My Paranormal Experiences

My maternal antecedents had faith in “folk cures” and “folk practices,” phenomena that cannot be scientifically or naturally explained, and I have become a true believer, myself. Herewith, I relate two inexplicable events. Years ago, when I worked at Beth Jacob, I misplaced $300. A generous congregant had handed me three $100 bills early that morning to anonymously help subsidize an upcoming Empty Nesters dinner. I wasn’t used to receiving cash donations, and I had no secure office place to hide the money until I could give it to the bookkeeper who came in at the end of the day. I had to rush to a committee meeting, so I hurriedly and absentmindedly hid the cash in the safest spot I could think of.

After the long committee meeting, I brought M.R., the Empty Nesters chairman, to my office to show him the donated money, but I couldn’t remember where I had hidden it. M.R. and I searched my office, emptying the desk drawers, bookshelf, and trashcan. When it seemed totally hopeless, I offered to replace the $300 myself, but M.R. wanted to keep looking. The money had to be there.

A favorite Holocaust survivor congregant stopped by, and I told her about the missing money. “I think I can help you,” she said. She asked if I had a few dollars. I did. She told me to drop the dollars into my desk tzedakah box. I obeyed. Then she led me through a Hebrew incantation which I repeated word by word. Confused and flustered, I banged clumsily into a chair, upon which we’d stacked a shaky pile of books cleared from the shelf. The books dropped and scattered. A few fell open, and the three bills fluttered out from between their pages, where I’d absentmindedly hidden them. The satisfied woman left, and M.R. and I were stunned. What had just happened?

The woman had led me through a Hebrew incantation for a lost object. I’d verbally declared that I gave tzedakah in the merit of the soul of Rabbi Meir Baal Haness (Rabbi Meir the Miracle Worker), a sage known for his legendary acts of charity. (A recent Internet search related that Rabbi Meir, a student of Rabbi Akiva and a brilliant scholar, is known as a spiritual protector for those who call upon him in times of need.)

Last week, my husband, Zvi, misplaced his new pair of special eyeglasses, essential for his driving and reading, and he was understandably distraught. We looked everywhere in the house, cars, and carport. We rechecked the places where he habitually rests his eyeglasses. We retraced his entire day’s movements. Our detail-oriented daughter, Rachel, came to help, but her methodical “search and rescue” wasn’t proving successful.

I recalled the incident of the missing $300, but I didn’t remember the exact prayer words, and the woman who guided me was no longer alive. Zvi was ready to order a duplicate pair of eyeglasses, and I decided to see if the Internet could help me find the complete Hebrew incantation. But first, I considered who might know the Rabbi Meir incantation.

Maybe my friend, Meta, could help. I called her because she is familiar with a lot of Jewish folk wisdom and, like me, she does not doubt the power of paranormal phenomena. She didn’t know the prayer, but she advised, “Turn a glass over.” I had never heard of the glass-turning practice, but I went into the kitchen, took a glass, turned it upside down, and waited.

Minutes later, Rachel ran into the room. “I found the glasses!” she declared. The spectacles had been hiding among a jumble of wires, nowhere near any of Zvi’s usual reading spots. He had no idea how his glasses had fallen there. Something paranormal, inexplicable, and mysterious had just occurred; when I told Meta, she wasn’t surprised. We had just experienced an event we couldn’t rationally understand or explain, yet we knew with certainty that paranormal phenomena are real.