by Rabbi Eliezer Gevirtz and Tzippy Basch (Feldheim
2025)
Reviewed by Chaim Yehuda
Meyer
It has been said of Rabbi
Alexander Ziskind of Hordona (author of Yesod
V’Shoresh Ha’Avodah, a guide to everyday Jewish living) that, what’s more
amazing than someone who was able to abide by his teachings, is that someone of
that caliber lived in our times. This was Dr. Raphael Moller, z”l, father, husband, doctor, shul
president, and askan. Always On Call, a monumental work 14
years in the making does an excellent job of covering the life of this great
man. Rabbi Eliezer Gevirtz and Tzippy Basch illuminate the eyes of their
readership with the image of someone whom Rabbi Yakov Perlow (the Novominsker
Rebbe), zt”l, called, “an image of limud haTorah, of yiras Shamayim, of gemilus
chasadim, and of osek b’tzorchei tzibbur,”
both in his personal and professional life.
Dr.
Raphael Moller was a great man who was held in high regard by the gedolim of his time. As the president of
Khal Adas Yeshurun, Dr. Moller broke a union picket line to obtain oil to heat
the Washington Heights mivkah. In his role as a medical doctor, he eschewed
offers to practice in places where the Torah
im derech eretz of his family might be compromised, settling instead in Washington
Heights, the working-class German-Jewish and Irish neighborhood in uptown
Manhattan he would call home for the rest of his life. A charitable man, Dr.
Moller would charge only 50 cents a visit (and reject money altogether from talmidei chachamim and the poor).
Once,
a person came to Rabbi Yoel Teitelbaum, the Satmar Rebbe, for help with a
certain medical issue. The Rebbe responded: “Why are you coming to me? Go to
Dr. Moller!” Rabbi Yaakov Kamenetzky wondered if there was a doctor as great as
Dr. Moller since the time of the Rambam. And like the Rambam, whose profession
he shared, who was pained by being held back from delving deeper in Torah due
to his obligations to the community and the court, Dr. Moller was always
looking to learn more. This is why he spent his Shabbosim immersed in shiurim. Once, a guest at Fleischman’s,
the upstate resort where Dr. Moller spent his summers, observed the Doctor
poring over a gemara in the hotel’s beis
medrash at 5:00 a.m. Vacation indeed.
As
a grandson wrote of Dr. Raphael Moller in the Jewish Observer shortly after his grandfather’s petirah: “Despite
his myriad accomplishments in life, he always questioned whether he was serving
G-d to the best of his ability. This humility was expressed in his signature;
he never failed to preface his name in any inscription with hakattan (the insignificant). So he
viewed himself.”
In
an age where young Jews might feel intimidated or even discouraged from
attending medical school out of fear of antisemitism or implicit racial quotas,
Always On Call brings hope and
encouragement: If Dr. Moller could do it so can you. He overcame prejudice,
hatred, and sheer brutality through his patience and his patients. One thought
he was being mechazek the other, but he was the one being given
strength. What carried Dr. Moller and his black leather medical bag from one
call to the next was the need to help others; this was his chiyus (life-force). Dr. Moller experienced
hate in a German medical school, was detained briefly in a concentration camp,
and suffered a series of heart attacks – not to mention an untreatable kidney
stone. His work was not to put food on the table; it was to live up to the
ideal of being a “mentch Yisrael.”
One
elderly patient, who was alarmed at the cost of the medicine he was prescribed
by Dr. Moller, arrived home to find a wad of bills stuffed in his shirt pocket.
A baby, who would not eat or otherwise respond to his mother, found itself in
the soothing, calm arms of Dr. Moller; it survived and even thrived. Dr. Moller
told the relieved mother that the baby needed to feel a sense of calm in order
to eat. A teenage patient knew that, when going for a medical checkup by Dr.
Moller, he was going to undergo a checkup of his Yiddishkeit as well; doctor
and patient conversed in learning for a good half hour.
Dr.
Moller doted over his late wife, Gella, who had suffered a series of
debilitating strokes that left her speechless near the end of her life.
Together, they raised children and were zocheh
to see grandchildren and great-grandchildren who followed in their ways. This
is what the pasuk says: “Grandchildren
are the crown of their elders.” (Mishlei 17:6). Grandparents know that they raised their kids right when
they see their grandchildren follow in their ways.
Indeed, Dr. Moller’s children
held strong, refusing non-kosher food while they were staying with gentile
families in rural England during the War. Dr. Moller’s grandchildren
volunteered at the local nursing home in Washington Heights during a nurse’s
strike; they and their descendants continue to lead lives of Torah-true Jews in
the chinuch system and workforce. I
myself attended Yeshiva Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch (Breuer’s) with some of
them. The simcha hall and senior center Dr. Moller helped establish at 90
Bennett Avenue now bears his name.
When
it came to his leadership role as president of Khal Adas Yeshurun, Dr. Moller
would insist on meetings to get communal business done as he calmly listened to
all sides. When pressed on a matter, he said, “Ve vill have to vait and see.”
However, he would not adjourn a meeting until the business at hand was taken
care of. The minutes of these meetings, along with the minutes he spent playing
with his grandchildren and overseeing the medical needs of the community, are
certainly a zechor yemos olam.
Aside
from his family, shul, medical profession, and community, Dr. Moller kept a
strict learning seder. When Dr.
Moller was told to scale back his medical and communal duties due to age and
health, his family thought he had followed instructions and had gone to bed.
Instead, Dr. Moller was found with his large brown Gemara pursuing Rashi’s pshat on a certain sugya (Rabbi Dr. Joseph Breuer advised him against learning more b’kiyus due to the strain of the concentration
required). Alarmed, they asked: “Dad, what about the instructions?” Dr. Moller
painfully replied: “You want to take away my learning, too?”
“Malach Rephael,” as Dr. Moller was
called, gained widespread acclaim and praise from the diverse Washington
Heights community. A Black patient wrote a letter thanking him for his medical
care. My own father called an ambulance when Dr. Moller suffered a heart attack
after treating a patient in his apartment building in Washington Heights. Always On Call is adorned with beautiful
pictures, anecdotes, and lessons, thanks in part to my late grandfather, Manny
Meyer, and my uncle, yb”l, Mendy
Meyer (breuers2gether).
Always On Call teaches us that we can be humble yet still do great
things. Be unassuming, but when the need arises, answer the call. In this way,
we can continue Dr. Moller’s life’s work of serving the klal.
Chaim Yehuda Meyer is an attorney and writer
living in Brooklyn, New York. He has written numerous articles over the years
for various local, national and international Jewish publications covering a
wide variety of topics. He can be reached at howard.jay.meyer@gmail.com.
