A real reason to give thanks

By Michael Orbach

Well over a 100 people gathered on Thanksgiving morning for a particular type of giving thanks: a Seudat Hoda for Ilan Tocker.

The meal began after the late shachris minyan. Tocker, looking slightly frail, was one of the last people to walk down the two flights of stairs to the auditorium of the Young Israel of Lawrence-Cedarhurst. Friends and family maintained that the fact that Tocker could walk at all was a miracle.

Months ago, Tocker, 33, a slender father of four, had been on death’s door.

The night after Tisha B’av, Tocker was with a friend, Oscar Seidel, in Atlantic City. As they made their way out of a restaurant, Tocker fainted and slammed his head on the marble floor.

“Why did he fall backward?” Seidel recalled in a pamphlet titled “In the Blink of an Eye” that was given out at the meal. “Why did it have to happen on the hardest marble floor possible? Seconds earlier, we were sitting at a table ... Why couldn’t he have fainted then, and fallen gently into his plate of ribs?”

As an ambulance was called the normally laid back Tocker became aggressive, the first indications that he had sustained serious brain damage.

Rushed to the hospital, Tocker nearly died. There was swelling on both sides of his brain, which doctors interpreted as a sure sign of intracranial bleeding. The right side of his skull was removed and doctors wanted to remove the left, but the pressure in Tocker’s brain had skyrocketed and the surgery was impossible. If somehow he managed to survive the night, the doctors weren’t sure he would ever emerge from a vegetative state.

The Chevra Kedisha of Philadelphia was called to make arrangements. Tocker’s parents had made Aliyah three weeks ago and were on the phone with their daughter-in-law, Rachel. With nothing else to do, Tocker’s family and friends began to pray.

Seidel called Rabbi Avraham Moyal, a Kaballist in Israel, whom Tocker was close with. The rabbi told Seidel to take water and make a blessing over it with a special kavanah (intention). The rabbi also texted a verse from the Torah to Seidel and told him to repeat it in Tocker’s ear 17 times.