My story begins back in 2012, as I was finishing a degree in accounting at Lander College. I was learning with my Torah-study partner, and after a few hours I began to feel my voice getting tired. We paused for a bit and resumed learning afterward, and I didn’t think much of it.
As time went on, however, I began experiencing voice fatigue more and more. At first, I thought I was simply suffering from a winter cold, but then things escalated to the point where it hurt to say anything. When learning with my study partners and singing the Shabbat songs I loved became impossible, I knew I had an issue.
Soon things got worse. My voice was so vulnerable that if I overused it at any point during the day, I would need to rest it for three days to recover. And it affected me in so many ways, big and small. When people didn’t hear me the first time, I’d simply agree with them rather than have to answer again.
“I’d like the chicken burger,” I’d tell a waiter when going out to eat, but when he repeated, “Did you say the beef burger?” I’d just resign myself to that.
A few times people hit or scraped my car (nothing major, thankfully), but I just waved it off; the alternative—a long discussion and an exchange of phone numbers and insurance information—was beyond my abilities.
For the next couple of years, the problem came and went. After graduating, I took a job as a CPA which fortunately didn’t require too much speaking. I wasn’t able to socialize much, but I could still manage a 20-minute phone call or a one-hour face-to-face conversation.
I consulted doctor after doctor—I must have seen 20 different ones over the years—but no one could get to the source of my problem. “It’s a vocal cord issue,” said one. But the medicine he prescribed didn’t help. “Allergy-related,” said another, but the meds he prescribed didn’t help either. “It might be psychological,” said a third, but the psychologist I saw at his urging was also a dead end.
(In 2017, I met a dentist who believed the problem was due to a jaw misalignment that affected my nervous system. He seems to have come closest to truly understanding the root of the issue. Since starting his protocol, I’ve begun feeling stronger and better overall.)
As the situation progressed, I found myself unable to speak for more than a few minutes, which was terribly destructive to my personal and professional life.
My embarrassment at being unable to respond led me to start avoiding people. Even when friends and family texted me, I ignored them. I simply couldn’t relate to others who weren’t suffering; I felt that we spoke different languages.
At synagogue, I hid in an unused section so that I could remain unnoticed and avoid speaking to anyone. At work, I avoided my colleagues or even entering elevators with people I knew, preferring to ride with strangers.
As a 24-year-old, I wanted to date, but I had to keep dates short because my voice would give out. Unless the first date was truly exceptional, I wasn’t motivated to go out a second time.
I once made the mistake of attending a speed dating event. There were probably about 25 women there, and the idea was to spend two or three minutes with each one before moving on to the next person. I managed to have a conversation with the first woman, but by the time I got to the second one I literally couldn’t speak any more. The poor woman saw I was struggling, so I had to tell her, “I just can’t do this anymore,” and I left. I was mortified.
Trying for a Fresh Start
After three years of struggling with the loss of my voice in New York, I needed a change. When I was told that perhaps a warmer climate would help, my family suggested I move to California, near my grandparents in Los Angeles. As I’d never liked the pressured pace of New York, nor the cold winters, I easily acceded. In the summer of 2015, I transferred jobs and moved.
I was hoping my condition would improve, but not only did it persist, but I also developed other medical conditions such as IBS and some gum recession, unusual for someone my age. Doctors weren’t sure if these were related to my voice issue or not, although surely my mental stress must have left me more vulnerable to developing physical disorders.
On the marriage front, things weren’t going so easily either. I tried some long-distance dating through Skype. Once I met a woman three times and thought things were good enough to continue, and the shadchan proposed that I fly out to meet her.
“I don’t know if I can do that,” I said. “I’ve been dealing with this voice issue.”
“Well, if you don’t feel you can handle that, maybe you should take a break from dating altogether!” she responded.
It was a bitter pill to swallow, but by 2016, at age 27, I concluded that my dating life would have to be put on hold indefinitely until my voice issue was resolved.
Suffering in Silence
By now I had been dealing with voice loss for four years. As the years passed with no resolution in sight, I began to despair. I was terribly lonely and cut off, spending Shabbat and holidays in isolation, sometimes walking a few miles to a shul where everyone spoke a foreign language. At one point, I was eating Shabbat lunch in a shul that offered a large kiddush, but I’d go only at the very end, when the crowd had left and the janitor had begun cleaning up. It turned out I wasn’t the only one who waited. I was joined by a few homeless people, with whom I felt a kinship, since we were all cut off from “normal” society.
My family was deeply concerned for me. “How can we help?” they asked.
But what could they do? They couldn’t give me a voice, and they were just as clueless as I was. People had good intentions, and many tried to communicate by texting, but I was so tired of not having a voice that I lost interest and sent only very brief responses.
Drained by isolation, I reached a psychological breaking point. I can’t say I was suicidal, but I definitely would have felt relieved to go to bed and not wake up the next morning. During the first four years, I thought the problem was temporary, and that gave me the mental fortitude to keep going. But as time dragged on with no solution in sight, I became like a boxer in a ring who has been punched so many times, he loses the will to get off the mat.
We’re all social creatures who need contact with other humans. My Hebrew name is Yaakov (Jacob), and I often thought of the verse, “Vayivater Yaakov levado” “And Jacob was left alone,”1 which describes Jacob, stranded and alone, wrestling with an angel.
I continued to work, because I knew that going to work was the only way I was going to survive. Simply staying home in that mental state would have been dangerous.
Human beings are wired to keep going even under the most trying circumstances, yet I knew my situation was untenable. I had to find a path forward or perish spiritually and emotionally. Fortunately, I have always been a truth seeker and a deep thinker. Desperate to find answers, I began to delve into Jewish and secular sources to figure out how I could be happy in my silence. I listened to TED Talks about philosophies like stoicism. I read Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning and Rabbi Akiva Tatz’s Letter to a Buddhist Jew. I started to learn the Talmud again, starting from the beginning, and read volumes of Torah philosophy such as the Duties of the Heart, Tanya, and many more.
It’s one thing to theorize and pontificate about happiness when it’s an abstract issue, and another to dive into the topic because it’s your own life that’s on the line. I was desperate for answers.
Finding Serenity Within
Holidays were particularly challenging, because I spent them alone and couldn’t pass the time listening to podcasts or classes; a three-day yom tov seemed interminable.
And then, during a three-day Shavuot, I arrived at a paradigm shift that changed my entire view of happiness.
That morning I prayed at home, and when I finished, I went for a walk. It was a gorgeous, sunny day, and as I walked, I thought, This is crazy, but I feel pretty content!
Even in the midst of all that silence of the three-day holiday, I realized I was not suffering the emotional pain that comes when the pursuit of pleasure is thwarted.
“Who’s to say the life I’m living is a bad one?” I asked myself.
I had been relying on the secular definition of happiness, where one’s goal in life is to maximize all experiences that bring pleasure. According to this worldview, fun, comfort, excitement, financial success, status, popularity, and so on are the things we strive to attain. As my lack of a voice precluded me from attaining most of these things, I could not be happy.
My sudden clarity enlightened me: taking myself out of the running for goals like status, popularity, and fun also meant I was spared the kind of anxiety, worry, frustration, and dissatisfaction that are the consequences of valuing these goals and failing to achieve them. Retreating from goals that are, ultimately, only superficial forms of happiness meant that I suffered no disappointment when they didn’t come through for me.
Which life is better? I asked myself. Is it better to live life on an emotional roller coaster, experiencing the highs of fun, comfort, and excitement along with the lows of anxiety, worry, and disappointment? Perhaps it is better to eschew that volatility and pursue a more emotionally neutral life of serenity, contentment, and peace of mind (in Talmudic language, this is called menuchat hanefesh, “serenity of the soul”).
For me, a serene life is better than a life spent frantically chasing emotional highs and physical pleasures.
By defining happiness differently—as a life of balanced serenity and service of G‑d—I could be eligible for happiness. Even without a voice, even being cut off from most people, I could find my own path to happiness and emotional health.
I began to analyze all areas of life according to this new criterion. Take marriage, for example. If my goal is to get married, I won’t be happy until I find a mate. But if I’m focused on mental equilibrium and striving to serve G‑d and others, I can be happy even if I do not marry.
We have very little control over what happens to us in life. We can put in our best efforts, but in the end it is only G‑d Who determines whether our efforts bear fruit. By striving for mental equilibrium and a life of effort and service, we bypass reliance on external circumstances to make ourselves happy.
Yes, sometimes we do need to give ourselves breaks and indulge in pleasurable activities just to rest and refresh. Like the basketball player who drinks Gatorade on the side so he can get back on the court with renewed vigor, a yeshivah student who has spent many hours studying Torah might need to rest his brain by listening to music, or a mother might need to relax with a cup of tea and a novel after finally getting her children settled for the night. In all these cases, the recharging plays second fiddle to the primary goal and not vice versa.
Once I made that paradigm shift, my life changed. Little by little, I was able to stop worrying about whether I’d recover fully, or if I’d be able to hang out with friends, or marry and have children.
I focused on maximizing learning and service rather than pleasure per se. I replaced my old diet of pizza, burgers, and cookies with sprouted wheat bread, vegetables and chicken, exercised more, and reduced my once-voracious consumption of music in favor of listening to Torah classes.
Realizing I was still eligible for happiness under my new definition felt like a rebirth.
I felt a great sense of accomplishment knowing I had gained so much clarity and achieved this new level of understanding.
A Talmudic Value
I went back to Jewish sources and found that my theory is actually the Jewish approach to happiness. Ethics of the Fathers states that the wealthy person is the one who is content with their lot, regardless of their circumstances.
I started corresponding about my ideas and research with friends and rabbis, and was encouraged when I received the backing of such distinguished authorities as Rabbi Mendel Blachman, Rabbi Yechiel Perr ztz”l, Rabbi Moshe Brown, Rabbi Mordechai Willig, and Rabbi Akiva Tatz. I even heard from some of them, “This piece of Torah has been somewhat lost due to the heavy influence of secular values, but you should revive it.”
My parents once spoke to a kabbalist about my situation, who told them, “Rest easy; he is going to save lives.” None of us had any clue what that meant then, except that perhaps my ideas could help people with depression and emotional problems. But when I shared my ideas with Rabbi Blachman, he commented, “They can save the spiritual lives of the general public.”
My isolation has given me the perspective to see what really matters and what really makes us happy.
I know that personal accounts often finish with a happy ending, tied up neatly with a bow. Mine doesn’t. I don’t know what my future holds. I pray to G‑d that my voice will be restored completely, that I’ll get married and have children and live an otherwise “normal” life. But I know that even without these things, I am still eligible for the greatest life in this world—one of serenity and self-development—and the greatest life in the Next World.
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