PAGE 1
      I woke up in a hospital room in Formia, South Italy, to hear a voice exclaim: “She is waking up! She will live!" And other voices answered her, “Bravo! Bravo! Thank G-d!” As I regained my senses the women in the room related to me the story of my rescue:
      The woman who came every Wednesday to clean the building where I had hid happened to come at dawn Tuesday, the night of my suicide attempt. On Wednesday she was going to a family wedding. The occupants of the building were retirees and bar girls who customarily rose late in the morning.  She came together with her little son, who found me laying at the bottom of the long marble staircase. I was covered with bruises from the fall. She ran to the restaurant owner next door, and he called the ambulance. While they attended to me, the little boy found my suitcase in a niche of the house, the empty glass of water and the two bottles of sleeping pills. Then they rushed me to the hospital.
         
      A woman whom I had once helped, happened to be in the hospital and identified me. She told the others about me and they organized a watch, to keep vigil at my bed. Thus it was that she sat at the footend of my bed when I awoke, and all the women on that hospital floor rejoiced at my recovery.

      I marvel exceedingly at this rescue account. It was humanly impossible to have survived 78 prescription sleeping pills while hid away in a niche of that old house. Yet I was found at the bottom of the staircase. How did I get there? I had passed out while sitting on my suitcase. In later years I became convinced that an angel removed me from that niche in order to be discovered in time. Unconscious, I fell down the marble stairs. However, not a single bone was broken.

      Time was of the essence. So G-d arranged for this cleaning woman to come at dawn on the night of my attempted suicide, and for the restaurant owner to tarry over his accounting books. G-d provided the young woman in the hospital who not only identified me, but who aroused the compassion of that whole hospital floor, so that they watched for every little sign of life I might give.

      This was not the first time that I had attempted suicide. I was sixteen when a  “spontaneous” attempt from a train had been frustrated by a man popping up out of nowhere. I have no idea from where he came. My first “planned” attempt was amateurish and therefore did not succeed. My next try saw me meticulously cut my wrist several times in the right place. A fountain of blood gushed forth --- and then dried into a crust right under my eyes. A merciful G-d intervened again to save my life. The third time I left nothing to chance. I ensured this attempt would succeed.

      I did not reckon, however, with G-d. I knew not the Scriptures which declared: “I sinned, and perverted what was right, and it was not requited to me. He has redeemed my soul from going down into the Pit, and my life shall see the light. Behold, G-d does all these things twice, three times, with a man, to bring back his soul from the Pit, that he may see the light of life (or, “to be lighted with the light of life”  (Job 33:27-30).

      It took near death to make me turn toward Him. A faint light in my dark tunnel began to glimmer after my rescue from sure death. I have often pondered those three days of hanging in the twilight zone. Where was I? What did my soul encounter that caused me to search for Him with such zeal? Still, a yearning for love gave me no peace for yet another year until, in desperation, I finally called out to G-d and began to seek Him most earnestly.

      I dusted off my German Bible I had received from a German Lutheran Pastor, one of three lone Christians who had shown me a little of G-d’s kindness and compassion. His name is forever etched into my memory. I, an atheist, had never asked myself though, why on earth I kept carrying this Bible with me from place to place? I now sat down to read, starting with Genesis - Torah - my first step into a brand new world... G-d’s world.
       

      I did not as yet realize the power of the Word and I could not grasp that this was a map, a blue-print that led to G-d and to the knowledge of Him; that it directed toward the Light and the Love, the Purpose and the Destiny I so desperately sought for all my life. As I read, His Word penetrated me and brought forth my very first vision of the night: