An Unforgettable Experience: Comedian Adi Ashkenazi's Near-Death Revelation

Comedian Adi Ashkenazi revealed for the first time in an interview with "7 Nights" that she underwent a near-death experience in 2008 while traveling in India. At that time, she was suffering from vertigo, a sensation of spinning, along with nausea and vomiting for two days. Ashkenazi returned to her hostel and drank some alcohol, which worsened the vertigo symptoms. "And then I died," she recalled. "I stepped out of and returned to my body three or four times. It was very clear. I'm drawn into a corridor, flying upwards, and I can see the entire room and the world from a distance."

Ashkenazi described the experience as intense and moving. "I felt incredible happiness and was moving towards a light—a light which I was sure I was part of. Then suddenly someone did a U-turn in this experience, and I got drawn back into the sphere within that corridor... and I simply came back to life."

Following this experience, Ashkenazi changed her lifestyle. She shared that at the time, she was 33, and her life revolved around work. "I made money and gained fame; I was satisfied but didn’t pay attention to other aspects like my happiness, self-confidence, and self-image. Suddenly, I started looking at families and feeling something. I saw a mother, father, and child, and rather than thinking, 'Oh, the child ties them down,' I thought, 'Wow, the child is their creation.' And I wanted that."

Ashkenazi added that the reactions to her experience were skeptical, but she decided her story needed to be told in an upcoming series. "It's a brainstorming session to understand this thing. People think this belongs to realms of hallucination... psychosis, dreams. Science doesn’t accept what it can't prove, and you can't measure the soul. But what characterizes death is that everyone who experiences it and returns to tell the tale, they all narrate the same story, word for word. Among other things, people say they return with a defined mission."

The series will also focus on building bridges, particularly between secular and religious communities. "Where is our culture? What do we know about our religion? What do we encounter as readers of secular media?" Ashkenazi asked. She stressed that the secular public often hears media reports about religious individuals breaking the law and assumes all religious people are the same. "That's not Judaism; it's some extreme. Don’t you want to find values that connect you with your environment? That have united generations before you? We must stop. This is the hope of our country: that those knowledgeable in Judaism will provide us with common ground. People who unite, not divide."