Here’s My Story: The Original Telehealth

Rabbi Menashe Althaus

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Towards the end of 1980, I traveled to New York with a group of friends, as part of the kvutza program, in which graduates of Chabad yeshivot in Israel spend a year with the Rebbe, studying at 770.

Chabad students usually spend their Fridays on Jewish outreach, going out to help people put on tefillin or to distribute Shabbat candles, and that year I was hoping to do the same. After speaking to Rabbi Shraga Zalmanov, head of the Lubavitch Youth Organization’s Hebrew-speaking division, I found out that he would be visiting the local Israeli consulate on Sukkot – but nobody went there on a weekly basis. When I asked to come along, he happily agreed.

The following Friday, I returned on my own. I didn’t know whether I would be allowed in the building, which housed Israel’s diplomatic delegation to the United Nations, but I gave it a shot.

At the entrance, I rang the intercom.

“Who are you?” a voice inquired.

“Menashe from Chabad,” I answered. “I was here on Sukkot. Now I’ve come to offer tefillin to whoever is interested.” The door opened.

Within a month, I became a regular at the consulate. The security guards would open the door as soon as they saw me, and then come out to greet me with a warm hug.

One Friday, a security officer handed me a note with the phone number and address of a Manhattan hospital. “Yisrael Granot is there, and he’s not doing well. He needs a serious operation on his spine.”

Yisrael Granot was the head of consular security, and as the officer knew, I had a special connection with him. In addition to putting on tefillin whenever I came, he would also take a few moments to study an idea from the weekly Torah reading with me.

Like most Fridays, I got back to 770 with only minutes to spare before Shabbat candle-lighting, so I was unable to call then. But I was at the public telephone immediately after Shabbat.

Yisrael’s ailing voice soon came on the line. Groaning in pain, he explained to me that he had been injured on the job. Based on their medical imaging, the doctors had decided that he needed surgery.

But he had a request for me. “I once escorted a certain prominent Israeli figure on a visit to the Rebbe, as a member of his security detail. I didn’t understand everything the Rebbe said then, but I believe that his blessing could help me now. Please ask the Rebbe for a blessing for my recovery.”

I wrote down his and his mother’s full Hebrew names. “The Rebbe isn’t in his office now,” I told him, “but the moment that his secretariat opens up tomorrow, I will submit your request for the Rebbe’s blessing.”

A phone call wasn’t enough, so I set out to visit Yisrael in the hospital. In the ‘80s, taking the subway late at night could be dangerous, but I managed to convince a friend to come along. Sitting on the train, we were surrounded by various dubious characters under the influence of alcohol or drugs, but thank G-d we arrived safely.

Given how he had sounded on the phone an hour-and-a-half earlier, I was surprised to find Yisrael looking cheerful in his hospital bed. Noticing the look on my face, Yisrael explained:

“You might not believe this, and I’m not sure I believe it myself. But, as soon as I hung up the phone after our conversation about getting a blessing from the Rebbe, all of my pain disappeared!”

As promised, I delivered my note to the Rebbe the next morning. Later that day, Rabbi Binyomin Klein, one of the Rebbe’s secretaries, informed me that the Rebbe had said he would mention Yisrael in prayer at the resting place of the Previous Rebbe.

When I called Yisrael to update him, he became very emotional: “This righteous tzaddik is fasting and praying for me? He doesn’t even know me!” He burst into tears.

The next Friday, as I arrived at the consulate, I found Yisrael back at his job. “As I put it to the doctor,” he told me “with all due respect to the X-rays, I came to the hospital because I was in pain. Now that the pain has gone, I’m going home.” He handed me a letter addressed to the Rebbe, expressing thanks for his recovery, and asking what he could do for the Rebbe. I delivered it that Sunday.

The next day, Rabbi Binyomin Klein told me that the Rebbe had a mission for me. “Bring these to Yisrael Granot,” he instructed, handing me a letter and a pair of tefillin.

In the letter, the Rebbe asked Yisrael to put on the tefillin regularly, and to take care to only have kosher food and drink – both inside and outside the home. Yisrael began putting on tefillin by himself from then on. But I continued to visit and study with him every week.

When Yisrael concluded his stint in the consulate that summer, I invited him – with the help of Rabbi Klein – for a personal audience with the Rebbe.

“How does one go to the Rebbe?” he asked me.

“The Rebbe is like a father,” I told him. “Speak freely, and say what’s on your mind.”

But that wasn’t enough for him. “I want to go like a chasid,” he insisted.

I explained that our custom was to prepare any questions or requests for the Rebbe on a note. “Then, if the Rebbe has questions for you, he will ask, and you answer.”

Yisrael and his wife, Varda, came to 770 with a note they had prepared. They were hoping to receive a blessing for their only son, who had just celebrated his Bar Mitzvah; for Yisrael, who was going to transition to a civilian career; and for Varda, who was hoping to become a teacher in a school in Petach Tikvah. They did not, however, ask to be blessed with more children, as they had been told that they were not medically capable of doing so.

However, when the Rebbe responded to their note, he included – twice – an additional blessing for a “larger family.” Yisrael and Varda knew that they could not have any more children, and so they hadn’t even thought to mention it. Now, standing in Rebbe’s room, they barely noticed the extra blessing.

When I returned to Israel myself, a few months later, I found a letter from Yisrael. He reported that all of the Rebbe’s blessings had been fulfilled: He found a job to his liking, Varda had been accepted as a teacher, and their son was doing well at school.

He wrote that Varda had recently had a health scare in a suspected case of uterine cancer. But after a proper examination, her doctor had told them that she had “come down with a very healthy kind of illness.” She was pregnant! Looking back, they made the connection to that unsolicited blessing from the Rebbe.

They named their daughter Meirav, which can be translated as “from the rabbi.” She grew up to be an outstanding student and then an officer in the IDF. Later, I had the honor of serving as a witness at her wedding.

At the wedding, Yisrael told me through tears, “When the Rebbe gave us that blessing, we didn’t know what he was talking about!”

Rabbi Menashe Althaus is the director of Chabad in Kiryat Tivon, Israel. He was interviewed in February of 2024.