A Journey Back to Faith: A Brush with Death as a Child

"I was looking for a glass but couldn't find one. If I had found a glass, this whole story might never have happened," N begins her story in the recording you are about to hear. "I said there's no choice, I'll drink from the bottle. I swallowed what I thought was soda, it looked like soda. I felt like I swallowed fire or coals. I almost choked. I started coughing. My parents realized something was wrong. My mom saw me with the soda bottle in my hand, thought I drank too fast and started pounding on my back.

My dad turned completely white. He grabbed the bottle and tried to take it from me. He had no idea what to do. Turns out, what I drank was a chemical that preserves the scent of perfumes from evaporating. I had consumed quite a lot, and no matter how much I tried to vomit, it was already inside my body. My mom didn't understand, and when my dad tried to explain, she went into a panic.

She believed that if I drank milk, it would remove the poison. She quickly gave me a large glass of milk. I drank it all, and we returned to the factory. Meanwhile, my dad called to ask what the substance was, and they said in a small amount it wasn't harmful but suggested I go to the hospital.

We went to the hospital, and there, sometimes you're lucky, and sometimes you're not. My dad brought the formula of the chemical, and we arrived at a special department for poisons. It seemed they weren't familiar with the substance, and they decided not to do a stomach wash, but to give me these tablets like chalk that absorb the chemical in the stomach."

It was quite disgusting, and after 15 minutes I vomited them out, and it didn’t help. We returned to the factory, and my mom kept asking, 'How are you feeling?'. In the evening, my dad decided to close the factory early, and on the way home – the bumpiness of the ride made me feel like everything was coming back up, even though I had opened the window. Slowly I felt everything turning into steam rising to my head, starting to see blurry and unable to think logically. I felt all the way like I was about to fall asleep, but not a normal sleep, more like 'a curtain falling on me'.

"I Saw Them Suffer So Much, I Couldn't Leave Them"

I felt like each of my legs weighed a ton, and I reached my room, that's all I remember. It was a dark winter evening in France, around seven. My mom called me, and I thought it was already morning and we were going to school. She turned on the light, and I didn't understand what was happening. I saw myself on the floor, like a marionette whose strings were cut, lying weirdly. My mom suddenly screamed hysterically, and I saw everything from above.

My dad heard the screams and ran to the room, tried to wake me up, slapped me, and nothing. I saw myself lying on the floor, thought I was dreaming. I saw drool coming from my mouth, and what's strangest was that I felt really good. It's indescribable. My parents immediately called the doctor, and I saw everything from above. When we are in the body, we are limited, but once out of it, you see everything at once from all directions.

"Leaving the body, you become another entity that understands, the soul knows many things you don't regret. Looking at the body you think, well, it's over. It's like an old garment you no longer need. The only thing that saddened me was my parents' distress because emotions remain. They lifted me, cried, not knowing what to do. They hoped I would wake up soon, that it was just a faint. I remember I really wanted to calm them.

I wanted to shout, but didn't hear myself. It was a thought, but I couldn't speak. I shouted to my mom: 'I am here, up here. Down there, there's nothing. Look here.' But they couldn't hear me, and I didn't know what to do. Suddenly I saw from the corner of the ceiling, like a bullseye appeared. I didn't know what I was really seeing, and it attracted me a lot. I almost wanted to enter there – and realized that each circle I saw, I could simply enter inside.

Today I know it's a tunnel that if you enter there, it's unknown whether you return. The feeling is that you are drawn there for many reasons – curiosity and others. The screams and cries that broke my heart from my mom, that's what prevented me from going in. I saw her crying so much and suffering that I understood that for them it was a disaster even though I tried to tell them I was fine."

"When I Embraced Judaism, 'Modeh Ani' Moved Me Deeply"

Meanwhile, the young girl was taken to the hospital, where efforts were made to revive her. "Eventually, I entered the body, and it felt terrible. All the time I felt amazing, and suddenly the nausea returned, the blur. I couldn't think, speak. I felt like a paralyzed person because my body was affected by that poison. The worst was feeling the slaps and trying to tell them 'enough, stop it'. But there's no way. The body is paralyzed, the mouth is closed.

In the meantime, I began to wake up, which was really hard. I wanted to sleep and wasn't allowed because they feared I would slip into a coma. After two days I returned to myself, thank Hashem, and was discharged. Naively, I began telling my mom what I went through, and she was very frightened. She told me: 'Don’t tell anyone.' Because 40 years ago, no one talked about clinical death. I promised her I wouldn't tell anyone. They told me: 'If anyone hears this story, they’ll place you in a mental institution.' I was ten and a half when this happened.

My mom thought something was damaged in my head, so I decided not to tell her anything more. But it changed my personality – as a ten-and-a-half-year-old girl who usually loves to play and doesn't think too deeply. I began reading books, but didn't know Judaism held the answers. I read religions, Buddhism, and what not? I searched for answers not knowing where they were. Until at 14, I stumbled upon a book by a Tibetan monk explaining how they leave their bodies using certain methods. Then I saw that what I went through was real, and I wasn't the only one.

"Years later there was a TV show on clinical death, with testimonies from people around the world who experienced it. Then I saw everyone went through the same process – leaving the body and seeing the tunnel, some entered, and some didn’t. I was so happy to finally find an answer to what happened to me and that I was okay mentally. When I returned to Judaism they gave me to read prayers and what moved me the most was what we say in the morning: 'Modeh Ani Lefanecha'.

"I identified so much and understood word for word what it means. How much we need to thank Hashem for returning the soul to the body, and the body is just a vessel. Hashem made this amazing vessel to help us perform mitzvot and elevate our soul in spiritual levels. It's a rectification to come to this body and once you leave it, it feels so good..."

Listen to the amazing story of the returnee to faith: