A Few Words With Yitzi Hurwitz

When I visited him on Monday, it took Chabad Rabbi Yitzi Hurwitz at least a minute to get these words out: “I’m honored to see you.”

Eight years ago, when I met him for the first time, he was doing better. A few years earlier, he had undergone a tracheostomy, a surgical procedure that creates an airway allowing him to breathe.

At the time, he had been using a machine called a BiPAP to help him breathe, but he seemed to be fading. His wife and devoted partner, Dina, took him to the hospital where he was diagnosed with pneumonia and an oxygen level that was dangerously low.

The tracheostomy kept him alive.

But ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, is a degenerative disease that gets more debilitating with time. The miracle of Yitzi Hurwitz is that ever since he was diagnosed with the disease in 2013, he has squeezed every little ounce of life that has been afforded to him.

He couldn’t move his body when I met him eight years ago, but he was well enough that he could point his eyes at individual letters on a specially designed computer screen with eye-tracking software. That allowed him to write weekly Torah commentaries and share his blog with readers from around the world.

As painstaking as that was, it’s even harder today to eke out the letters, but he still manages with the assistance of a person holding a special board of letters.

As long as there’s life, Yitzi is all in.

He can hear perfectly. This helps him hear the words of his wife, children, friends, visitors and the Yeshiva students of his La Brea neighborhood who read him words of Torah throughout the day. He can hear music, he can see videos of himself dancing when he was a Chabad emissary in Temecula, he can see faces.

His eyes didn’t have the sparkle they had eight years ago, so I made an extra effort to connect with him.

First, I reminded him that when we first met, I told him I needed his help. I was scheduled to give a talk on the weekly Torah portion, Tazria and Metzorah, so I asked him if he could share something with me.

I read to him an excerpt from his commentary which I used in my talk:

“The real question is, what do you see when you meet a Metzorah? Do you focus on the ailment (a biblical-era type of leprosy), or on the possibility to reenter? How does the Metzorah view himself? Does he see himself as an outcast?  Or as a person who was granted the opportunity and the time to search his ways and refine himself to have a more meaningful existence upon reentry?”

I could feel that he heard and recognized every word. Maybe it was my imagination, but I saw a hint of a sparkle in his eyes.

Later, I shared a Hanukkah story about lighting the first candle of the holiday at Ben Gurion Airport, thanks to a Chabad emissary. The best part of the story, I told him, was that as happy as I was, the emissary seemed even happier for helping another Jew do a mitzvah.

During my visit, I discussed with other visitors the idea of choosing words carefully. I asked Yitzi if his verbal limitations forced him to look for deeper, essential insights in the Torah. His nurse, who knows him well, held up the letter board and immediately answered “yes.”

I also mentioned that in recent years, a movement has started around the notion of five words—five words to tell a story, five words to review a book, and so on.

While my friend Dina Leeds read aloud a transcript of a film about Yitzi’s journey, I couldn’t help think of what five words I would use to describe that journey. What especially moved me was that ten years ago, he had a choice. He knew his body would never move again. He knew how limited he would be.

As Dina quoted Yitzi in the story:

“At this point, I was given the choice to have the tracheostomy, effectively saving my life, or choose against it, putting an end to the suffering and difficulties. Legally and halachically (according to Jewish law), it was my choice, and with Dina’s unwavering support, I chose to live.”

The five words wrote themselves:

They asked. I chose life.

Before leaving, I felt a need to do something special, like share something personal. Knowing his love of Torah and with Shavuot– the holiday of receiving the Torah– only a day away, I shared that I was born in a little village just outside of Casablanca on the first morning of Shavuot. And as my mother has never stopped reminding me, I came out that morning right around when the actual Torah came out. (Maybe the holiest thing I’ve ever done.)

I wanted Yitzi to feel the blessings of our Torah holiday through my little Shavuot story, to feel that this was not just another greeting of “chag sameach.”

The delicate tears in his eyes were worth a thousand words.