"Tzaruch shemirah" & "Hasof bah"

A fish spoke in Brooklyn. The event was in Jan 2003.
Do you not remember?
Everyone thought the carp was only joking, now we know better.
Many in the world were gripped in awe by what they believe to be a mystical visitation by a 20lb carp that was heard shouting in Hebrew, in what many Jews worldwide are hailing as a modern miracle.


Many of the 7,000-member Skver sect of Hasidim in New Square, 30 miles north of Manhattan, believe God has revealed himself in fish form.

According to two fish-cutters at the New Square Fish Market, the carp was about to be slaughtered and made into gefilte fish for Sabbath dinner when it suddenly began shouting apocalyptic warnings in Hebrew.


Many believe the carp was channelling the troubled soul of a revered community elder who recently died; others say it was God. The only witnesses to this mystical event were Zalmen Rosen, a 57-year-old Hasid with 11 children, and his co-worker, Luis Nivelo. They say that on 28 January at 4pm they were about to club the carp on the head when it began yelling.

Nivelo, a Gentile who does not understand Hebrew, was so shocked at the sight of a fish talking in any language that he fell over. He ran into the front of the store screaming: 'It's the Devil! The Devil is here!' Then the shop owner heard it shouting warnings and commands too.

'It said "Tzaruch shemirah" and "Hasof bah",' he told the New York Times, 'which essentially means that everyone needs to account for themselves because the end is near.'

The animated carp commanded Rosen to pray and study the Torah. Rosen tried to kill the fish but injured himself. It was finally butchered by Nivelo and sold.

However, word spread far and wide and Nivelo complains he has been plagued by phone calls from as far away as London and Israel. The story has since been amplified by repetition and some now believe the fish's outburst was a warning about the Americas demise from the impending war in Iraq. Many members of the city's Jewish community are now certain that God, troubled by the prospect of war in Iraq, has revealed Himself in fish form.

"Ah, enough already about the fish, I wish I never said anything about it."

Zalmen Rosen

"Two men do not dream the same dream," said Abraham Spitz, a resident who visited Mr Rosen's shop to observe the site of the miracle.

"It is very rare that God reminds people he exists in this modern world. But when he does, you cannot ignore it."


Some think the carp's voice is that of the reincarnated. Or, like the burning bush, the cloud, and the pillar of fire, God has spoken to men, from the mouth of a fish.But the fish story speaks to all Faiths, including pagan Muslims, and Christians; as well as the Jews. If the voice was indeed from God, Then this WILL happen as God has spoken. It will not return to Him void.

We have all heard of things equally as strange - the Koran verses that appear when a pomegranite is sliced open, the damp patch on the wall of a church which makes an unmistakable portrait of Jesus, the bagel that tumbles from the oven in the rotund form of a Buddha.

What is strangest of all is that humans have become so immune to wonderment, so sceptical of the spiritual, that God is compelled to move in ways that are not merely mysterious, but jaw-droppingly odd. We have forced God to be a fish.