Nes Godol Hoya Shom – A Great Miracle Happened There
” Let the great world spin for ever…”
– Locksley Hall, Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1842)
I never knew anyone with a stronger grip than my father, mentally or physically. Both were evident on Hanukkah.
Mentally, he could recite all the blessings, benedictions and verses of Maoz Tzur, without consulting a Siddur. Physically, his fingers were so strong, he could spin the dreidel into perpetual motion. To his young son, it seemed that was the Nes Gadol, the great miracle. His dreidel would spin forever.
Until it didn’t.
On his final Hanukkah, we left Manhattan as soon as Shabbas was over to light candles with him in Queens and return in time for the kids’ Hanukkah parties. As we entered however, I could see something was wrong. He was glaring at me.
“What’s the matter, Dad?”
“You know what’s the matter!”
“No, I don’t.”
“Yes, you do!”
We had had this painful conversation before. Many times before.
“Humor me, Dad. Tell me what’s bothering you.”
“You drove here on Shabbas!”
“What are you talking about? Shabbas ended an hour ago!”
“How could it end an hour ago, when last week it ended at this time?”
“They changed the clock, Dad.”
He looked confused, then defeated, but only momentarily:”We don’t hold by that!”
He wouldn’t acknowledge he was wrong, but Noblesse Oblige, agreed to proceed with candle-lighting.
As always, he recited everything by heart. As recently had become the case, he butchered every verse. My kids looked confused. Under my breath, I prompted him. He corrected himself each time, but still wouldn’t pick up the proffered Siddur.
Within months, we had to move him to a Brooklyn nursing-home. Our first visit there was as painful as the Hanukkah one had been. As we entered his room, we found him lying in bed, his genitals exposed. The attendants did this to expedite the perpetual cleanups. Practical for them, mortifying for us. To protect my children again, I learned to enter before them and cover up his body, as I had his blessings.
His conversations with them were revealing, as well. He no longer knew the year or country, current events or historical ones. His only remaining window of lucidity was Limudei Kodesh. He could discuss their Torah and Talmud studies with familiarity and enthusiasm. This oasis of competence in his desert of incognizance brought great joy to him, to them, but most of all, to me.
At their last visit with him, he asked them what Yeshiva they attended. They told him. This forgetfulness on his part didn’t bother them. What happened next did.
He told him that he had grandchildren there. Their eyes welled up with tears as they turned to me.
“Dad, these are your grandchildren.”
He was oblivious to my correcting him as he had been to my covering him. We left soon thereafter. As we did, he had one last favor to ask them: “Can you give my regards to my grandchildren?”
I didn’t bother to correct him again. It was the last time they ever saw him.
The last time I saw him was in a hospital bed the night he finally died, shortly before Hanukkah. The intervening months had taken their toll. He no longer knew who I was, his wife was, or even who he was. In psychiatric parlance, he was oriented times zero. He was incapable of speech or any other cognitive activity. There was only fear in his eyes, a once-proud animal caught in a trap he could never escape.
My wife bent over to kiss him goodbye. As she did, his large black velvet Kipa fell. Nes Gadol Hoya Shom. A great miracle happened there.
With his tethered, mitten hands, he slowly, determinedly replaced it. Though he had forgotten everything, oriented times zero, somehow, he still remembered he was in the presence of The One.
I had long ago resigned myself to the fact he could no longer die reciting the Shma: “Hear Israel,The Lord our God, the Lord is one!” as observant Jews are directed to.
He could still however acknowledge it. His actions spoke louder than any words.
His dreidel faltered, but even in the very end, it never fell.
—
Excerpted from Who’s Afraid of The Big Sad Wolf?, a memoir of his life.
