Israel

Three years later, my mom’s husband wanted to move back to Israel, and they took me along (my sister stayed behind as she was already a senior in high school). I was a teenager, and it was a hard time for big changes. But I embraced that change, even though it was an utter transplantation, a foreign tree in Israeli soil. And it was oh-so-Israeli. My classmates spoke Hebrew and Hebrew only. I had to adapt fast, and I did; my childhood had taught me to be adaptable. I welcomed my Israeli — if not religious — identity. Here, I didn’t have to hide my Jewishness. Here, no one would call me a smelly Jew. When high school was over, I enlisted in the army with my peers.

I did basic training and was assigned to a medical unit, and then did secretarial work for the officers. I was offered a position in officer’s training, but I demurred. I was in a relationship with a guy I’d met back in high school, and I just wanted to move on. I’d grown up in such an unsettled home, and I wanted to have a home of my own already. Also, a girl could be released from the army upon marriage. It seemed like a win-win.

We got married and I left the army, although my husband served in the Golani unit for some time longer (marriage didn’t exempt men from the army). I sought to build a business alongside building our home, to have the safety and comfort I didn’t have growing up. I dreamed of becoming a professional chef, a career path that seemed enjoyable and lucrative to me. The program of my dreams was in America, so I thought we’d go back for a stint, I’d get my degree in culinary arts, and come back soon enough.

America

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ulinary school was exciting. I loved the creativity of it, especially plating and presentation — the “wow” factor. And once I got my qualification, it made sense to open a business right there. We wanted financial security before going back to Israel, and opportunity seemed to be smiling at us in America. We had two small children by that time and were living in a community in New Jersey with a lot of Israelis where my husband had found his place. My catering and events business was taking off nicely. Our plans to return to Israel were put on the back burner, and life with a young family and growing business took over.

That my kids would go to public school? That inside me simmered a hatred and a knowledge of the divide? I tamped it down with the platitudes I told myself: We don’t live in an area with a large Christian population, it’s been decades, the world is different….

A few years along, while looking to expand my business, I realized it would be profitable for the business to have kosher certification. We registered with the KOF-K in what seemed to be a purely marketing and financial decision. It quickly turned into more.

Mashgichim started their rounds. All of a sudden, there were guys with kippahs and peyos in and out of the business kitchen. I was a curious, outspoken person, and I asked a lot of questions about what they were doing. “What’s the deal with checking eggs?” “What happens if you eat a bug?” And also, since this was some of my first direct exposure to frum people, “What are those sidelocks all about?” and “What’s that stringed garment you’re wearing?”

Every mashgiach gave me some answers, and the more responses I amassed, the more I wanted to know. I realized that what these people had was worlds apart from the Jewishness I’d grown up on. Their Jewishness mattered. They mattered. It evoked memories of Shabbos at my teacher’s home.

Around that time, Arachim and other kiruv organizations were starting to gain a foothold in communities like ours, with large numbers of ex-Israeli residents. In Fair Lawn, New Jersey, where we lived, the Israeli community was very connected. They were people who’d grown up on falafel and hummus and the IDF, and had come to America to seek their fortunes. Much as they were trying to integrate — sending the children to public school and trying to become all-American — it was difficult to bridge the cultural divide. Inevitably, they were drawn back to each other, to people who could be a “chevreh.” In a melting pot, you need an identity, and the chevreh provided that.

This was true more for my husband than for myself, but I needed the identity, too.

But what was that identity? What did it mean to be Israeli in America? Was it just the food we ate? The accent some of us spoke with? There had to be more.

And that’s where Arachim came in, giving substance to the identity we craved — Torah. And many of us took to it. Obviously, there were individual journeys, but when the organizations got members of our strong “chevreh,” it worked like dominoes; one bringing another and another.

As a family, we started taking on observances. Never one to accept things at face value, I wanted to learn more and more. I had so many questions for the kiruv people. As a doer in the community, I’d offer my home for talks and shiurim that the women would attend. In an inverse of what had happened to me in middle school, we took our two kids out of public school and put them into Jewish day schools.

Becoming fully frum was a process; while my husband was happy to wade in shallow waters by taking on the basics, I took to the deep end, ready to take on everything that we were learning. Eventually, the values, the learning, and the truth, won him over, and we were both fully on board.

In time, we felt that we had outgrown what the Fair Lawn kiruv community had to offer, and we wanted to move to a fully Torah-observant community. We wanted our kids to attend Bais Yaakov without having to commute so that they could have a frum social life and we could be fully in it.

A few years later, we’d made a complete turnaround, and were living in Monsey. We had two more children and I was expecting our youngest.

It was then, at age 36, that I started to experience some strange symptoms, including a numbness that crawled up my arm until my whole upper limb felt cold and lifeless.

My doctor suspected a stroke and sent me to a neurologist. I sat in the office, that cold and sterile place, waiting for the specialist, with a sense of impending doom.

“We’ve ruled out a stroke and are now going to test for MS,” the doctor said matter-of-factly.

The MRI found lesions on my brain and spine, but the doctor didn’t want to do further testing because of the pregnancy. “Go home. We’ll worry about a diagnosis after the baby.”

There was nothing to do right away, but I knew deep down that I had MS.

In my mind, I conjured a disabled person, someone in a wheelchair. I recalled how, in high school, we raised funds through marathon running for people with multiple sclerosis. I remembered those posters with pictures of people in wheelchairs and the sense of uncomfortable contrast — to run in aid of people who couldn’t.

In hindsight, that period of time where the diagnosis couldn’t be confirmed was a gift. It wasn’t easy, but it gave me some time to process what was happening.

Three months after my baby girl was born, I had a spinal tap done and was officially diagnosed.

The symptoms intensified. I had more numbing, vertigo, spasms in my leg; I couldn’t cross a room without bumping into the walls.

My husband tried to take over the running of the business, but it wasn’t his forte, and on the home front, I needed so much more help. We had a tiny baby, a bustling household, and I was struggling daily, in pain, and increasingly incapacitated.

Just like that, things started to fall apart. We missed one mortgage payment, and then another. Tension, stress, and worry followed. And then — disaster. Our baby, just shy of her first birthday, had a near-drowning experience. We were rushed by helicopter to Westchester Children’s Hospital and the baby was put into an induced coma.

“We don’t know what to expect,” the doctors told us. “But she will likely be a very different child from the one you knew.”

They thought she’d have serious and permanent brain damage. Instead, after just four days in the hospital, we walked out of there with our healthy child, who had a mild case of pneumonia due to the water that had gotten into her lungs. The day that she was released was the eve of Thanksgiving and the medical team saw it as a “Thanksgiving miracle.”

We, however, directed our thanks to the One Above and made a seudat hoda’ah a week later.

But that close call with the Angel of Death took a toll on us all. For me, the fear and stress exacerbated the MS. I had severe relapse attacks that affected my body in different ways. I suffered from leg spasms and body tremors. I had to rely on a cane, a walker, and sometimes a wheelchair. My mind, too, was affected, and it was hard for me to formulate a normal sentence. I was on steroids to manage the overwhelming symptoms, and it made my body blow up.

What could I do but be a couch potato, sitting on that sofa alone with my troubles while my family was out at school and work? I was 37, but I felt old and decrepit, bitter toward a G-d Who could take my busy, productive life away from me. I could do little in the house, and even less in a business that floundered without my involvement.

We reached rock bottom when a fire broke out in the business kitchen, sweeping through it and destroying everything. We couldn’t recoup our losses. The insurance couldn’t come through; the business was well and truly done.

Without an income, it didn’t take long for our house to go into foreclosure. We became Tomchei Shabbos recipients, the brown box lasting us the week.

To be desperately reliant on the community after being contributing members of it? The shame was a pain of its own. Our situation filled me with despair and I fell into depression. Rage brewed within me. “Do you think my name is Iyov?” I railed at Hashem one day. I felt like a caricature for suffering.

I questioned G-d, His kindness and justice. “How is any of this fair? We were in a good place in Fair Lawn before we took on Torah and mitzvos. And now that that we’ve taken on the yoke, we’ve been rewarded with illness and poverty!”

The rav of our community sent us to gedolim in Israel. We went and discussed our situation with Rav Chaim Kanievsky and Rav David Abuchatzeira. With their guidance, we realized that our mazel was over in America. There had been the diagnosis, the near-death, the fire. It was time to start over. We waited a short time for our daughter to finish high school and then we were off to Israel. Meshaneh makom, meshaneh mazel.

Israel

WE

got off the plane with just enough money for three months’ rent. My husband was looking into parnassah options, and I sat in our new apartment in Ramat Beit Shemesh A, unable to do much, emotionally drained.

“Come to classes on emunah with me,” urged a neighbor who saw the state I was in.

I swatted her suggestion away. I wasn’t interested in anything. But she nudged, and I went with her just to shut her up.

The rebbetzin who gave the classes was a firm chassidah of Rav Shalom Arush, who started us with the The Garden of Emuna. I knew that she didn’t have any children, and I was intrigued and inspired by her faith in the face of a challenge like that.

She taught us that it wasn’t what you had or didn’t. It was about who you were on the path that G-d put you on; if you walked with the awareness of Him beside you.

I asked a lot of questions about what we were learning. The approach of Breslov and chassidus was new to me, and what I found there resonated deeply. Essentially, chassidus is the Torah of the nefesh, and it took me beyond mitzvah observance in a whole new direction — dealing with my imperfections, facing up to myself and the One Above.

The rebbetzin taught about dveikus, being with G-d, and I started doing something novel for me — hisbodedut. During focused hisbodedut, I faced my pain head-on. I’d gone from busy, accomplished mom and businesswoman to a shell of myself, and was deeply frustrated with the limitations of my body and mind. I cried and cried, giving release to my feelings. This was the beginning of my journey to release my traumas.

Alongside that, there was the consistent emunah learning: That there’s always a plan; that Hashem is ein sof, and so are you; that it’s not only what you see. I got flashes of clarity about my own situation. Rabbi Nachman spoke a lot about finding the nekudah tovah, and I was on the lookout for it, but I was also real about where I was at. If I couldn’t find it, I’d share my upset with Hashem. I learned to start a dialogue with Him; thanking and crying and kvetching in turn.

About a year into our learning, the group took a trip to Ukraine, covering five locations: the gravesites of Rabbi Nachman in Uman, Rabbi Nosson in Breslov, Rabbi Levi Yitzchak in Berditchev, the Baal Shem Tov in Mezhibuzh, and the Maggid of Mezritch in Anipoli.

Rabbi Nachman was the main Rebbe we were learning from in our Garden of Emuna classes, and he kept referring to the Baal Shem Tov in his writings. I wanted to know more about the father of chassidus, the original healer and mystic, who saw a different and formative way for his generation and the world.

At the grave of the Baal Shem Tov, I had an otherworldly experience. The group davened and left to a workshop, but I couldn’t leave. I prayed and did hisbodedut and cried and danced. For hours after the group left not another soul came by the tziyon. It was just the Baal Shem Tov and me.

When we returned to Israel, I approached Rav Daniel Stavsky, head of an organization in RBS called Beit Baal Shem Tov, and through his programs, delved into Toras HaBaal Shem Tov. I also got into the seforim of the Baal Shem Tov’s disciples.

There I was, a woman born secular who came back to Yiddishkeit as yeshivish-modern, now a “chassid.”

It was during this “sabbatical” from life, when I was learning, studying, and imbibing, that I started an emunah journal. I was still plagued by illness, but I was also seeing Hashem’s light in my world, and I’d write down what I thought of as my “daily dose of emunah.” My entries were up-close and personal, straight from the heart. I wrote about mothering and disability and emunah moments, and ended up emailing those entries to some friends of mine whom I thought would appreciate them.

Duly inspired, my friends asked if they could pass the entries on, and if they could add others to my “list.” That’s how the “daily dose” grew organically and became the base for the emunah work I do today — that work wasn’t even a pipe dream then.

At that point, my body was lagging way behind my learning. I was in a lot of pain from the MS and couldn’t get around without a cane. I was carefully taking the medication prescribed for me by my doctor, but it didn’t seem to be doing much for me. Would things regress? Where would I be in a few years from now?

In my quest for emotional — if not physical — wellness I came to meet Rebbetzin Reva Steiner, who ran a mental health clinic in the Shmuel Hanavi area. She was a talmidah of Rav Asher Freund, who was a great rabbi and healer in Jerusalem. I went on a therapy journey with her for many focused months, where she used various methodologies, especially energy therapy, to help me face my traumas and heal from them. Energy therapy works with the subconscious to discover the root causes behind our ailments. It’s an intense process that feels like peeling away the mask and falling through the years, finding early beliefs and conditioning. Some traumas are so old that they may have been inherited for generations.

Through the work, I came face-to-face with parental rejection, abandonment, and the lack of attention of my youth. A deeper look found that this had been the case for several generations — members of the family had suffered from their parents’ emotional withdrawal because parents were in survival mode.

I realized that, as a child, I’d been conditioned to seek attention using negative and extreme means. I now used a cane to walk at an age when it was uncommon to need one, and that caused people to stare and children to point. Terrible as my situation was, the attention-starved child within me was exulting at being noticed. Somehow, she was still calling the shots.

It was crazy to consider that idea, since adult-me was suffering so much and resented the cane and everything it represented. But once I could see the little girl, and also see how the adult-me was in such a different place — learning emunah, how Hashem was in my life, and having gratitude for it all — I found that I suddenly felt stronger and less dizzy. In time, I relied on the cane less and less. Within a few months, I was okay enough not to need it at all.

The crutch had been real and metaphorical at the same time, and now I didn’t need it in either sense. When I finally hung it up on the rail in my closet, it was not with rancor at the years of hobbling and dizziness, but with the humility of seeing how it had served me in more ways than one.

It still hangs in my cupboard as a reminder of the strength of the inner world over the outer.

It’s also a reminder of what I want to change going forward — to work not to perpetuate this pattern of parental inattention. I want to try make it better for my children; to be a mom who sees them.

When I visited my MS doctor without a cane or walker, he was shocked. He couldn’t understand the significant reversal of my symptoms, that it had been so long since I’d had a relapse attack (in the first few years of the illness, I’d get them three to four times a year). I was still on the same medication that I’d used all along, and clearly, that didn’t account for these drastic improvements. He watched me walk across the room when I left. “You’re a miracle,” he said. “Keep doing what you’re doing.”

Before long, feeling better and stronger, I began attending the same program that the rebbetzin who worked with me had attended: the Bio-Orgonomy energy program in Tel Aviv.

I learned how to use blinking and eye movement in energy work, how to use gemstones and pendulums and other means. This isn’t hocus-pocus stuff, and it’s not a modality that only the select “gifted” can practice; it’s a system that can be learned, open to anyone who wants.

From there, feeling increasingly better both physically and emotionally, I could be in a giving, contributing mode again. I created a (rabbinically approved) program of healing which I call “Or Emuna,” built off what I learned at Bio-Orgonomy, but with the hashkafah based in emunah — using the techniques and invoking Hashem, seeing Him as the Ultimate Healer.

I practiced energy therapy with clients, always alongside emunah counseling. People came with deep-seated traumas, and together, we were able to work through them.

Here in RBS, on the other side of a healing journey, I became a teacher. People call me a rebbetzin, people call me “emunah lady.” Even now that I’ve been teaching and practicing energy healing for years, I wonder at it all.

I was a chef. That was all. Sometimes I think, just give me a white hat, let me walk around with greased palms and handle a dough.

But Hashem has given me the zechus of feeding souls, not just stomachs.

And it goes on. People started asking me to teach them to heal. Teacher of the teachers? That wasn’t how I saw myself, but I was told by daas Torah that if they wouldn’t learn it from me, they’d learn it without the Torah and emunah hashkafah.

I set up the Or Emuna institute, where people learn and train to become Or Emuna practitioners. In my program, I teach about consciousness of G-d — “Shiviti Hashem Lenegdi Tamid” — while doing the work. In the process of energy healing, there’s a lot of hachna’ah and subservience; to administer a session is literally to be in a dialogue with Hashem. The work is rooted in Torah. Essentially, it’s “mibesuri echezeh Elokai” (people will come because of ailments in the body, and all of it leads back to Hashem).

They say hindsight is an exact science. When I look back, I can see how the terrible diagnosis at 36 and my family’s breakdown in America led to a path of healing up a mountain I could never have envisioned ascending. So Hashem didn’t do those things to me, He did it for me.

But even though I’m not incapacitated from my MS, I still have it and struggle with it, and like all of us, I contend with many other challenges. I still fall into the mindset of What is He doing to me? Why is He doing this to me? Dai, it’s enough.

They call me “emunah lady,” but that doesn’t mean I have it down pat. I forget, I fall, I lose the clarity and have to find it again. And it takes work to find it. Because that’s how it is when you have a relationship with a G-d Who’s not a human being — you have to reach beyond.

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 933)