Flora was always superstitious about interfering in anyone’s love life because she knew what had happened to her grandmother. Back in czarist Russia, this grandmother was engaged to marry her beloved. However, he had tuberculosis, so her parents forced her to break off the engagement. Eventually she married someone else and did not know what had happened to her first fiancé. After she’d been married for some years and had a family, her husband also contracted tuberculosis. She thought she’d been cursed because of what she’d done to her first fiancé.
They were Lubavitcher Hasidim, so she went to the Rebbe and told him she was afraid her marriage was cursed because she’d broken off a previous engagement to someone with tuberculosis. Although the Rebbe was a very mystical person–or perhaps because in his mystical insight he knew what each person needed–he gave her a very modern answer. “There’s no such thing as a curse,” the Rebbe said. He added, “If you feel badly about what you did to your former fiancé, go find him and ask his forgiveness.”
After some investigation, Flora’s grandmother found out that her first fiancé was still living, though in a far-off town. She traveled there alone, first taking a train and then going the rest of the way in a horse-drawn wagon. Finally she found him: He was married, with children, and completely well! He was cured of his tuberculosis. She asked his forgiveness for having broken off their engagement due to her parents’ insistence. He forgave her. Then she returned home and her husband died of tuberculosis.
Copyright © Leora Freedman 2015
***If you have something to say, or a story to share, our comments page is the place to leave it!
Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2015 Leora Freedman 
