A year since the passing of Doctor Yaakov Greenwald, healer of psyches and souls

Photos: Family archives

It’s a dance, this job, between trying to tell people something they don’t know about names they recognize and trying to persuade them to take a moment and learn something about those they’ve never heard.

And every once in a while, there’s a story that combines both: you get to tell them about a person they think they know, but it turns out they don’t know it all.

The name of Dr. Yaakov Greenwald was fairly prominent. In an era before therapy and psychology were a thing in the frum community — in fact, even in the era before that era — he was already sitting with people, one after another, listening and diagnosing and prescribing, a rofei nefashos who believed in the neshamah too.

The Greenwald brothers were legendary figures in the world of chinuch, summer camp, and activism. There was Yaakov, a psychiatrist who helped hundreds; Ronnie, an international diplomat and early advocate of the abused and broken; and Sidney, builder of Laniado Hospital, a confidante of the Klausenberger Rebbe, and pioneer of frum healthcare. In addition to founding Camp Kol-Ree-Nah, Reb Yaakov authored a sefer featuring his exchange of letters with the Steipler Gaon regarding mental health issues, primarily in bochurim.

Not really, though.

Last year, during the hectic days just after Pesach, he slipped away. A small tribute appeared in Hamodia, two paragraphs.

Because this man, this giant of a man, this great healer — operated behind closed doors, in a realm behind layers of confidentiality and discretion. How would anyone know?

But during the shivah, they came, a stream of healthy, successful, accomplished adults — roshei yeshivah, rabbanim, askanim, dedicated husbands and fathers — they came up the stairs of the shivah house in Lakewood, looked around the room and then quickly whispered HaMakom.

One, a revered figure in a frock, with wise eyes and snowy white beard, said, “Others should say it, but they won’t, veil zei shemmen zich, they are embarrassed. But it needs to be said: He helped so many of us, with our talmidim, with our children… and with ourselves.”

This is the story of that man, the one you didn’t know.