"A surgeon does G-d’s work and a rabbi does G-d’s work, so I’m also your colleague!”

RABBI YAAKOV SPIEGEL WAY, Lower East Side, Manhattan

Dedicated in memory of Rabbi Yaakov Spiegel a”h

WHO WAS RABBI YAAKOV SPIEGEL?

Rabbi Yaakov Speigel was the rav of the Romanisher Shul on the Lower East Side (also known as the First Roumanian-American Congregation and officially called Shaarei Shamayim) from 1981 to 2001. In addition to being one of the largest shuls to serve the burgeoning Lower East Side from the time it was founded in 1885 by a group of frum Romanian immigrants, the shul — with seating for 1,800 — was famous for the world-acclaimed chazzanim who performed there: Yossele Rosenblatt, Moshe Osher, Moshe Koussevitzky and others, giving rise to its nickname, the “Jewish Carnegie Hall.” By the 1940s, the congregation’s membership was in the thousands — but back then Rabbi Spiegel was just a child. By the time he was hired to regenerate the famed shul on Rivington Street in the 1980s, most Orthodox Jews had long relocated to Brooklyn, Queens, and further out, leaving him with a grand building and a tiny membership. Regardless, Rabbi Spiegel rejuvenated the place, reviving some of the former life and Yiddishkeit that once flourished on Rivington Street and beyond.

The shul was assured a morning and evening minyan during the week, made up primarily of the neighborhood’s businessmen, but the glorious main sanctuary became too expensive to maintain, so Shabbos davening was held in the downstairs social hall. The building was demolished in 2006, five years after Rabbi Spiegel passed away, after extensive water damage caused the roof to collapse.

The size of the kehillah, though, never seemed to faze Rabbi Spiegel. For him, it was about every individual to whom he could be of assistance.

“My father was a rav for the pashuter Yidden,” says his middle son, Rabbi Ari Spiegel, a teacher in Bnos Chaim seminary in Lakewood, whose own son Menachem authored his grandfather’s biography, The Rabbi from the Lower East Side. “He had the right background to become something much bigger. He had the unique combination of being both a scion of the Ostrov-Kalushin chassidic dynasty and a talmid of Rav Moshe Feinstein and Rav Aharon Kotler, so he had the blend of varemkeit and also the American open-mindedness. He was learned, he was charismatic, he was articulate. But he loved every Yid, no matter their background or affiliation, and was therefore thrilled at the opportunity to lead the Romanisher Shul, even if it was the few over the many.”

Rabbi Speigel was a selfless person who treated every person like his own child. For example, even before he moved in to an apartment he had only just leased, he gave the keys to a stranger on a bench who had nowhere to live, since he would anyway be spending the next two months of summer in the country. He spontaneously accompanied an elderly bachelor who rarely attended shul but happened to bump into the rabbi while on his way to a doctor’s appointment, and expressed his anxiety about going alone. And although Rabbi Spiegel had a weak heart, he refused the man’s offer to take a cab instead of the train, feigning energy he didn’t have as he took the subway steps. Intrigued by the rabbi’s genuine concern about the man’s medical situation, the doctor was shocked when he learned that he wasn’t even the man’s rabbi.

Although Rabbi Spiegel had a golden heart, it wasn’t a healthy heart. One time, he went to a highly recommended cardiac surgeon for an initial consult, but the doctor refused to take him on, saying he had a two-year waiting list. Before Rabbi Spiegel left, he asked him, “Do you know who the world’s first surgeon was?”

The surgeon drew a blank.

“G-d!” responded the rabbi, explaining how he created Chava from Adam. He wasn’t done yet. “If another doctor would come in, would you send him away? No, because he’s your colleague. Well, a surgeon does G-d’s work and a rabbi does G-d’s work, so I’m also your colleague!”

“Okay, come back next week,” the surgeon answered.