The incredible case of the missing fingers

National Examiner

The incredible case of the missing fingers
By Cliff Linedecker

MEIR YEDID performs tricks that only a very few are capable of doing.

AN AMAZING young magician is so adept at sleight-of-hand that he even makes his own fingers disappear.

One moment, the nimble, fingers of Israeli-born Meir Yedid can be seen, and the next moment the fantastic digits have vanished — right before your eyes.

It’s a trick, of course, and one that the incredible illusionist insists "anyone can do" — but except for a tiny handful of experts — most people can’t.

And according to Dick Brooks, co-founder and operator of the Magic Town House on Manhattan’s Gold Coast, no one in the world does it as well, or as completely as Yedid.

"Meir is an innovator and he has devised some things that are totally unique, things that have never been done before, with his incredible fingers and close-up magic.

"You can be sitting two or three feet away from him, and miracles occur," confides the expert showman and promoter.

"Meir is a magician’s magician, and is a regular performer here, as well as a teacher of close-up magic."

Vanished pinkie Yedid has authored three books: Close-Up Hallucinations, The Incredible Close-Up Magic of Meir Yedid and Finger Fantasies.

Yet, Brooks insists, to truly appreciate his amazing skill, he must be seen, rather than read about.

Even the most confirmed skeptics have admitted after watching him that the hand is indeed quicker than the eye.

NOW YOU see 'em, now you don't:
Meir's fingers do the amazing disappearing act right before your own eyes.

And to further prove his point, Yedid sometimes closes his act by performing a dangerous stunt with a heavy-duty rat-trap, capable of smashing bone and muscle to a pulp.

Setting up the stunt, Yedid sticks a pencil inside, so his audience can watch as the heavy frame of the trap snaps down, crushing the wood and graphite to smithereens.

Then the ominous appearing trap is reset.

And faster than the eye can follow, Yedid’s incredibly deft and valuable fingers are inside tripping the spring — and safely outside again — microseconds before the heavy arch smashes down harmlessly on the wooden frame.