MIRACLE, EVIL, EVOLUTION, OR MR. LIMPET?:

'Talking fish' stuns New York: A fish heading for slaughter in a New York market shouted warnings about the end of the world before it was killed, two fish cutters have claimed. (BBC, 16 March, 2003)

Zalmen Rosen, from the Skver sect of Hasidic Jews, says co-worker Luis Nivelo, a Christian, was about to kill a carp to be made into gelfilte fish in the city's New Square Fish Market in January when it began shouting in Hebrew.

"It said 'Tzaruch shemirah' and 'Hasof bah'," Mr Rosen later told the New York Times newspaper.

"[It] essentially means [in Hebrew] that everyone needs to account for themselves because the end is nigh."

Mr Nivelo told the paper he was so shocked he fell into a stack of slimy packing crates, before running in panic to the shop entrance and grabbing Mr Rosen, shouting: "The fish is talking!"

However his co-worker reacted with disbelief.

"I screamed 'It's the devil The devil is here!', but Zalman said to me 'You crazy, you a meshugeneh [mad man]!" Mr Nivelo said.

A disbelieving Mr Rosen then rushed to the back of the store, only to hear the fish identifying itself as the soul of a local Hasidic man who had died the previous year.

It instructed him to pray and study the Torah, but Mr Rosen admitted that in a state of panic he attempted to kill the fish, injuring himself in the process and ending up in hospital.

The fish was eventually killed by Mr Nivelo and sold.

The Lord works in mysterious ways, but maybe not quite this mysterious...

MORE:
Fishy Story Tests Chasidic Town's Beliefs (MAX GROSS, MARCH 14, 2003, FORWARD)

The owner of the market says that he has received thousands of letters and phone calls asking about the tale. Of course, many people are skeptical. When Nivelo repeated the story to his family, they told him he had gone crazy.

But for others the loquacious carp is believed in as fervently as the law of gravity. Even local rival fish markets such as A&B Famous Fish and Monsey Glatt refuse to say the talking fish is a hoax. Rosen, one of the three men who claims to have heard the fish speak, is highly regarded in New Square. "This man is not a liar," declared one New Square resident, who - like most residents here - insisted that his name not appear in a newspaper.

"Opinion varies within the community," said Rabbi Mayer Schiller, who teaches on Sundays at New Square's girls' school, a few blocks from where the fish uttered his words. "Some people believe - others don't."

New Square is in many ways the most cut-off of any of the chasidic communities. An incorporated village founded in the 1950s by followers of the Skver chasidic sect, it basked in obscurity for years. It was briefly the focus of national attention after President Clinton pardoned several town officials who had been convicted of embezzling millions of dollars in federal funds, but once the scandal died down the town gracefully slipped back into anonymity. Today it looks like a suburban version of a medieval Jewish shtetl: SUVs are parked in driveways and toys are scattered across front lawns, but geese still walk casually down its streets. Strangers are eyed with caution.

But the fish tale has put New Square back on the map, as the story has become a source of fascination for Skver chasidim scattered throughout the world. And why not? The Skver chasidim believed in the parting of the seas and the sun standing still... why not a talking fish? "Certainly in Jewish mysticism there is the notion of [transmigration of] souls [into] other life forms," Schiller said, "particularly fish."

Posted by Orrin Judd at March 16, 2003 9:53 AM