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Short Summary
Main recommendation: Gather a group to say Tehillim (Psalms) with focused, sincere prayer for someone in need, since the speaker attributes a recovery from a coma to this collective prayer. The story centers on Raquel Katz, who came out of a coma after women prayed at the Kever of Rabbi Yaakov Yosef in Safed, and the speaker frames it as a miracle earned through a test of faith.
Key Points
- The story begins with the Sarah for that girl Tehillim group in the Five Towns, a group formed about ten years earlier in memory of Lori Martin's daughter Sarah, who died of cancer, and which meets with 50 to 70 women on different days.
- Raquel Katz, Lori Martin's second daughter, collapsed while walking in Miami and was in a deep coma, judged brain dead by doctors who believed she would never talk.
- Women from Far Rockaway traveled to visit holy graves in Safed, stopping first at the Kever of the Rebbetzin (Rabbi Chaim's wife) and then Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai and his wife Rivka, then Rabbi Chanina ben Dosa, before heading toward the Kever of Rabbi Yaakov Yosef (the Ari), reciting Psalm 23 at each site.
- Shortly after the prayers, Raquel woke from the coma, and the treating physician, a pulmonologist of 21 years, told the speaker he had no medical explanation.
- The speaker says the women who went to Safed were "the icing on the cake" and credits the sincerity and focus of the entire Sarah for that girl Tehillim group back home for the recovery.
Details Worth Noting
- Concrete instructions: Drink water before and during any hot outdoor visit, since the speaker insisted each woman carry a bottle because the heat was extreme and dehydration was a risk. Recite Tehillim at each stop, praying for the person in need as well as for oneself, and finish at the final site before leaving. Form a group of women who say Tehillim on set days, saying the brachos, Tehillim, and Hallel and Kaddish as described in the story.
- The Hebrew word "nes" is used by the speaker to mean three things: miracle, a flag on a high flagpole, and a test (nisayon). He links these by arguing that passing a test raises a person to a higher level, from which one sees the next level, where the miracle appears.
- The speaker says Hashem tested Avraham because God knew he would pass, and that the women's faithfulness on a very hot day counted as passing their own test.
- The speaker explicitly warns the traveling women not to credit themselves alone, framing the outcome as God's doing through the prayers of the whole Tehillim group; he also notes that normally eating is not allowed in the cave, but he insisted the women drink water due to extreme heat.
Bottom Line
Collective, sincere Tehillim recitation, here at sacred graves in Safed, is presented as the cause of a dramatic recovery the speaker could not explain medically, and the story asks listeners to view the group's faith as a test that raised them toward a miracle.
