Here’s My Story: One Jew, Three Opinions

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I vividly recall my father, Samuel Sydney Schwartz — Shimshon ben Menachem Mendel HaKohen — telling me in my youth, “I can trace my family back to Aharon the High Priest. That’s where I come from. So you must marry Jewish. If you don’t, you break the chain.”

That made a strong impression on me, especially because neither of my parents was Torah observant during my formative years, and it makes the story I am about to tell even more poignant.

In 1986, I was living with my husband and children in Colorado Springs, Colorado, and my parents joined us there so that they could be closer to me and their grandchildren. A year later, Rabbi Mendy Teitelbaum came to the area as the Chabad emissary, and my father developed a close relationship with him. Rabbi Teitelbaum knew that if he was short a man for the minyan, or if he needed help with a particular mitzvah, he could always count on my father.

When my father was subsequently diagnosed with cancer, of course, he had to let Rabbi Teitelbaum know he would not be available: “I want you to know that I’ll be having surgery so I won’t be able to join you for prayer services for a while. It looks like I’ll be out of commission for months, so don’t count on me.”

Naturally, Rabbi Teitelbaum asked, “What kind of surgery?”

“For lung cancer,” my father replied.

“I’ve been a smoker my whole life and this is the price I now have to pay. They are going to remove my left lung.”

“I’m so sorry to hear that. Can I tell this to the Rebbe?”

At that time, my father had no special connection to the Rebbe, so he merely said, “Sure, if you want to tell your rabbi, tell your rabbi; it’s okay with me.”

Rabbi Teitelbaum picked up the phone to call New York and came back to my father with: “The Rebbe says you should get a second opinion.”

“Not a bad idea,” my father responded, and he followed through. But the second opinion was no different from the first: “You’ve got cancer in your left lung and you should have it removed immediately.”

When my father related this to Rabbi Teitelbaum, Rabbi Teitelbaum again called New York and came back to my father with: “Get a third opinion and listen to whatever that doctor says.”

This was a little hard for my father to accept, largely because there were no more surgeons specializing in pulmonology in Colorado Springs, so he’d have to go far out of town. But Rabbi Teitelbaum convinced him that it would not be wise to disregard the Rebbe’s advice, and my father ended up making an appointment at a hospital in Denver — what was then called National Jewish Health Center for Immunology and Respiratory Medicine. They had specialized for many decades in tuberculosis and asthma, and thus it was an appropriate place for treatment of my father’s lung issue.

Oddly, the doctor there wanted to know where my father was born. He was surprised to hear the response: Philadelphia. Why? Because his tests showed what appeared to be a lung fungus common to people in the South.

But then my father clarified, “My parents moved to Memphis when I was six years old, and I lived in Memphis for thirty-five years!”

“Well, that explains it. And I am happy to tell you that you don’t have lung cancer. You’ve got histoplasmosis. It’s a fungus that comes from birds or bats and it’s in the soil in the South. You do need to quit smoking, but you don’t need surgery.”

You can imagine the relief our whole family felt, and how grateful we were to the Rebbe for insisting on a third opinion.

About a year later, I moved with my family to Miami Beach, Florida, and my parents opted to return to Cherry Hill, New Jersey, where they had lived previously. After seven years there, my father was again diagnosed with lung cancer — this time in his right lung — and surgery was again recommended.

Unfortunately, this cancer was for real, and he did have his right lung removed. But none of us failed to appreciate that had his left lung been erroneously removed years earlier, he would not be able to have this life-saving surgery now. Obviously, a person can’t have both lungs removed. So had the Rebbe not advised as he did, my father would not have had this option for treatment. His life would have ended with a long painful death from terminal cancer.

As it happened, he was able to have the surgery, which was successful. He lived another five years during which he saw another grandchild born to him, and his older grandchildren marry. None of this would have been possible without the Rebbe’s intercession.

Now, there is an addendum to this story.

After my father’s second lung cancer diagnosis, my parents decided to move to Palm Beach, Florida, where they became close to Rabbi Moshe Scheiner, who led the local synagogue. Years later, after my father passed away, my mother went to Rabbi Scheiner and said, “I want to keep Shabbat now.”

Rabbi Scheiner informed her that if she wanted to keep Shabbat properly, she couldn’t drive to prayer services. He convinced her to move to Delray Beach, where my sister lived, and where she would be within walking distance of a synagogue.

And so it was that through this chain of events my mother became Shomer Shabbat at age seventy-two and ended up keeping Shabbat for the next twenty years.

One beautiful story on top of another.

Ms. Judy Waldman, a yacht broker, has been living in South Florida for the past thirty-six years. She was interviewed in June 2026.