet – such kedusha!”
All of a sudden, the words of the posek became clearer. We couldn’t have both worlds. We had to provide Avi with the holy atmosphere his pure neshamah required. By compromising the kedushah in our home, we had almost lost him.
This newfound state of reality brought us to another level of awareness. We finally understood how much Avi meant to us. We would never forget how devastated we had been when faced with the possibility of losing him.
People had literally changed their lives in his zechus. My own father began learning the daf. It was amazing how much one little boy had accomplished. Suddenly, we were truly aware of the importance of all things. We treasured our newfound connection with Hashem, and considered it the greatest gift in the world – all thanks to Avi!
Back home, I pinned our contract with Hashem to the corkboard in my office and decided to leave it there to remind us of everything we had been through, as well as the very important decisions we had made. One evening, in an act of impulsivity, we decided to watch a documentary, consoling ourselves that since it wasn’t the same type of show as those we have given up, it was surely permitted.
Every window was closed and there was now breeze in the house. Yet suddenly, the pin holding the contract simply fell out of the board. There was no apparent reason for this – it had been firmly stuck in, but just the same, there it was lying on the floor.
We looked at one another, then up towards Heaven.
“Okay,” we said. “You win. Holiness all the way.
Our next daughter was born a few years later. We celebrated her Kiddush on the same exact Shabbos as her older sister’s. Thankfully, this time we were on hand to greet family and friends.
Years have passed since those traumatic events and the deal is still ongoing. Hashem kept His part and we are keeping ours. And our whole family has continued to grow in its closeness with Hashem