A Fishy Gefilte

Talking and fish are two words that never seem to be seen
together, until now. On Jan. 28 at a kosher fish store in New Square, N.Y. (an
upstate Chasidic enclave), Ecuadorian worker Luis Nivelo was preparing carp to
sell for Shabbat, when he heard a voice. Nivelo looked around to see where the
sound was coming from, and when he saw that there was no one there, he realized
that the piscatorial wonder he was about to chop up and make into gefilte fish
— was talking.

“I almost got a heart attack,” Nivelo told The Journal from
New York. “The face of the carp looked straight at me; I thought it was the
devil.”

Tremendously frightened, Nivelo called for Zalman Rosen, the
shop’s proprietor, to come see — and listen to — the fish.

What the fish had to say was in Hebrew: “tzaruch shemirah”
and “hasof bah” — everyone needs to account for themselves because the end is
near — Rosen told The New York Times. The fish also commanded Rosen to pray and
study Torah, according to the London Observer.

“The voice came from inside the fish,” Nivelo said. “The
mouth of the fish opened and closed and it was a really funny voice.”

The fish was eventually butchered and sold, but, since then,
both Nivelo and Rosen have been plagued with media calls from around the world.

“I am sick from this,” Nivelo said. “It changed my life, my
family; 24 hours a day they are calling me; Argentina, Spain — I don’t know
what to do.”

Back in Los Angeles, at least one skeptic managed to
capitalize on the story. This Purim, Project Next Step Director Rabbi Yitzchok
Adlerstein dressed up as a fishmonger, attached a tiny speaker-microphone that
had prerecorded message to a large papier-mache fish and squired the “talking”
fish around town as a prop to collect money for Keren Y & Y, an Israeli
charity that provides food vouchers for the needy.

“It was very effective,” Adlerstein said. “I was able to
raise upwards of $650 in under two hours, so that was some good that the fish
did.”

But what would the fish have to say about that?