Building a Coronary Care Unit in 770.
The Jewish community worldwide is rejoicing and celebrating the release of the hostages from Hamas captivity in Gaza, after two long and painful years. It is a joy that unites the entire nation of Israel, wherever they may be. We thank G-d for this great miracle.
At the same time, however, there are still many worries — about what will happen in Gaza on the day after, and so on. Therefore, it is better to wait a bit of time until matters become clearer, and perhaps then we will be wiser — rather than say things now that we might later regret.
That is why today, I want to share something personal with you.
In 1977, when I was eleven years old, I traveled to the Rebbe together with my father, Rabbi Moshe Greenberg, of blessed memory. I was very excited — it was the first time I ever left the Land of Israel, the first time I ever flew on an airplane, and above all, it was the very first time I merited to see the Rebbe! I remember that visit vividlyl, every single thing that happened there.
We arrived in New York on the eve of the festival of Sukkot, in the middle of one of the Rebbe’s farbrengens (Chassidic gatherings). That year, the festival of Sukkot was an especially joyous one by the Rebbe — even more than usual in other years. But then something very, very unusual happened — and that is what I want to share with you today.
Shemini Atzeret and Simchat Torah
Shemini Atzeret and Simchat Torah are the most joyous of all the festivals by the Rebbe.
The Rebbe’s joy and vitality during this holiday were truly supernatural, and that special atmosphere in the synagogue could be felt and experienced by everyone present.
On the night of Shemini Atzeret, the first three hakafot passed without any problem. Then came the fourth hakafah — suddenly, the Rebbe’s face turned pale. At first, he leaned on his shtender (lectern), then sat down on his chair, leaned back, and closed his eyes. The sudden change threw the entire crowd into turmoil. I remember how people began rushing to the exits of the synagogue to let in air, and windows were shattered.
Despite all this, the Rebbe insisted on completing the hakafot. He then ascended the stairs to his room, but refused to eat or drink anything until he went out to the sukkah to recite Kiddush on wine.
The doctors who were present said that the Rebbe was suffering from a serious heart attack and that he had to be taken immediately to a hospital. But the Rebbe rejected the idea and said that he would be treated only in 770. As the hours went by, a procession of cardiologists came and went, and each one confirmed that the Rebbe had suffered a major cardiac event and required hospitalization.
At some point, in the early hours of the morning, the Rebbe suffered a second heart attack — this one even more severe. At around six o’clock in the morning, the Rebbetzin approached the Rebbe’s secretary, Rabbi Yehuda Krinsky, and asked for an update. He replied that the situation was serious, and that some of the doctors were insisting that the Rebbe be given sedatives and taken to a hospital.
The Rebbetzin responded: “All my life that I have known my husband, there has never been a moment when he was not in complete control of himself. I cannot allow the doctors to act against the Rebbe’s will.”
A moment later, she said to him: “Rabbi Krinsky, you know so many people — can’t you find a doctor for my husband?”
Suddenly, Krinsky remembered a young and brilliant cardiologist named Dr. Ira Weiss, who had once been a Hebrew School student of his brother-in-law, Rabbi Shusterman, in Chicago.
It was in the early hours of the morning when Weiss received the phone call from Krinsky, who described the severity of the situation. The Rebbe, he explained, was not rejecting medical treatment — but wanted the treatment to take place in 770 itself, a position fully supported by the Rebbetzin. Krinsky wanted to know whether such a thing was even possible.
“I had known about the Rebbe since I was a Hebrew School student in the 1950s in Chicago,” said Dr. Weiss. “We were not from a Chassidic family … but I had at least the sense to know that one does not dismiss the things the Rebbe wishes to do. On the other hand, as a doctor, you are obligated to do whatever must be done — even if the patient tells you otherwise — if that is the only way to save him.”
Dr. Weiss had adopted a patient-centered approach to medicine—that is, the belief that a doctor must work together with the patient and follow the patient’s wishes. During the phone conversation, Weiss suggested setting up an intensive coronary care unit inside 770.
The idea of treating the Rebbe in this way stemmed from Weiss’s own experience, having seen how such arrangements were implemented in practice—he had seen special medical setups established in the homes of people like members of the Kennedy family.
At that point, Krinsky suggested: “Dr. Weiss, why don’t you come here yourself and help us set this up?”
Weiss agreed immediately, but calculated that it would take him at least several hours to get from Chicago to Crown Heights. A qualified cardiologist who believed it was possible to treat the Rebbe outside of a hospital was needed right away.
Weiss then remembered Dr. Teichholz, who had just moved to New York to become the head of the cardiology department at Mount Sinai Hospital.
Teichholz had known only vaguely about the Rebbe before Weiss’s phone call, but when he heard the situation, he cleared his entire schedule—he had been about to begin a lecture tour on echocardiography—and instead agreed to travel immediately to 770.
“Someone met me at Mount Sinai, and I had a police escort driving the wrong way down the street at 90 miles per hour (145 km/h),” recalls Teichholz with a chuckle.
When he arrived, bringing advanced equipment with him, he went straight into the Rebbe’s office and stabilized the situation. When Weiss arrived at 770 a few hours later, the Rebbe’s heart rate was normal and steady. This was being measured precisely by a telemonitoring device that Teichholz had brought with him — advanced technology that, at that time, was not yet available in most hospitals.
Both Weiss and Teichholz, without any hesitation, dropped everything they were doing, because they understood that the Rebbe’s medical care had to be carried out in a way that would allow him to continue his vital work — leading the Lubavitch movement and world Jewry, and influencing and teaching humanity as a whole.
However, there were still many chassidim who were deeply worried about the Rebbe’s condition. One of them was Rabbi Moshe Binyamin Kaplan, of blessed memory. Kaplan had a cousin named Dr. Bernard Lown, a senior and world-renowned cardiologist, and he decided that he simply had to bring him to the Rebbe.
Dr. Bernard Lown — an internationally famous cardiologist from Harvard University, the inventor of the direct-current defibrillator for cardiac resuscitation, and a co-founder of the organization “International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War” (IPPNW), which won the Nobel Peace Prize — happened to be in Moscow at that very time.
On that particular October evening, Lown, who was born in Lithuania, and his wife Louise, were attending a ballet performance at the Bolshoi Theater, something they did on nearly every visit to Moscow. Therefore, he was taken completely by surprise when suddenly, in the middle of the performance, he was summoned to the theater’s telephone.
“Boruch!” shouted the voice on the other end of the line in Yiddish, calling Lown by his original Hebrew name. “The Lubavitcher Rebbe isn’t well — you must come to New York immediately! It’s a matter of life and death!”
Kaplan quickly explained what was happening: Two nights earlier, on Shemini Atzeret, the Rebbe had suffered a serious heart attack during the hakafot dancing in his synagogue at 770 Eastern Parkway in Crown Heights, and the following morning he suffered a second heart attack — even more severe — in his office. Dr. Lown immediately agreed to return to New York.
On Sunday, October 9, 1977, the Lowns — utterly exhausted — arrived at JFK Airport, from where Dr. Lown went straight to 770 and entered the Rebbe’s room.
Kaplan picked up Lown later that first night in 770. In the few minutes before retiring for the night, the weary doctor said that the Rebbe had been absolutely right to avoid going to the hospital after his first heart attack, because the standard hospital protocol would have been to sedate him — and in such a state, it was likely that the Rebbe would not have survived his second heart attack.
The Rebbe had insisted that the chassidim continue celebrating the remainder of Simchat Torah with even greater joy despite his condition, and Lown remarked that he believed the Rebbe’s physical state had actually improved by being in an environment where he could hear the sounds of singing and dancing from the synagogue below throughout the night.
Kaplan recalls that Lown — who spent about a week in Crown Heights during that first visit — told him about a conversation he had with the Rebbe. The Rebbe had asked him why this heart attack had occurred at that particular time.
Lown replied: “Until now, your willpower has been driving your body. But after a while, sheer willpower alone can no longer overpower the body — and your heart could no longer bear the load you were placing upon it.”
During the following year, Dr. Lown would come to examine the Rebbe about once a month, with the visits becoming less frequent in the years that followed. Lown was not a man who was easily impressed. And yet, over the next four decades, he would often return to his memories of that time with the Rebbe.
The Shmurah Matzah and the Shofar in China
The Rebbe had the custom of distributing shmurah matzah on the eve of Passover. And so he did on the eve of Passover 1978. Towards the end of the distribution, around 4:30 or 5:00 in the afternoon, Rabbi Krinsky requested matzah for himself.
“I don’t know why,” says Krinsky, “but when I approached the Rebbe, I also asked for a piece of matzah for Dr. Lown. The Rebbe looked at me, handed me a whole matzah, and asked, ‘Will he receive it before Passover?’ From that I understood — without any doubt — that the Rebbe wanted him to receive it before Passover.”
Passover was only a few hours away — and Dr. Lown lived in Boston! Krinsky quickly packed up the matzah, found a yeshiva student, and sent him off to catch someone boarding a shuttle flight to Boston.
When the plane landed, the person to whom the student had entrusted the mission was somehow located in the crowded terminal by Rabbi Krinsky’s brother, Rabbi Pinchas Krinsky, of blessed memory, who lived in Boston. He immediately delivered the matzah to the Lown family home in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts, and managed to return to his own house just minutes before the holiday began.
“I remember that the Rebbe was very pleased that it had worked out,” says Rabbi Krinsky.
From that day on, every year, Rabbi Krinsky sent shmurah matzah to the Lown family.
The matzah sent by the Rebbe became an important and meaningful part of the Lown family’s Jewish life. For him, it was not only the matzah itself that became a tradition — but also the story of the man who had sent it.
“He spoke about the Rebbe often with family members and close friends,” his son shares.
“Every Passover, when the shmurah matzah was passed around the table, it was always an opportunity to tell the story about the Rebbe. I remember that vividly from every Seder
I ever attended. The Rebbe and the shmurah matzah were always a central part of it.”
In the late summer of 1979, when Dr. Lown visited the Rebbe, the Rebbe asked him where he would be spending Rosh Hashanah. Lown replied that he was about to travel to China as part of a cardiological delegation, and that he would be there during the holiday.
The Rebbe then asked him whether he knew how to blow the shofar. Lown, who had attended cheder as a child in Eastern Europe, answered that he did. The Rebbe asked him: “If I give you a shofar, will you blow it in China on Rosh Hashanah?”
Lown replied that he would. The Rebbe then took a shofar from his desk and gave it to him as a gift. Lown kept his promise. When he returned to the United States and reported back to the Rebbe, the Rebbe told him that it was the first time in many years that the sound of the shofar had been heard in China.
Dr. Lown kept the shofar that he received from the Rebbe as a treasured possession for the rest of his life. Dr. Bernard Lown passed away at the age of 99 in the year 5781 (2021).
The Shofar on Rosh Hashana, and Matzah on Pesach were the links that connected Dr. Lown to Judaism and the Rebbe.
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