Here’s My Story: My Life In A Flash

Mrs. Cheryl (Chaya Bracha) Spangenthal

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In 1979, my husband and I were living in Cape Town, South Africa, where I worked as a teacher. One rainy night, after attending a staff meeting, my friend gave me a ride home. We were driving along a winding mountain road when suddenly we saw a car coming head-on toward us! We had the mountain on one side of us and a steep drop to the ocean on the other. There was nowhere to go.

I screamed at my friend to stop, but then I became calm. I knew the car was going to hit us, but I also knew without a doubt that whatever would happen was out of my control.

The driver crashed into the side of the car where I was sitting, and judging by the pictures of the crash scene, it was a miracle that I survived at all. I had injured the left side of my head, injured and lost use of the right side of my body. My speech was affected too, and I was left with chronic pain and severe migraines. I worked hard over a long period to regain my functions, but I remained heavily medicated, which in turn made me afraid that if I were to have children, they would be affected by all the medication.

In 1980, we immigrated to Boston, where, by a miracle, I gave birth to a baby girl, without any complications.

We later moved to Charlotte, North Carolina, where my husband got a job as a pulmonologist, and we became friends with the local Chabad emissaries, Rabbi Yossi and Mariashi Groner. At one point, they invited me to come along with them to New York to get a blessing from the Rebbe.

I did not know anything about the Rebbe, but I decided to go along. My chronic pain had not gone away, and was so bad that sometimes I could not see any future for myself. I was desperate for help.

When we saw the Rebbe, he was handing out dollars or coins for people to give to charity. I went over to him together with Rabbi Groner, who explained to the Rebbe, in Yiddish, what had happened to me and asked him for a blessing. But as they spoke, I could not look at the Rebbe; it was as though there was too much energy around him, and I had to turn my gaze downward. Rabbi Groner later told me that the Rebbe gave me a blessing to be healthy and a blessing to have children.

For the next couple of days, I had so much energy that I was unable to fall asleep. I knew that a spiritually powerful man had given me a blessing, and I knew then that I would be okay, and my health would surely improve.

Thank G-d, I became pregnant a year later, and went on to have another three children. During all my pregnancies, I had no pain, but after each birth, the pain would return for six months or so and then gradually subside. Although the pain did not go away completely, the quality of my life improved substantially.

At one point, during one of my pregnancies, under the insistence of my obstetrician, I underwent an ultrasound. The doctor was quiet during the procedure, but afterwards he told me that we needed to follow up with further tests. The results came back positive for spina bifida, a serious condition involving a malfunction in the bones of the spine and the spinal cord.

When I told the Groners about the diagnosis, Rabbi Groner said that whenever one has some uncertainty regarding a medical condition, they should get multiple opinions. Following his advice, I took the test results to another doctor to get his opinion, and then did a re-test with two more doctors. Without disclosing the findings of the initial test, I merely asked them to let me know their findings.

The subsequent tests also came back positive. The doctors could not be fully certain, but all of them said that there was a very strong likelihood that my baby had spina bifida. My husband and I started to discuss the possibility of raising a child with a severe disability while managing my own health issues and trying to raise our other children, as well as thinking about how this would affect them. We had a big decision to make. Eventually, I came to a conclusion: If this is what G-d had in store for me, I would accept it and find a way to manage.

A month or so later, at a regular prenatal appointment, the obstetrician said there were further complications. Apart from the spina bifida, I also had placenta previa, a condition in which the placenta drops, thereby blocking the cervix and preventing normal delivery. There was also a strong possibility of this causing a spontaneous abortion.

Rabbi Yossi Groner suggested I tell the Rebbe, so I wrote a note expressing all of my concerns. I also mentioned that I had been planning to attend a seminar in Minnesota with Rabbi Manis Friedman, a chasidic lecturer, but was concerned that flying would further increase the risk of an early stillbirth.

Rabbi Groner sent my note to the Rebbe, and soon after, I was excited to receive a letter with his response. “You will have a healthy baby,” the Rebbe wrote, “and that child will go on to have many children and bring you a lot of nachas. You must trust in G-d that things will be good.”

I felt completely reassured that everything would be alright, and from then on, I acted as any woman with a normal pregnancy would, including attending the conference in Minnesota. And, thank G-d, when the baby was born, everything was normal!

Two or three weeks after the birth, Mariashi Groner suggested that we go to the Rebbe to thank him for the blessing and to show him the baby.

This time, when we arrived in New York and went to 770, there was a small line of people waiting to see him near his office. I watched as the Rebbe came out and stopped to speak to the first person in line, and then moved on to the second person. “Here is the baby,” I was planning to say. “Thank you!” Then the Rebbe came to Mariashi, and she spoke to him. Once again, I felt this palpable, tremendous energy radiating from him. Then the Rebbe stood in front of me, and I looked up.

I was not expecting what happened next. As he looked at me, it was like a camera flash went off, but much deeper than that. It felt as though the Rebbe saw right through me and connected with a part of my soul that I had never connected with myself.

I was so shaken by this experience that despite what I had planned to say, I could not make a sound. The whole meeting probably took a few seconds, but since then, and through some other major life events, I have had the sense that the Rebbe was with me.

Mrs. Cheryl (Chaya Bracha) Spangenthal is a retired school teacher and nurse who has resided in Charlotte, North Carolina, since 1982. She was interviewed in November 2015.