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What’s Really Going On – By Rabbi Pinchas Winston
This is not a true story, but it could be. Danny lost his brother at an early age to a rare illness. Only a handful of people have it in any given generation, and Danny’s older brother was one of the unfortunate few.
It took only two years for the disease to spread and do its thing, taking Danny’s brother’s life at the tender age of 16. Danny himself was only 12 at the time, and it hurt him very much. He had felt the helplessness and hopelessness of his family once it became clear that the doctors had no idea how to treat the illness.
Hearing all the wonderful things about his brother at the shivah did not help matters. On the contrary, it just made the loss of his older brother that much more painful. On a few occasions, he found himself getting up and going outside to be alone. That’s when he would cry and talk to his missing brother.
Shivah became shloshim, and the shloshim became a year. The Gemora says that the heart starts to forget the dead after a year, but Danny’s heart seemed to be an exception. Some of the pain had subsided but a lot of it still remained. It concerned his family and friends.
But then Danny realized that it was not his brother he was refusing to let go of. He knew that his brother was in a better place, and felt his presence every time he thought of him. It was as if his brother was still watching over him, as he had always done even into his sickness. It was something else that would not go away.
It was the helplessness. It was that sense of helplessness that he had felt from not being able to help his brother when every part of his being cried out to fix the situation, that wouldn’t disappear. And the longer it continued, the more it began to take over his thinking…until one day he found himself saying to himself, “I will find a cure for this horrible disease.”
And with those words, a burden was lifted from him, and an unhealthy connection to the past was severed. Even though he was creating a huge life-long challenge for himself, he felt relieved. It made him wonder if his brother had anything to do with it from above.
When he shared his decision with his parents, they outwardly admired his resolve while inwardly wondered how long it would last. Until that time, Danny had not particularly excelled in school, and he would have to from that point onward if he wanted to make good on his plans. Becoming a doctor is hard enough. Getting a research grant for a rare disease is almost impossible.
But Danny had already done his research. He was only 14 years old, but he knew how to ask questions. He quickly learned what was involved in his decision, and despite the reservations others had about investing his life in such a focused endeavor, he never wavered. He always had his brother for support.
Overnight his grades improved, slightly at first, and then significantly. He was putting in the time and doing the work, and then some. Every spare moment he had he used to further his personal research into the disease and the means used to research it. For all intents and purposes, he had already started medical school before actually being accepted.
He had gotten used to working hard and being single-minded. It never interfered with his Torah values and obligations, and he felt as if he was doing the work of God. He could not bring back his brother, but at least he could save others from what his brother, and the family, went through. That was a mitzvah…a BIG mitzvah.
Seven years had not exactly been like one year, but the time did go by quite quickly. He had graduated with honors and was accepted at several good universities for medicine. He chose the one that he thought would give him the greatest shot at a research grant.
The workload was enormous and the pressure was tremendous, especially to change his mind and focus on other areas of medicine. “You will be a great doctor one day,” his professor told him. “Why limit yourself to a very narrow area of medical research?” He would just smile and say, “I’ll give it some serious consideration…” knowing full well that he had no plans to veer from his chosen path.
He wrote many grant proposals that came back rejected. So he wrote more grant proposals and they also came back rejected. For the first time in the 15 years since he started thinking about his mission, his will was starting to waver. Did God not want him to succeed? Was his brother unable to pull strings for him above?
He was getting on in life and had to look at the bigger picture. He decided to try one more time, and if that didn’t get the desired results, he would look into some other area of practice or research. He had stuck to his guns and done all he could. Now it was Heaven’s turn to either support his work or direct him in a different direction.
The board that received the proposal almost voted to reject it. The difference this time was that there was a doctor on the board whose own son had the disease, and he understand Danny’s passion to cure it. Soon Danny’s passion became his own, and he fought hard to convince the rest of the board to accept the proposal and give the grant.
When the letter from the grant board came in, Danny did not run to open it. He put it neatly to the side of his desk while he went about other business. Part of him wanted to rip the letter open and see the answer, but part of him was afraid to see if decades of work were coming to a premature end. So far, that part was winning.
Finally, when he had a moment, he casually strolled over to his desk and picked up the letter like it was any other as if to make no big deal out of something that was clearly a big deal. He opened the letter and read:
Dear Dr. Weiss,
On behalf of the Board and Trustees of Medical Research, Inc., we are pleased to inform you that your grant proposal to research Disease X has been accepted and is being processed at this time. We hope that this meets with your approval, and we will be sending you another letter shortly with all the details and requirements to activate your grant. We look forward to working with you in the future.
He was shocked. He was so excited that he did not know what to do next. All he could do was fall into his chair and contemplate with excitement what he just read and what it means. He could not wait to get started, but first, he offered a heartfelt prayer of thanks to God, and a promise to do his best to cure the disease. Then he said to his brother, “I know you must have had a hand in this. Thank you, dear brother, and know that I will do my utmost to spare others of what you had to endure.”
It took only two years, and the most current technology available to solve the mystery and find a relatively successful drug to fight the disease. It took an additional year and some important collaboration to find a way to effectively deliver the cure to the body so that it could have maximum impact.
Two more years after that the drug had FDA approval and was gaining acceptance around the world. Pharmaceutical companies made the drug available worldwide, and initial results were as good as hoped. In some cases when the drug was used early enough the disease was stopped altogether.
One young child halfway around the world from where Danny did his breakthrough research was about to take his first of many treatments. He was only 10 years old, and his mother handed him the pill with trepidation. Would it work? Would it make him worse? Would the side effects be miserable?
As the boy placed the pill into his mouth and drank water to wash it down and let it begin its work, he had no idea that he was swallowing the will of a 12-year-old boy named Danny Weiss who lived somewhere in America. He did not know that the cure he was ingesting was really the desire of another young boy, now all grown up with a family of his own, to cure people with the disease his own brother suffered from.
But that’s what it was. The pill casing was just the physical means of delivery for the physical cure inside. But the physical cure inside was just the physical actualization of the spiritual will that made it possible. If he could have, Danny Weiss would have just willed everyone with his brother’s disease to be instantly cured. But not being able to do that, he was more than happy to have discovered a physical means to accomplish the same thing.
And so was God, as the next chapter explains.
