AppleTree
Cover Story
A Miracle, A Destiny
family learned the growth was a tumor.
But what kind?
Dr. Lutz tried to be nonchalant. Not
aniel Syme was 20 years old
to worry, he said. Then he added, quiet-
when he found something
ly, ''But if you were my son, I would
unusual, something that
have this taken care of right away."
shouldn't be there.
The pathology test came next; the
It was a lump in his groin.
results were in on April Fool's Day. "It's
His first hope: It's nothing.
one of those strange coincidences —
"I tried to rationalize,
though I don't believe in
`Oh, it's probably just
coincidences — that you
the result of a football
remember," says Daniel,
injury," he says.
today Rabbi Daniel
Then he called his
Syme of Temple Beth El.
mother. Right away she
It was then the Syme
made an appointment
family learned that the
with Dr. Ray Altman.
lump was in fact a malig-
Dr. Altman had little
nant tumor. Further, it
doubt that the lump
was an extremely rare
was not nothing. Nor
form of cancer.
was it a football injury.
"Although I didn't
But he couldn't say
know it at the time,
what the lump was. It
apparently only one
could have been any
other person in the med-
number of things. So
Rabbi Daniel Syme
ical journals had survived
Dr. Altman, a surgeon,
with the kind of tumor I
sent Daniel to a urolo-
had," Rabbi Syme says.
gist, Dr. Sherwin Lutz. Daniel under-
The best option was immediate sur-
went a series of tests. That was when the gery, to see exactly how far the tumor
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The Silberberg family — Dov and
Zelda and their five daughters and two
sons — lived in the Bronx. It was home
to a large Jewish population; yet unlike
mong the patients at the
Hospital for Incurable Diseases, the Silberbergs, most Jews there weren't
observant. Dov and Zelda remained in
in New York City's Bronx, was
the Bronx, though, because their parents
a woman who had spent her entire life
lived there and the family needed to stay
on her stomach. She couldn't move her
close.
legs or arms. But she could move her
Dov was in love with his family and
mouth, and she had taught herself to
his Jewish life, but he also worked at the
paint and write using nothing more
Brooklyn Navy Yard, fol-
than her lips.
lowing his military service
On many Shabbat
during World War II,
afternoons in the 1950s,
when he was stationed on
the woman received a
Okinawa. Zelda was a
visitor, a boy. He wasn't
homemaker.
family, but he would
They were "very sensi-
talk to her, and feed her;
tive," Rabbi Silberberg
there simply wasn't
says. "They were solid,
enough staff to tend to
genuine people, devoted
these jobs, and so the
to Yiddishkeit and driven
hospital was dependent
by sincerity"
on volunteers. The boy's
name was Elimelech
The Silberbergs sent
their sons to Chabad day
Silberberg.
school and their daugh-
Today, Rabbi
Elimelech Silberberg
Rabbi Elimelech Silberberg ters to Bais Yaakov for
their education. But
lives in West Bloomfield,
Elimelech learned a great
where he is director of the
deal about life, and being a Jew, simply
Sara Tugman Bais Chabad Torah
from living where he did, he says.
Center. But he grew up in New York,
"Growing up in the Bronx, being
where early childhood lessons, including
among a basically non-observant popu-
his experiences at the Hospital for
lation, gave me a sense of responsibility,"
Incurable Diseases, helped him become
he says. "When my brothers and sisters
the person he is now
A
had progressed, and to see if it could be
removed. So not long after hearing the
results, Daniel went into the hospital.
"Two doctors joined in the explorato-
ry surgery, which took five hours,"
Rabbi Syme says. "When the tests came
back, Dr. Altman came into my room."
"We expected to find something," he
told the family. "We didn't. The tumor
was totally encapsulated."
It was, without a doubt, "a miracle"
the physician said. He then turned to
Daniel, the son of Temple Israel Rabbi
M. Robert Syme, and said, "This means
you're here to do something important.
You should become a rabbi."
"I was only 20 at the time," Rabbi
Syme says today. "And when you're 20
and hear something like this, it really
makes an impact."
So he did indeed become a rabbi, and
"I hope that as a rabbi in some small
measure I've lived up to that responsibil-
ity.
33
Yet he admits that mystery still lingers,
that unknowing why this gift was his.
"I'm still figuring out," he says, "exactly
what I should do [for this miracle]." ❑
and I went to synagogue, to shul, when
families came to our home for Shabbat
dinner, we knew we would be the exam-
ple for others.
Rabbi Silberberg now serves not only
as rabbi of the Torah Center, he is
actively involved in outreach, helping
Jews learn more about their religion. He
often thinks back to his childhood,
when his parents were, in many ways,
doing the same thing.
It was the way his parents taught him
compassion.
"We lived a few blocks from the
Hospital for Incurable Diseases," Rabbi
Silberberg recalls.
The patients were a diverse group, all
united in the loneliness of their fate.
"One time, my mother suggested I
volunteer there," he says.
Elimelech was 10 years old and was
signed on to come on Saturday,
Shabbat, when he helped feed patients.
The hospital was a bleak place. There
were those who spent all their days in
bed, and hallways were lined with men
and women, heads bent over in their
wheelchairs.
"[Volunteering there] really struck a
chord with me," Rabbi Silberberg says.
"My parents always guided me in that
direction, to help those in need. Being
at the hospital taught me a lot about
pain and suffering." ❑
"