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.

During the entire encounter, I do not remember saying a single word.

But before it was over, she moved her chair away from me 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 left without learning my future. It would take me years to understand that perhaps this was the gift.

The Woman Who Knew

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 practical, skeptical, and still years away from becoming a baal teshuvah.

Then an unusual visitor arrived in New York—a woman people believed could see things about their lives that ordinary people could not know.

People flocked to her. I understood why.

Human beings have always wanted one thing no amount of money can reliably purchase:

Tomorrow.

Whom will I marry? Will the business succeed? Will my children be well? Will the illness pass? Will the thing I fear happen?

I wanted no part of it.

My family went. They returned with stories about what she had supposedly known. Then they told me: “She wants to see you.” I refused.

The next day, again: “She wants to see you.”

I could not yet explain my hesitation through Torah. I simply felt there were doors a person should not be eager to open.

Eventually, family pressure won. I went.

Fifteen Inches

We sat on a couch. She entered, told my mother to move farther away, and pulled her chair toward mine until our faces were perhaps fifteen inches apart.

Then she stared into my eyes. I stared back. Neither of us spoke. Seconds passed. Then more.

I concentrated on remaining still. Something inside told me not to speak, not to react, not to give her anything.

Then something changed. Her face began to lose its color. She looked to my right. Then my left. Then above me. Finally, she stood 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 happened in that room? I cannot tell you with certainty.

I will not turn a childhood experience into proof of something I cannot prove. But the encounter never left me.

Years later, Torah gave me a language for the question behind it.

The Door Torah Closes

The Torah does something striking with our desire to penetrate the unknown.

It closes the door.

In Devarim, after prohibiting divination, sorcery, and attempts to seek hidden knowledge, the Torah gives the Jew a different instruction:

תָּמִים תִּהְיֶה עִם ה׳ אֱלֹקֶיךָ

“Be wholehearted with Hashem your Hashem.”

Human instinct says: Tell me what happens next.

Torah says: Walk with Hashem even when you do not know.

Knowing tomorrow would make today easier. If I knew the business would succeed, there would be less courage in investing. If I knew the illness would heal, prayer would contain less vulnerability. If I knew where every road ended, trust would become navigation.

But Hashem did not give us tomorrow. He gave us today.

Above the Stars

Years later, I encountered another teaching of Chazal:

אֵין מַזָּל לְיִשְׂרָאֵל

“Israel is not subject to mazal.”

The Gemara in Shabbat teaches that a Jew is not simply imprisoned inside an impersonal destiny written in the stars.

That changed how I remembered the woman. I do not need to decide what she possessed or what she saw. Torah does not ask me to investigate occult powers to discover whether they work.

The prohibition itself tells me where not to look. Our address is Hashem.

The deeper question is no longer: How powerful are they? It is: Why would I seek them when I belong to Hashem? Perhaps being wholehearted means no longer demanding that Heaven show me the map. I take Hashem's hand and walk.

The Long Short Way

Then Tanya gave me something deeper. The Divine soul expresses itself through thought, speech, and action. Through Torah, prayer, and mitzvot, those ordinary faculties can attach a person to Hashem's will and wisdom.

I once thought the extraordinary thing would be to discover what Heaven knows about tomorrow. Tanya taught me that something greater is available today: to attach myself to Hashem Himself.

No crystal ball. No intermediary. No secret appointment. No fifteen-inch stare into another person's eyes. The road can feel longer because it offers no instant answers. You learn. Pray. Act. Fall. Get up. Slowly, faith becomes part of your inner architecture.

But it is the shorter road because you stop chasing fragments of information about creation and begin living with its Creator.

The Gift of Not Knowing

Many things happened to me after that afternoon.

Joys I could never have predicted. Difficulties I would never have wanted revealed in advance. Illnesses. Recoveries. Miracles. Disappointments. Responsibilities. Blessings.

Looking backward, I am grateful I did not know.

Imagine being shown every painful day before you were strong enough to live 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 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 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 people believed could see what ordinary eyes could not. She looked at me. I looked at her. And 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 spiritual achievement is not knowing what tomorrow holds. It is knowing Who holds tomorrow—and trusting Him enough to walk without seeing what comes next.

We possess yesterday only as memory. Tomorrow only as possibility. What Hashem places into our hands is today.

Today I can learn. Pray. Perform a mitzvah. Love my family. Repair something broken. Help another Jew. Take another step.

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

תָּמִים תִּהְיֶה עִם ה׳ אֱלֹקֶיךָ

“Be wholehearted with Hashem your Hashem.”

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

She couldn't.

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

My future was never mine to know.

It was mine to live—one day at a time, with Hashem, leaving tomorrow where it belongs.