Crown Heights, New York. Some time in the mid-90’s. I’m walking Kingston Avenue next to 770, Lubavitch World Headquarters, and once again I see the Rebbe’s healing mikvah water for sale. Fancy packaged cartons of it and simple little vials. Scientist that I am, I pass it all by.. ..almost. “How do I know it’s really blessed water?” I muse to myself. “Maybe someone’s just making a little money on souvenirs and the public’s naiveté.”

“Hey Rivkie” I ask the street vendor. “Where did you get the water?”

“From Itche Gansburg” she replies candidly.

Reassured, I walk straight on to Itche Gansburg’s home at the back of the Machon Chana dormitory on President Street. Itche Gansburg, may G-d rest his soul, was a one-of-a-kind chassid, a passionate, brilliant, eccentric little guy, who always took life to the Nth degree, and expected others to do the same.

“Sure I’ve got some Rebbe’s water for you.” Rabbi Gansburg said, handing me a vial he had prepared himself. “I’ve seen plenty of miracles with it myself.”

“I’d actually like a few of these, if you can spare them” I said. “There’s quite a few people I know who need a good blessing for health. Where did you get the water?”

“I got it from Yisrael Halperin, the shliach in Herziliya. The Rebbe told Leibel Groner to take advantage of the mikvah water, and Yisrael got some as a result.”
 
Finally I was convinced that I had the real goods. Itche Gansburg was a reliable fellow, every inch a chassid. His son, Yosi, had taught me the abc’s of Judaism and Chassidism in Toronto for years, and I felt quite confident that I’m dealing with competent, reliable people. Moreover, having heard so many miraculous tales involving this miracle water, I was happy to have my own bonafide supply.
 
As I write these words, it’s Elul, the month of stocktaking and now I’m taking stock of the miracles I have seen with this water. There was one with my mother-in-law, one with my father-in-law, one with my niece and one with my brother-in-law. Then there was the university student who overdosed on heroin and the charity collector who was so happy he wouldn’t take money. More recently there was the spontaneous complete remission, and the psychotic who mellowed out.

Once my mother-in-law was hospitalized for 2 or 3 weeks with a few simultaneous problems: A low grade fever which the doctors could not diagnose, a balance issue that kept her falling all too often, and a mysterious (and ominous) lump under her chin. The doctors had scheduled a biopsy for the Monday and I was visiting her at the hospital on the Friday afternoon. I offered her some of the Rebbe’s mikvah water. My mother-in-law was an observant Jew but very practical and down to earth. She said, “the water can’t hurt” and gulped it down with the appropriate blessing for drinks. On the Monday, as they were prepping her for the scheduled procedure, the doctor said, “I don’t know what you are doing here. The fever is gone, the lump is gone and you are steady on your feet. You may as well go home!” And she did.

Some time around then, my father-in-law, who had plenty of health issues himself, had an angioplasty that had gone bad. His arm swelled up like a balloon and it was all black and blue. Due to his frail condition, the doctors feared the worst. Again, the water did the trick and the doctors were as surprised as we were happy to see his turn for the better.

Some months later, family and friends made a big anniversary party for them at a fancy Toronto restaurant. Knowing how skeptical my in-laws always were about the Rebbe, I was quite taken aback to hear both of them announce, before the entire crowd, that they would not have lived to celebrate this event were it not for the divine intervention that came through the Rebbe’s mikvah water.

In the meantime, a couple of local college students had gotten themselves into big trouble with an accidental overdose of heroin. One of them died that night and the other barely made it. The survivor, an Israeli Canadian (we will call Peretz) was hospitalized with bilateral complete kidney failure. When I visited Peretz, his mom was at his bedside. They explained to me that he had to have five hours of dialysis every day, if he could take it. The prognosis was bleak. They did not know if or when he would ever have renal function again. I aksed if he could drink and they said yes. I told him some mikvah water miracle stories and left the water with them.

About three weeks later there was a Yud-Tes Kislev Farbrengen in my home. It’s a celebration of the Chassidic New Year, marking the anniversary of liberation of the founder of Chabad from imprisonment for promoting Chassidic teachings in Czarist Russia. At the farbrengen there was a special guest, Peretz! He had just been discharged with a clean bill of health! He had brought his medical charts and tabled them before the 40 of us gathered there. First daily dialysis, then every second day, then less hours, then less often until two weeks later, poof! No dialysis and 100% functioning of both kidneys, and he attributed it all to the Rebbe’s mikvah water.

The next fall, our niece suffered a burn with boiling water that simply wasn’t healing properly. My brother-in-law came over for some water, and she healed right up. Then some time later, maybe a year or two, it was my brother-in-law with a problem. He had broken his foot and called my wife, his sister, for some Rebbe’s water. She thought, wow, I’m supposed to be the one with the faith in the Rebbe’s water and here is my brother teaching me how to believe. She dropped some off to him which he imbibed before going to have the cast reset. They took a second x-ray and behold! They said that according to this x-ray, the foot had never broken in the first place! When asked how that could be if the first x-ray showed the foot was clearly broken, they had no explanation (but we do!).
 
Then, about two years back, there was a remarkable scene at my front door. During the course of an average week, about ten or more people come to our door to collect charity. We don’t give much, but we cheerfully give a little money to everyone who comes to the door. We always invite them in, and my wife offers them a little something to eat or drink. To the Israelis, I often offer an old Beis Moshiach magazine which they snap up happily. It revives their souls. When there is a medical issue, however, I offer the Rebbe’s mikvah water.

One Sunday afternoon, I answer the door to find a smiling, burly Israeli who strides in and gives me a big hug, while proclaiming, “Doctor Gotfryd! My friend, my friend!” I’m thinking, wow, what these guys don’t think of in order to get a nice check. As I squirm out of this apparently random display of affection or affectation, I don’t yet know which, he says, “Don’t you remember me? From last year?”

I said, “Look, the check is not going to get bigger or smaller. I can give what I give and that’s it.”

He said, “Dr. Gotfryd, I didn’t come here for money and I’m not going to take from you any money. I came here to say thank you. Last year, I came with a terrible kidney problem and you gave me a bottle of the Rebbe’s mikvah water, don’t you remember? Well, I took and the whole disease cleared up right away. It was a big miracle, and I have come here to thank you! That’s all!”

What is it all about? How does it work? Is this what the Rebbe wants? I certainly don’t have all the answers, but one thing is certain. Jews always came to the Rebbe with their problems and he always tried to help, often giving something, be it a book or a dollar or a matzah, a cup of wine or a piece of cake. Today is no different. The Rebbe, wherever he is, has found a way to convey material blessings even now. Why not utilize it?

I like to think of the Rebbe’s water as a kind of spiritual homeopathy. One of my biology professors, Bruce Pomeranz, introduced me to his ground-breaking research into homeopathy (and the political fracas surrounding it) in the mid to late 1970’s. He was part of a multinational team at four world-class universities that conducted double-blind, well-controlled experiments investigating the amazing claim that water has a chemical memory, even when the chemical is absent.

The idea is that a solution with an active chemical can be successively diluted in a certain manner that results in no chemical presence of the original substance, and yet the remaining water behaves just as if the chemical was still present in full strength. Scientists are still divided on the issue today, but consumers buy upwards of $500M in homeopathic remedies annually, in the US alone. I know homeopathy works because my nasty tree and grass pollen allergies are completely controlled by this inexpensive, non-invasive, occasional treatment, while some of my similarly afflicted family members still choose to struggle with familiar OTC drugs that involve long-term daily doses and irritating side-effects.

The Rebbe’s mikvah water is similar. It requires a simple but specialized manner of dilution (To make more you just add water, pouring at each time an amount of fresh water that is less than the amount in the container), it works just as well with subsequent dilutions, it is based not on a chemical model but rather some kind of energetic imprint of the original sample, it is low cost, and it is somewhat controversial. Another similarity is that it has mixed reviews. I, for example, have never personally experienced any physical or spiritual wellness benefits of the Rebbe’s water, although I have personally seen so many miraculous recoveries in others.

Our sages say that the Holy One Blessed Be He wanted to make King Chizkiyahu Moshiach, but he missed out on the opportunity because he did not sufficiently proclaim the miracles that were done for him. The Lubavitcher Rebbe teaches that we can hasten the coming of Moshiach by recounting the miracles we witness in our daily lives. May it be G-d’s will that the recounting of these stories be counted as a sufficient merit to bring Moshiach Now!

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