“Rabbi please please promise me this illness will pass. Please promise me.”

I looked at Yitzchak* and sadly reviewed his life.

Yitzchak had been single for many years until he found Leah. This was truly a match made in Heaven. When two years after the chasunah they had their first and only son their joy was boundless. The boy whom they named Baruch was indeed a brachah for them. They doted on him and always dressed him in the nicest of clothes.

Although Leah was a little older than most of the first-time mothers in shul that never stopped her from walking proudly with Baruch to the park and showing him off. Even if occasionally an insensitive twenty-something mother would say “Oh your grandson looks just like you.” Leah would just smile and relish being a mother.

Yitzchak loved bringing Baruch to shul for Anim zemiros and when Baruch could answer “Amen” in shul Yitzchak was delirious with joy.

However all that was before the diagnosis. All that was before everyone in shul began referring to Leah with the whispered words: “yenna machlah” (a euphemistic reference to cancer). All that was before the dreaded treatments and before Leah began to be seen less and less in public.

Yitzchak was in my office and he was crying. His whole life seemed to be collapsing. His beloved wife whom he’d waited until he was forty to marry was deathly ill. His five-year-old son whom he’d davened his heart out for was on the brink of being raised by a single parent. Yitzchak’s life had been turned inside out. Instead of trips to the park and the zoo the family car went back and forth to Sloan-Kettering.

Yitzchak pulled himself together somewhat and almost demanded of me “Rabbi please please promise me this will end. Please promise me this illness will go away!”

I looked at Yitzchak and thought about all the other patients I’d seen when I visited Leah in the oncology unit. I wondered how many of them were still alive.

I looked at Yitzchak and knew there was no way in the world I could promise Yitzchak that this illness would pass.

No amount of spiritual resources no amount of Torah learning could grant me the tools or the confidence to give the promise Yitzchak so desperately wanted to hear.

Although I realized that Yitzchak was just another innocent victim in the plague of “give me your dollars and I will guarantee your salvation” Judaism nevertheless I could not promise him what he wanted.

Despite the fact that full-page ads in every Jewish publication just about “promise” and “commit” to bring you immediate satisfaction and instant gratification not to mention much-needed salvation I know that the real world is far different from anonymous initials testifying to miraculous cures and extraordinary recoveries.

The real world has pain.

Nothing short of outright prophecy — obviously not part of my spiritual stockpile — would grant me the right or the warrant to authorize and pledge to Yitzchak that the illness will go away.

Assurances and certainties are the purview of Hashem; only He or His prophets can assure and ensure that their words will come true. We can only daven and hope beseech and petition; give tzedakah and trust that He Who knows all will do what is best for us — whether we understand what is best for us or not.

Yitzchak continued to look at me with his desperate and despairing eyes: “Rabbi please please promise me …”

I just looked down at my desk and averted his tormented gaze.