“Why did you come to see me?” the doctor asked Mr. David Segal with concern. Mr. Segal was a heart patient whom he had treated for several years, and his sudden visit worried the doctor.

“Please give me a full EKG and checkup,” requested Mr. Segal.

“But why?” asked the doctor. “Are you feeling worse than usual?” He knew that his patient suffered constant chest pain.

“Please do the examination,” Mr. Segal begged without any explanation.

The doctor shrugged agreeably. If it would make his ailing patient happy, why refuse?

After the examination, the perplexed doctor deliberated over the results. He looked at his patient, back at the results, then at his previous file and back at the patient.

“This is the second time in the last few days someone is giving me a very strange look,” remarked Mr. Segal. “What’s going on?” he asked, pointing at the papers.

“I don’t understand,” the doctor mumbled. “Your heart and your file tell two separate stories. Today, your heart is in fine condition for a person your age.”

After thanking the doctor and leaving his office, Mr. Segal thought about the first strange look he had received. It was from a scribe.

Some time earlier, Reb Shlomo Greenwald, an acquaintance who was a Lubavitcher chassid, had persuaded him to seek the Rebbe’s blessing for his recovery. At first, Mr. Segal was reluctant, he had given up all hope of recovery. “When I was healthy,” he argued, “I never wrote the Rebbe. Why I should I write to him now when I am ill?” Finally, he agreed to have Reb Shlomo himself write the letter. He added a short note himself stating his despair about his health.

The Rebbe’s reply was short. “Check your mezuzos.”

The scribe unrolled the first parchment scroll of Mr. Segal’s mezuzos and gave him a strange look. “I was told that you have heart disease, Mr. Segal,” he said. “Well, so does your mezuzah!

The word ‘heart’ is missing from the verse,1 ‘And you shall love G‑d, your L-rd, with all your heart.’ ”