Title: Always On Call: The Life and Times of Moreinu Dr. Raphael Moller
By: Rabbi Eliezer Gevirtz and Tzippy Basch
Publisher: Feldheim
It has been said of Rabbi Alexander Ziskind of Hordona (author of Yesod V’Shoresh Ha’Avodah, a guide to everyday Jewish living): 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 also Dr. Raphael Moller, 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 who Rabbi Yakov Perlow (the Novominsker Rebbe), zt”l, called “an image of limud haTorah, of yiras Shamayim, of gemilus chasadim, 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 age. 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 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 for? Go to Dr. Moller!” Rabbi Yaakov Kamenetzky wondered if there was doctor as great as Dr. Moller since the time of the Ramban. Like the Rambam, 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 much of his “free time” immersed in shiurim. Once, a guest at Fleischman’s, the upstate resort Dr. Moller would stay at in the summer, observed the doctor poring over a Gemara in the hotel’s beis medrash at 5:00 a.m. A 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 (lit. small, 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 could you. He overcame prejudice, hatred and sheer brutality through his patience and 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. 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. He didn’t become a doctor to put food on the table; he did so to live up to the ideal of being a “mentch Yisroel.”
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 feed 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 with 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. All this is what the passuk – “Grandchildren are the crown of their elders” – speaks to (Mishlei 17:6). Grandparents know that they raised their kids right when they see their grandchildren following in their ways.
Indeed, Dr. Moller’s children held strong, refusing non-kosher food while they were staying with non-Jewish 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 (“Breuers”) 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 all while calmly listening 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 learning, playing with his grandchildren, overseeing the medical needs of the community, and rallying behind various causes, are certainly a zechus for all time.
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 peshat on a certain sugya. 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 non-Jewish 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 (via breuers2gether, a YouTube channel and website).
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.
