VOCAL MIRACLE

“The battle is not for your voice but for your health.” * R’ Z’vulun Katzavi, shliach of the Rebbe in Ramat HaSharon, experienced an amazing miracle that left a famous doctor stunned.

By Zalman Tzorfati

R’ Z’vulun (Ziv) Katzavi is a shliach in Ramat HaSharon and a mashpia in the Chabad shul there.  He is also a highly regarded lecturer.  His shlichus focuses on his giving shiurim and lectures.  He spends most of his day giving shiur after shiur around the country.

In a text that was recently sent out to Chabad Chassidim and hundreds of mekuravim, R’ Katzavi wrote that he thanked all those who had prayed for him and miraculously, the problem from which he was suffering disappeared.

We spoke with R’ Katzavi and after some hesitation he was willing to tell Beis Moshiach what he went through, from the bad news to the big miracle.

THERE IS SOMETHING ON YOUR VOCAL CHORDS

“I use my voice a lot.  With many of the shiurim that I give, I practically have to shout, either because I am speaking in front of a large crowd on Shabbos or even during the week, but a microphone is not available.  I recently felt that I was losing my voice.  I was getting hoarse very quickly and sometimes, by the end of a shiur, I was left with hardly any voice at all.

It happened gradually and got worse until it became intolerable.  It became physically difficult for me to talk and I went to a doctor.  The doctor examined me and said, “I see something on your vocal chords and it doesn’t look good.”  He recommended that I make an appointment to operate.

I decided not to take a chance and went to a doctor who is considered the best ENT in the country.  He runs an ENT department in one of the big medical centers.  It cost me a pretty penny but I wanted the opinion of a recognized expert.

I was given an appointment for the beginning of Elul.  The doctor examined me thoroughly with a camera that was lowered down my throat.  He immediately saw the problem and called me in for a talk.  I began explaining to him that every year I am a chazan on the holidays and that I give many lectures and that an operation would sideline me for weeks.

The doctor looked grave and he interrupted me and said in a low voice, “Listen, Mr. Katzavi, the battle is not for your voice but for your health.” 

Then he explained that I had a tumor on my vocal chords.  He tried to reassure me that the situation was not irreversible, that the growth did not look fatal as of yet, but there was no knowing what would happen if we delayed, and there was no recourse but to make an appointment for surgery to remove the growth and send it for a biopsy that would determine the rest of my treatment.

I left him with a strange and terrible feeling.  My thoughts raced.  I went home and for the meantime, did not tell anyone, not even my wife.  In the evening I had a shiur to give in Tel Aviv.  It’s a weekly class which is attended by dozens of young people.  I give the shiur along with the musician and singer, Roi Lavi.  He plays and sings and I teach.

VERRUCOUS CARCINOMA

At one of the musical interludes, I took out the white paper with the medical diagnosis and began reading what it said.  Until now, my thoughts had been on what he said and I hadn’t read the written diagnosis.

The diagnosis was written in English and when I saw the words “verrucous carcinoma” written black on white, I felt like a rock had fallen on my head.  The word “carcinoma” is the general name for that disease… Although the doctor had said that the growth did not look typical and symptomatic, still…

My head began to hurt but just then Roi finished singing and I had to continue the shiur.  I mustered my emotional strength, folded the page and put it in my pocket, and continued giving the shiur as though I had not just read something which could change my life entirely.

Somehow, the shiur ended.  I went straight home.  My mind kept racing.  I began thinking about my shlichus, teaching and giving shiurim which all depended on my ability to speak.  I began to think about my life, what I accomplished to that point and what I had yet to achieve.  I thought of my plans for the future, about my family, about my wife and children.

It all churned within me.  I began speaking to Hashem from the depths of my heart.  I said to Him, I have not finished my work, I have so much more to give…

I arrived home and sat down to write to the Rebbe.  I wrote about the doctor’s diagnosis and that I am on the Rebbe’s shlichus and I want to continue until the coming of Moshiach.

STRENGTHENING EMUNA AND BITACHON

I opened the Igros Kodesh and in the letter I opened up to the Rebbe gave a blessing to someone that the medical treatment should be successful.  The Rebbe mainly asked him to strengthen his emuna and bitachon, and the greater his bitachon in Hashem who is the Healer of all flesh and does wonders, the faster and in more complete fashion would the salvation come.

I felt as though the Rebbe was next to me and telling me, don’t worry, it will be all right.  At that moment I changed my approach.  I decided to go with emuna and bitachon in Hashem.  It is not like I was the calmest person in the world, but I kept telling myself that Hashem is the One who decides, and I was sure that He would arrange things in the best possible way.  Since the Rebbe wrote me about success in the medical treatment, the next day I called for an appointment for surgery.

I had still not told anyone.  A few days later, the doctor called to reassure me and he said that the way that the growth looked now, it did not appear to pose any danger to life.  I decided to tell my wife about what was going on and what the Rebbe wrote.

I went through the holidays with the feeling of absolute bitachon in Hashem that everything would be all right.  I did not tell people what was going on; I told my fellow shluchim, the k’hilla, and those who attended the ongoing shiurim that I needed a “minor” operation to treat my hoarseness.  I tried to continue my work as usual, while trying to control my voice and trying to preserve it from shiur to shiur.

Erev Rosh Chodesh Cheshvan, I went for a pre-operation check-up.  They put a camera down my throat and examined the area to make sure that since the previous check-up nothing had changed. 

Two doctors conducted the exam, one of them the assistant to the director of the department.  During the exam, one of the doctors said it looked to him like only a cyst and not a cancerous growth, but in either case, it was something that needed to be removed and he gave me instructions for how to prepare for the surgery.  I let out a big sigh of relief but I was still not completely convinced.  After all, the doctor who had examined me at first was considered the top expert in the country and he sounded quite certain…

The next day, I got a phone call telling me the doctor wanted to operate as soon as possible.  They told me to show up the following Sunday.

Shabbos Parshas Noach is the Shabbos of selling the aliyos in Ramat Aviv and I am the auctioneer every year.  That means I’m on my feet for about five hours and using my voice loudly.  I prayed to Hashem that my voice would hold out and asked people to be quiet, because my voice was a little fragile.  I also asked that they say l’chaim in my merit because the next day I would be undergoing an operation on my throat.

Dudu Fisher, the famous singer, was there and he came over to me and said, “Your voice sounds great.  You really don’t sound like someone who needs an operation tomorrow.”

THE MIRACLE UNFOLDS

Sunday morning I went to the hospital.  It was a complicated operation under general anesthesia.  A special implement stretches the jaws, and they go through the mouth to reach deep into the throat to remove the growth.  The director of the department was supposed to perform the operation, the same person who is considered the biggest expert in the country, who examined me and found the growth.

Before the operation, I was taken into an examination room where the pre-op briefing took place.  They put the camera down my throat again and the pictures were shown on a large screen, but there was nothing to see! The doctor asked the one in charge of the camera, “What’s going on? We don’t see anything?”

They started moving the camera around my throat but nothing significant appeared on the screen.  They decided to remove the camera, checking it from all sides, checking the lighting, and then they put it down again.  The doctor stood there bewildered.  He asked me to clear my throat and cough, to do all kinds of things with my throat and yet again, nothing looked unusual.  There were two tiny polyps on the vocal chords but there is no connection between that and a frightening carcinoma.

The doctor was stupefied.  It couldn’t be, he said to the medical team.  I saw with my own eyes a white wrinkly lesion!  With my own eyes! This makes no sense!

The doctors, nurses, and medical staff stood there, dumbfounded.

I felt a chill.  I began to realize that this was the miraculous moment.  What the Rebbe had written was happening before everyone’s eyes contrary to all natural expectations.

They took the camera out of my throat and I could talk again.  I asked, what do we do now?

Nothing, said the doctor.  No surgery is necessary.  Go home.  He asked me to come for a check-up in three months and released me.

DID YOU SPEAK TO HIM?

“Tell me, how can this be?” I asked the doctor. “The week before you clearly saw something in my throat.”

“I have nothing to say,” he said, and he asked me, as he pointed upward, “Did you speak to Him?”

“A lot,” I replied. 

“Then that explains it,” he said.

A few hours after I came home, I called all the places that I had canceled shiurim for the next few weeks and told them we were on as usual.

Hardly anyone knew what my situation had been and I planned on telling about the miracle only to the few people who knew about the condition.  But the Rebbe apparently wanted otherwise, since publicizing miracles, aside from strengthening emuna and bitachon in people, hastens the Geula.  I composed a text to the members of the community but by mistake, it was sent to a list of hundreds of people who receive notices from me about shiurim.  Within a few hours the text had spread like wildfire and the miracle was publicized on an unexpected scale.

I am made small from all kindnesses and all the truth; for me it was testimony that the Guardian of Israel neither slumbers nor sleeps and the Rebbe’s miracles continue to occur and roll about, and we just need to pick them up.  By doing so, we ourselves are uplifted.