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My wife and I, in the beginning of our marriage, were not blessed with children. Not right away. And for years, we struggled. Many rabbis in Israel would say to me, “Shamayim wants you to feel the yearning. Hashem wants to hear your prayers.”
But still, year after year — one, two, three, almost four years — we waited. Most of our friends, who married around the same time, were already having their second or third child. And we were still waiting for our first.
It was a time of deep personal suffering. At two o’clock in the morning, staring up at the ceiling, we would ask ourselves: Will we ever have a child? The test of patience, faith, and endurance was profound.
We returned to America and began the rounds of doctors — every doctor imaginable. Doctors in Israel, in the United States, overseas. We left no stone unturned. Everyone we heard of, everyone we hadn’t heard of — we went to them all.
Finally, we were referred to the last doctor anyone would recommend — the “out-of-the-box” specialist. A German doctor on the Upper West Side, renowned for helping couples who had exhausted every other option. Insurance wouldn’t cover him. Just the first visit cost a thousand dollars. Follow-ups, another two grand. Every part of the process was a test in itself — and, in retrospect, part of the kaparah Hashem was giving us.
We walked into his office. He sat back in a large leather chair, bald, with a wall behind him filled with photos — thousands of babies. He looked at us and said, simply, “Babies.”
He began his examination — the most humiliating and invasive tests imaginable. And yet, we survived, and we left still hopeful.
At the end of it all, he looked at us gravely and said, “You have no chance.”
He offered a last-resort medication, a very slim chance it might work. “Try it for a week, come back,” he said. We tried. We returned. The result: still no hope. He suggested we begin considering adoption.
This was it. The last stop. No one else could help us. We had reached the end of the line.
On the stoop outside his office, my wife collapsed in tears. “It’s over,” she cried. “There’s no hope left.”
I held back my own tears and said, softly, “Who is in charge? Who is the boss here?”
She looked at me and whispered through her tears, “Hashem is in charge. We can no longer put our faith in doctors. Only in Him.”
We went home, hearts heavy but faith intact.
Then, 30 days later, I received a frantic call from my wife. She was standing in the kitchen, hands shaking, holding the pregnancy test. I knew immediately. Two stripes.
I stared. I couldn’t believe it. In my life, I had never seen anything like it. I screamed. I danced around the living room. I called the German doctor:
“Doc! Look! There is a God in the world! There is something bigger than medicine!”
He listened, silent. Then he said, calmly: “Impossible.”
I reminded him that the test box had said 92% accurate — and we were in the 8%. Truly miraculous.
Months later, 16 months after that first miracle, my wife became pregnant again — with our second daughter. I called Dr. Toath once more. Same reaction: “Impossible.”
This story, my friends, is a testament. No one deserves credit but Hashem. No doctor, no expert, no method. We had gone to every specialist in the world. We had tried everything humanly possible. And yet, Hashem provided. He reminded us that true faith is not in people or methods — it is in Him.
He waits for us to reach the end of the road, to see that human efforts have limits. And only then do we return to Him, and only then do miracles happen.