Testimony of Rabbi David Louis on the Healing of his Elderly Dying Father

This account is woven from the transcript of two interviews on the healing

Four years ago, my father [in the United States] was dying of terminal cancer [at his] home [where he] had 24-hour nursing. I went from Israel to be with him for however long -- they didn’t know how long -- it would take. After I arrived and put my luggage in the house, I didn’t have anything to say to my father because he was completely incapacitated. So I went out of the house to walk around, and I discovered there was a Christian Science Reading Room right around the corner. It happened to be open when I got there. I went in and chatted with the lady, and told her about my father. I don’t remember the ideas that were expressed as such, but I went home immediately, and told my father, “You are going to recover completely.” I was certain of this. I didn’t have any philosophy or idea in mind. I just said this and knew this was so.

When I visited the Reading Room, the people there, wonderful people, were not offering me any kind of intellectual ideas as such. It was the kindness and the prayerfulness. It was the atmosphere, the gracefulness, the graciousness. Now in retrospect, it is clear to me that probably those Scientists were praying. Every day I went back to the Reading Room, and when it was Sunday, I went to the service.

On the third day, my father perked up and wanted to eat. He hadn’t been hungry for three months. He hadn’t tasted anything. He was all connected to tubes – he was after operations. So we brought him yogurt and ice cream. His appetite developed, and I started going back and forth to the supermarket to bring him different kinds of foods. On the fourth day he wanted to eat scrambled eggs and pancakes. By the fifth day he wanted to eat in the kitchen. This was impossible. There was no way he could … yet now he was getting up out of bed, with a walker and the nurse by him, he’s eating in the kitchen. By the sixth day I was going back and forth to bring videos because he was sitting in front of his television set in the living room, drinking beer and eating popcorn. The nurses didn’t know what to do. They had never seen such a thing like this.

By the sixth day it started bothering him that he didn’t have his credit cards and checkbooks. He wanted to get his financial affairs back, because he had given them over -- he was dying -- and he had given them over to his lawyer, and now he wanted them back. In order to get them back he had to prove that he was legally capable of this, so to do that he had to get to the hospital. So we took all the equipment and everything and went to the hospital for a checkup on the seventh day. We went up to the sixth floor, and he was making jokes all the way. And we came back. The next day, now he had proved he was capable, he walked into the bank with a walker with the applause of all of the people there. It was really a fine moment. He got his affairs back in his hands. When we got back from the bank we got a phone call from the doctor, from the examination, that he was completely cleared of all this disease, nothing left at all.

All of his doctors and all of the people that knew him came over to the house, and everybody was astounded. And indeed, he lived for another year after that, and he had a good time, too. When I saw this, while it was happening, it seemed natural to me. I didn’t understand the grandeur and the magnificence of what I was witnessing, which was literally the resurrection of my father. He was coming out of the grave into a new life. He lived happily and well for another year. He went to concerts; he had a good time.

And that was my introduction to Christian Science. This changed my life. I decided that Christian Science is truth and that I intend to find out what it is, study this, and devote my life to this. And that’s exactly what I have done. I took a course in the subject. I began to study -- this is already three years ago -- and now I’ve come to understand that this truth of Christian Science is the way to understand God. That it is possible to have a constant conscious, continuous understanding of God, of God’s love, of God’s participation in everything that takes place with us.

Click here to return to the Rabbi's interview with Mary Trammell.