Nissim Black left the corona ward with a new musical mandate

Photos: Eli Cobin

For Nissim Black, the rap artist and inspirational speaker who has devoted the past decade teaching people about emunah and Hashem’s unconditional love, battling COVID-19 was a learning experience on the most fundamental level. He says it clarified something he’s been struggling with from the time he converted to Judaism in 2013.

“From the time I began studying about Judaism, I’d been trying to come to terms with how to integrate my music with my spiritual aspirations,” says the now-Breslover chassid who’s created his own style of “Jewish rap.” “I think it all clicked after my experience with coronavirus. When I was lying there, unsure if I’d get out alive, I told Hashem, ‘If I’m outta here, the whole world’s gonna know Your Name!’”

“Don’t Open the Door”

Nissim’s COVID-19 journey, which didn’t escape the media, spanned the Three Weeks, starting on the day before 17 Tammuz and ending on Tishah B’Av, when he and his family were officially allowed to exit isolation.

“When I started feeling feverish and achy on Wednesday, I had a feeling it might be coronavirus, so I took Tylenol for two days straight. By Friday I was feeling fine and the fever was gone. I figured I’d stay at home for a week in quarantine, and then get tested,” Nissim relays. “But late Friday afternoon as I started davening Minchah, all of a sudden I started to feel this crazy pressure all over my body, as if I were being squeezed from all sides. I felt dizzy, and I lost my focus and concentration — it was terrifying. I still tried to push myself to daven, but felt myself getting weaker and weaker. I woke up on Shabbos morning with the pressure again, and told my wife that I needed Hatzolah. They showed up with all their protective gear and took me straight to Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Yerushalayim.”

For the next several hours, Nissim waited for his test results. “I was still feeling the pressure and the dizziness, and had no idea what was going on. I knew that coronavirus affects everyone differently, but I had no way of knowing what these symptoms meant. First, they took my vitals and then swabbed me for COVID.”

Three hours later, Nissim was informed that he was COVID-19 positive. “They took me to an all-glass triage room, and told me not to move, not to open the door, not to talk to anybody, not even go to the bathroom. All I could do was cry out to Hashem. For six hours I begged Hashem to help me, sang niggunim, counted off things to give thanks for.”

It was already Motzaei Shabbos by the time Nissim was taken to the coronavirus ward, which he says was “like a world of its own. The medical staff were all dressed like astronauts, and there are all types of patients — some walking around, some on ventilators. There was a woman who’d recently given birth to a baby, there was a cancer patient — that’s the dynamic of it. I was struck by how the nurses and doctors were so involved, so dedicated to each and every patient.”

Nissim relates that by this time, he was feeling almost normal, and even made Havdalah for the other patients. By the next morning, he was discharged, with orders to self-isolate at home.