My Meeting with a Sorcerer

When I was fifteen years old, a woman tried to tell me my future.

She couldn't.

I never asked her why.

In fact, during the entire encounter, I do not remember saying a single word.

But before it was over, she moved her chair away from me, stepped back, and said something I would remember for the rest of my life:

“I cannot read him.”

Then she looked around me.

“There is an army of angels behind him. I am not being allowed.”

I had arrived without saying a word.

I left the same way.

It would take me more than a decade to begin understanding why perhaps the greatest gift I received that day was not discovering my future.

It was being denied access to it.

The Woman Who Knew

This happened only once.

I was about fifteen. We had recently arrived in New York after living in Israel, where I had grown up and celebrated my bar mitzvah at the Kotel. I was young, practical, skeptical, and still many years away from becoming a baal teshuvah. The extraordinary world of Torah learning that would later become central to my life was still somewhere beyond the horizon.

Then an unusual visitor arrived in New York.

She was described as an occult practitioner, a woman who supposedly possessed access to hidden knowledge and could reveal things about people's lives that ordinary human beings could not know.

People flocked to her.

I understood why.

Human beings have always been fascinated by one commodity that no amount of money can reliably purchase:

Tomorrow.

We want to know whom we will marry. Whether the business will succeed. Whether our children will be well. Whether the illness will pass. Whether the investment will work. Whether the thing we fear will happen. Whether the thing we desperately desire eventually will.

To know the future would seem almost as valuable as discovering the fountain of youth. Ponce de León became associated with the legendary search for waters that could defeat aging. But perhaps an equally ancient human dream is not to defeat time, but to look through it.

I wanted no part of it.

My family went to see the woman. They returned with stories about what she supposedly knew and what she had told them.

Then they told me something unexpected.

“She wants to see you.”

I refused.

The next day, again:

“She wants to see you.”

I still hesitated. Something about the entire enterprise made me uncomfortable. I could not yet explain my hesitation through Torah. I certainly could not yet quote the relevant passages in Devarim or explain the Jewish approach to divination.

I simply had a feeling that there were doors a person should not be eager to open.

Eventually, the family pressure won.

I went.

Fifteen Inches

We entered the room and sat on a couch. By then, I had heard enough stories about this woman's supposed abilities to know what everyone expected.

She entered.

I still remember her.

She sat directly in front of me and told my mother to move farther away. Then she pulled her chair toward mine until our faces were perhaps fifteen inches apart.

And stared into my eyes.

I stared back.

Neither of us spoke.

Seconds passed.

Then more.

It may have lasted a minute, although moments like that are difficult to measure. I concentrated on remaining completely composed. I controlled my breathing. Something inside told me not to speak, not to react, not to give her anything.

So, I simply looked into her eyes.

Then something changed.

Her face began to lose its color.

She looked unsettled.

The longer we stared, the more uncomfortable she appeared to be. Then I saw something I had not expected to see.

Fear.

She began looking to my right.

Then to my left.

Then above me.

Finally, she stood up and stepped away.

“I cannot read him,” she said.

Then came the sentence I never forgot.

“There is an army of angels behind him, protecting him. I am not being allowed.”

I said nothing.

I got up.

And left.

What exactly happened in that room?

I cannot tell you with certainty.

I was fifteen years old. I will not turn a childhood experience into proof of something I cannot prove, nor pretend today that I can scientifically explain what occurred decades ago.

But I can tell you this:

Something about that room never left me.

And many years later, Torah gave me a language with which to understand the question behind it.

The Door Torah Closes

The Torah does something fascinating with humanity's desire to penetrate the unknown.

It does not encourage us to pursue it.

It warns us away.

In Devarim, the Torah prohibits divination, soothsaying, sorcery, spells, consulting ov and yidoni, and seeking information from the dead. And after closing those doors, the Torah gives the Jew an entirely different instruction:

תָּמִים תִּהְיֶה עִם ה׳ אֱלֹקֶיךָ

“You shall be wholehearted with Hashem your God.”

The contrast is magnificent.

Human instinct says:

Tell me what happens next.

Torah says:

Walk with Hashem even when you do not know.

That is not intellectual weakness.

It may require considerably more courage than prediction.

Because knowing tomorrow would make today much easier. If I knew everything would work out, faith would require very little. If I knew precisely which business would succeed, there would be little courage in investing. If I knew every illness would heal, prayer would contain less vulnerability. If I knew exactly where every road ended, trust would become navigation.

But that is not the life Hashem gave us.

He gave us something much more demanding.

Today.

Above the Stars

Years later, when Torah became central to my life, I encountered another extraordinary statement of Chazal:

אין מזל לישראל — Ein mazal l'Yisrael.

The Gemara in Shabbat 156a records the teaching that Israel is not bound by mazal in the ordinary way. The discussion itself is nuanced, but its spiritual message is enormous: a Jew's relationship with Hashem cannot simply be reduced to an impersonal horoscope written into the stars.

That idea changed how I remembered the woman from my childhood.

I do not need to decide exactly what she possessed or what she saw. Torah does not ask a Jew to investigate occult powers, determine which claims are genuine, or experiment with forbidden practices to discover whether they work. The prohibition itself is the answer: these are not the channels through which a Jew is meant to seek guidance.

Our address is Hashem.

And once that becomes clear, the question itself changes.

The deeper question is not:

How powerful are they?

The question is:

Why would I seek them when I belong to Hashem?

A Jew does not need to negotiate with every mysterious force in creation. He does not need to chase signs, predictions, spirits, constellations, or secret knowledge to feel secure.

He deals with the Master of all of them.

The King of all kings.

The Source from which every force receives whatever existence it possesses.

Hashem.

Perhaps being wholehearted with Hashem means reaching the point where we stop demanding that Heaven show us the map.

We takes Hashem's hand and walks.

The Long Short Way

Then Chassidut gave me something even deeper.

The Tanya teaches that the Divine soul possesses three “garments”—thought, speech, and action—and that through Torah and mitzvot these ordinary human faculties become invested in Hashem's will and wisdom. The Alter Rebbe goes astonishingly further: through Torah and mitzvot, the soul does not merely receive information about Godliness; it becomes enveloped in and united with God's will and wisdom. Torah is described as an embrace in which the soul embraces Hashem and is embraced by Him.

That is a completely different kind of access to the “upper world.”

I once thought the extraordinary thing would be to discover what Heaven knows about tomorrow.

Tanya taught me that something infinitely greater is available today.

To attach yourself to Hashem Himself.

Through thought: learn His Torah.

Through speech: speak words of Torah and prayer.

Through action: perform His mitzvot.

The Tanya describes these as the very garments through which the Divine soul expresses itself.

No crystal ball.

No intermediary.

No secret appointment.

No fifteen-inch stare into another person's eyes.

Torah offers the long-short way. It may feel longer because it does not satisfy our appetite for instant answers. You must learn. Think. Pray. Perform mitzvot. Refine yourself. Fall and get up. Develop faith slowly enough that it becomes part of your inner architecture.

But ultimately it is the shorter road because you stop running after fragments of information about creation and begin developing a relationship with its Creator.

The Gift of Not Knowing

Many things happened to me after that afternoon.

There were turns in my life that no fifteen-year-old boy could have imagined. Joys I could never have predicted. Difficulties I would never have wanted revealed to me in advance. Encounters, illnesses, recoveries, people, miracles, disappointments, responsibilities, and blessings.

Looking backward, I am grateful I did not know.

Imagine being shown every painful day of your life before you were strong enough to live it.

Imagine knowing every loss before experiencing the love that preceded it.

Imagine knowing every hospital room before developing the faith required to enter it.

Perhaps knowledge of the future would not liberate us.

Perhaps it would imprison us inside events that have not even happened yet.

Hashem gives life differently.

A day at a time.

Enough light for today's step.

Enough strength for today's burden.

Enough Torah for today's decision.

Enough prayer for today's uncertainty.

Enough bitachon to go to sleep without possessing tomorrow.

That is not deprivation.

That is mercy.

What Happens Next?

At fifteen, I sat before a woman whom people believed could see things hidden from ordinary eyes.

She looked at me.

I looked at her.

And whatever happened in that room, I left without learning my future.

Today, I think that may have been the most accurate message I could have received.

My future was not mine to know.

It was mine to live.

Years later, Torah taught me that the great spiritual achievement is not knowing what tomorrow holds. It is knowing Who holds tomorrow—and trusting Him enough to walk toward it without seeing what comes next.

We possess yesterday only as memory.

Tomorrow only as possibility.

What Hashem places into our hands is the grace of today.

Today I can learn.

Today I can pray.

Today I can perform a mitzvah.

Today I can love my family, repair something broken, help another Jew, decide, change direction, say thank you, and take another step.

Perhaps that is why the Torah closes the door to forbidden attempts at knowing the future and then immediately opens a far greater door:

תָּמִים תִּהְיֶה עִם ה׳ אֱלֹקֶיךָ

Be wholehearted with Hashem.

Years ago, I sat fifteen inches from a sorcerer people believed could tell me what would happen next.

She couldn't.

And after everything Torah has taught me since, I am grateful.

Because the greatest freedom is not knowing what tomorrow holds.

It is being wholehearted with Hashem today—and leaving tomorrow where it belongs.