How to Cure a Cough

Raquel Candia on Pixabay

For the past five weeks* in Israel I have been coughing endlessly. An English virus, I must add, and not something that I caught here. When they give university degrees in "coughing",' I will undoubtedly be a PhD. Because of this, we agreed to cancel our visit to Tel Aviv this week and decided instead to explore parts of Jerusalem previously unknown to us.

Our first port of call was The Jerusalem Bird Observatory situated not far from Israel's Knesset (Parliament) building. We found it to be a delightful place to explore and saw at close quarters some of the 200 different types of birds that have nested there. It was certainly worth the visit.

On leaving there and less than 100 yards away, we came across something else unbeknown to us during our 35+ years of having a home in Jerusalem. We suddenly found ourselves surrounded by a large group of black-coated religious Jews. They had come to visit the grave of Rabbi Gedalye Moshe, the Rabbi of the ZHVIL – the name of a Hasidic dynasty dating back to the 1700s in a town in Ukraine.

A couple of years ago a devotee of this group came to pray at the Rabbi's grave. Amazingly his plea was answered. He told his friends, and from then on, this place has become a pilgrimage site with coaches arriving regularly every Monday and Thursday.

I asked a young Haredi what it was all about. Courteously, he replied that people pray here if they need something special - particularly women who are looking for a spouse or to become pregnant. To achieve this, one must come three times - on a Monday, the following Thursday and again the next Monday to recite a special prayer in order to qualify.

He referred me to the hundreds of notes pinned on the walls in the area attesting to the successful pleas of others. He had come because he had lost his job. He came as instructed on the first Monday, but then the following day was offered a new job which left him uncertain if he should still continue with the other two days of pleading his case.

He suggested I pray. Well, why not? I had tried every other remedy available to cure my cough with no success. I got as near as I could to the grave, found the partitioned "women-only" area and began to read the four pages of Hebrew text I was given. My Hebrew reading is painfully slow, and after 20 minutes I had only managed a couple of paragraphs. I decided to own up. "God, I said, I have never really believed in You, but I am an open-minded person and am fully prepared to try – it just might take time."

I apologized for my lack of faith and my inadequacy at reading and said that I was doing my best but obviously I couldn't finish it that day. I added that I also felt it was not quite right to ask Him for something on, so to speak, our first date. However, if He were inclined to help with the offending cough, I would be very grateful.

Strangely the next day I visited my hairdresser and told her about my experience. She said she knew all about this place, she is not religious, but last year was having endless problems with a neighbor who was refusing to sign an important legal document. In despair, she went to the grave and prayed. Twenty minutes later as she was driving home, she received a phone call from her husband. "Sigal, you'll never believe what just happened.Our neighbor came over and signed the papers!"Needless to say, Sigal was amazed, as this was less than half an hour after she had prayed.

As for me, today, for the first time, my cough seems to have improved slightly. Now, of course, I don't know if this is the result of taking onion syrup several times a day, (recommended by my friend who is a choir conductor and therefore used to cough/vocal problems) or the fact that I relented and took codeine medicine last night, or perhaps…. just maybe……. I owe all it to 'you know who'…

From whatever source it came, I am hugely grateful. I am counting my blessings and thankful that I can again start singing.

• I originally wrote this story back in January 2015, while living in Jerusalem.