By Rabbi Baruch Lederman
SAN DIEGO — Mort Blumberg* (*name changed) once gave me a call concerning an upcoming heart bypass surgery he was slated to undergo. He asked me what religious things he could do for a successful operation. After ‘prescribing’ him the standard regimen of prayer, recitation of Psalms etc., I told him that someone with a heart condition had posed the same question to the great Rabbi, the Vilna Gaon ztz”l.
The Gaon told that man that if he had a problem with his heart, he should be mesakain his laiv (correct his heart). Meaning that if he fixed his heart in a spiritual sense, it would help his heart physically. After some thought, he asked me if this meant that he would have to make amends with his sister. I didn’t know anything about his sister but I said yes, of course. He called me the next day saying, “Rabbi Lederman, I have been grappling with this and it is too difficult for me to forgive my sister for what she did to me. Are you sure I need to?” I said yes. He said he would think about it. He contacted me the following week and said, “Rabbi, when my mother died fifteen years ago, my sister railroaded me out of my rightful inheritance. True it wasn’t a lot of money, but, there was a lot of sentimental value.” I replied that he still had to make peace with her. Family is very important.
“But Rabbi, I was so deeply hurt, and she took such glee in her heart at my pain.” I reminded him that it was his heart we were worried about here, not hers. “I want you to have a heart of 24 karat gold.” He said that he got the point. That was the last we brought up that topic.
The next we spoke was while he was in the hospital recovering from the operation. “Rabbi, I am so happy, I called my sister and though it was hard at first, we made amends. She even flew out to San Diego to be with me in the hospital during the entire process. The support she gave me was tremendous. I don’t know how I would have gotten through this whole ordeal without her.”
His sister added, “After we made up, it was like nothing ever happened. It’s as if we took up from where we left off fifteen years ago. All the closeness is still there.” Mort’s heart made a wonderful recovery in every sense of the word.
Dedicated in memory of Shlomo ben Yitzchok by his son Simon.
*
Rabbi Lederman is spiritual leader of Congregation Kehillas Torah. He may be contacted at baruch.lederman@sdjewishworld.com