The field of high-tech, which was booming in Israel when I moved there, crashed about a year or two after my arrival, making parnassah very difficult for me. At around the same time, my marriage began to flounder, and in 2007 I got divorced.

My ex-wife and I maintained an amicable relationship after the divorce and shared custody of the children equally, doing our best to ensure that the children sensed no friction between us. But still, the divorce was a major blow.

Rather than lick my wounds in therapy, I sought solace at the piano. Feeling rusty after 15 years of not practicing seriously, I decided to take lessons from a concert pianist, a nonreligious Russian woman. After hearing me play, she asked, “Which conservatory did you attend?”

“None,” I replied.

“That’s impossible,” she declared.

After my fourth lesson, she admitted that she had nothing more to teach me. “Your Chopin is really professional,” she said. “Your talent comes straight from G-d.”

That comment made my hair stand on end. That a nonreligious person would ascribe my talent to Hashem was nothing short of bizarre.

She couldn’t end the conversation with a compliment, though. “You will never get back the 15 years you lost,” she predicted. “And you should have gone to Juilliard. Now, you’ll never become anything.”

But when I walked out her door that last time, the words reverberating in my ears were, Your talent comes straight from G-d.

I looked upward. “Hashem,” I said, “let me get this straight. I chose the wrong wife and the wrong career. What am I supposed to do now?”

Then a thought struck me. If I don’t use the musical gift Hashem gave me, then after 120, not only will I have to give a din v’cheshbon for squandering my talent, but I’ll also be told, “We sent a nonreligious Russian pianist to tell you that Hashem gave you talent, and you still didn’t listen!”

I resolved, right then, to begin practicing the piano every day and putting my musical talent to use, while still keeping up my work in computers. I started giving piano lessons to kids and offering volunteer concerts to groups of elderly people and other charitable causes.

In June 2013, I suddenly began to experience severe pain in my right leg that made walking impossible. At first the doctors thought I had pulled a muscle, but further testing revealed that I had aggressive lymphoma. I began receiving inpatient treatment at Hadassah Hospital in Ein Kerem, where I was confined to a wheelchair due to the tumor that had paralyzed my leg.

One day, during my month-long stay in the hospital, I was wheeling myself through Hadassah’s majestic atrium when I spotted a grand piano. At first, I laughed at myself, thinking I was seeing a mirage, like a thirsty man in a desert. But when I came closer, I realized that this was no illusion: It was a Blüthner grand piano. Sitting in my wheelchair, dressed in my hospital gown, I began to play Chopin’s Fantasie Impromptu.

The cancer had caused cramping in my hands, and I could not press the foot pedal with my right leg due to the cancer, so I improvised to compensate for the notes I couldn’t play and pressed the pedal with my left leg. Soon, an audience of delighted listeners — patients and visitors, doctors and nurses — gathered, enjoying the ad hoc concert.

After that, I played the piano practically every day in the hospital. And, recalling the story of a concentration camp survivor who gave 100 concerts during the Holocaust, I made a silent pledge that if I would recover, I would give 100 concerts for sick people in Hadassah.

One day, as I was sitting at the piano in the hospital, I noticed out of the corner of my eye that a man in a wheelchair had come right up to the piano. He was clearly in a lot of pain, but he sat there smiling as I played, and when I finished, he began to applaud enthusiastically. His wife, who was pushing his wheelchair, started to cry. “This is the first time I’ve seen him smile in two months,” she said.

After I was released from the hospital, I went for intensive physiotherapy to relearn how to use my right leg. It took over half a year until I was able to get to Hadassah on crutches and begin fulfilling my 100-concert pledge.

Thankfully, the cancer went into remission and eventually I regained full use of my leg and was able to resume my regular daily activities, while giving concerts at Hadassah regularly. A number of the concerts I gave were to elderly hospice patients, many of whom were mentally incapacitated and were unable to recognize even their own children. They sat there slumped in their wheelchairs, looking completely unaware of their surroundings, yet when I began to play, some of them suddenly came to life and began singing, humming, or tapping their feet along with the music. It was as though the music had penetrated a part of their minds and hearts that illness and dementia couldn’t destroy.

In August 2017, when I was 56, I fainted without warning in my apartment and collapsed on the floor, falling directly onto my right arm. By a miracle, my son happened to visit the next morning, and when he saw me lying on the floor, he immediately called an ambulance to take me to the hospital.

As it turned out, I was suffering from septic shock, probably caused by a sudden, aggressive strep or staph infection in the blood. (I had been feeling fine before I fainted.) By the time the doctors realized what was wrong with me — initially they thought I had suffered a stroke — some of my organs, including my kidneys, had begun to shut down. Yet after a few days of antibiotics, my body started to recover, and the organs that had begun to fail resumed normal function.

The doctors viewed this as a miracle. “How exactly are you alive?” they would ask me, shaking their heads, when they heard about my story.

The only lasting damage to my body was not a direct result of the septic shock, but rather a result of my fall: The nerves in my right arm had been crushed, and my arm was completely paralyzed — a condition the doctors claimed was irreversible.

“Learn to become a lefty,” they advised me.

“Uh, that’s not going to work for me,” I told them. “I’m a concert pianist, and I need both hands.”

In general, I’ve noticed that doctors tend to take a pessimistic view of a patient’s prospects of recovery. Perhaps that’s because they focus exclusively on the physical realities of a patient’s condition, and do not account for intangibles like prayer, miracles, and willpower. Or perhaps it’s because they don’t want to create false hopes in patients and their families and then have to deal with cries of “But you told me I’d recover!”

Either way, I wasn’t about to accept the prognosis of permanent paralysis. Let’s say I work hard for three years to regain the use of my right arm, I reasoned. Even if I make no progress, I won’t be in any worse shape for having tried.

I prayed to Hashem for a miracle, asking Him to restore the function of my arm, but I understood that miracles are a combined effort: I had to do my part, and then I could hope that Hashem would do His.

My part was not easy. For months, I traveled over an hour to Hadassah every day to receive physiotherapy and occupational therapy, even though the physiotherapist herself did not believe I would ever move my arm again. And the process was excruciatingly painful. Some nights, I didn’t sleep more than half an hour because of the pain in my arm, and I arrived at my physiotherapy appointments the next day completely exhausted — even before starting the difficult work of trying to raise my arm a couple of millimeters. Yet I persisted with the physiotherapy, knowing that as long as I was working to do my part, I could continue praying for a miracle.

In the meantime, however, I did follow the doctors’ advice to learn how to use my left arm for eating, writing, and other basic activities. Having honed the art of improvisation when my hands were cramping and my right leg was out of commission, I began to improvise in a different way, composing pieces of music that I could play with only my left hand. This way, I reasoned, even if Hashem would decide not to restore the use of my right arm, I would still be able to live normally and even continue playing the piano.

I had survived cancer and septic shock and was fighting paralysis of a limb for the second time. Yet I was on a mission to recover, and that gave me a sense of purpose, which allowed me to remain happy and upbeat.

One day, when I was at Hadassah for physiotherapy, I met a woman who worked for the hospital, and a look of recognition passed over her face. “I know who you are,” she said. “You’re the math and computers genius who’s also a piano maestro!”

“Genius, shmenius,” I retorted. “I can’t even tie my shoes!”

A sense of humor, I’ve found, is one of the greatest therapeutic tools available. Not only does it allow you to see the lighter side of even catastrophic situations, it also serves as a bridge connecting you to the people around you. Personally, I feel that having a sense of humor is a sign of bitachon; it’s a way of telling Hashem, “I’m going to make the best of whatever You give me.”

Yet it wasn’t always easy to know what Hashem expected of me. For months after my fall, the pain I was in, combined with the strenuous efforts I was making in physiotherapy, made my mind very foggy.

Before my fall, I would learn Gemara every morning. Learning Gemara was challenging for me, because, as a baal teshuvah, I lacked the necessary background in learning to readily understand the Gemara and its commentaries. But it was also enjoyable for me because my training in math, computer science, and music enhanced my appreciation of the brilliance of the Gemara’s approaches to problem-solving. After my fall, however, concentrating on Gemara became extremely difficult.

Unsure whether I should continue trying to learn Gemara despite my inability to focus, I asked my rav what to do. “In your condition, just thinking about wanting to learn is an achievement,” he replied. Not being in my shoes, though, he could not give me an answer as to whether I should persist with Gemara learning or try to learn something easier, like Mishnayos, or Chumash with Rashi.

Unsure how to proceed, I davened to Hashem to guide me in the right direction. Soon after that, in December 2017, I was walking through a supermarket and spotted Mishpacha magazine on display. The cover of that week’s issue featured a picture of Chaim Topol, of Fiddler on the Roof fame, and the caption read, “Will Chaim Topol’s Gemara learning bring the iconic actor back to tradition?”

Was Hashem sending me a sign?

I bought the magazine, and nearly fell off my chair when I read about how Chaim Topol opened the Gemara, during the interview, to the bottom of daf 21 in Shabbos and began to read: “Rav Huna says….” That was exactly where I was up to in the Gemara! Could there be a clearer sign than that?

In the days that followed, several people commented to me that they were puzzled, or even disturbed, that Mishpacha had chosen to profile the nonreligious Topol — and on the cover, no less! I don’t know if Chaim Topol belonged on the cover of Mishpacha, but for me, that cover story was an unmistakable message from Heaven. Since then, I’ve resumed learning Gemara — or trying to — every day.

To the shock of all the doctors and my physiotherapist, six months after my injury I was able to move my right arm. I still couldn’t do anything that required strength or dexterity, such as opening a jar, but I kept up the physiotherapy and diligently did the exercises I was assigned. Slowly, my arm gained strength, and my fine-motor skills returned. Not only was I able to tie my shoes once again, I was even able to play two-handed pieces on the piano.

Today, a year and a half after my fall, I can play an entire concert, including a Chopin nocturne and Mendelssohn’s “On Wings of Song.” My fingers are not (yet) as nimble as before, though, so I avoid fast-paced pieces or those with lengthy trills. I choose to play to my strengths, opting for slower, lyrical selections that require more soul and less technical proficiency. I have also arranged many pieces for the piano that I’ve made available online for others to enjoy playing as well.

Today, each time I play music, I see it as an expression of thanks to Hashem for the open miracle that He performed for me — a sort of pirsumei nisa.

At times, people ask me if I’m depressed that I can’t play as well as before.

“Not at all,” I say, “because I’m continuing to work and improve every day.”

That’s true not only in my music, but in the rest of my life as well. As long as I’m working on growing closer to Hashem and improving as a person, I can enjoy my life and be happy, even if I’m experiencing pain or difficulty.

Looking back, I’m glad my parents didn’t send me to Juilliard. The life of a concert pianist is grueling — always traveling, always practicing — and it’s certainly not a life for a frum Jew with children.

Because I didn’t go to Juilliard, losing dexterity in my hands was not utterly devastating, since my life did not revolve solely around my music. And because I didn’t go to Juilliard, I was able to play to my strengths and improvise as necessary, rather than being stuck in a rigid, theoretical model of how music is supposed to be played.

A famous performer once said that he always discourages people from going into the performing arts, because those who have a burning passion will do it anyway, and those who don’t have a burning passion should do something easier. I’m glad I pursued a different career, because it gave me the space to channel my burning passion into building a relationship with Hashem — one that had plenty of space for music.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 760)