In memory of Rav Yissachar Dov Biderman of Lelov

INgeneral, if one of my chassidic patients brings me to meet his rebbe, the rebbe will want to ask me about the case and to hear my diagnosis and treatment plan before making his own assessment. If there is more time, I’m sometimes asked to list my ruchniyus resume in addition to my medical credentials: Where do I daven? What seforim am I learning? Did I know the Bostoner Rebbe ztz”l during my time at Harvard Medical School?

But at my first meeting with Rebbe Yissachar Dov of Lelov-Piotrkov years back, the Rebbe immediately smiled at me as I entered his private room and asked me if I’d like to learn with him. He flipped through the pages of Rebbe Aharon of Karlin’s Beis Aharon, which happened to be on his shtender and which opened my mind to a world of chassidus that until then I had only visited but had never really been zocheh to live.

Ninety minutes later, after we’d delved into the most central chassidic topics of hiskashrus and dveikus, the Rebbe closed his sefer and told me to return and learn with him whenever I was in the area of his beis medrash on Rechov Bar Ilan in Jerusalem.

“And what about the patient?” I asked, my mind still floating in a bewildered haze, having seemingly traveled back in time to a generation where a rebbe still had time to teach strangers one-on-one about the fundamentals of avodas Hashem.

“He will be fine, b’ezras Hashem. Come back to learn. And bring your friends. A gutte nacht.”

After that encounter, I wasn’t even surprised when the patient who initially asked me to speak with the Rebbe made an immediate change towards a healthy life — a turnaround that would have been highly unlikely based on prior behaviors and statistics. Nor was I surprised that all the various people I brought to the Rebbe over the years felt as though he had given them a spiritual gift that they would have for the rest of their lives.

This list didn’t only include my cousin who was floundering at a yeshivah for at-risk kids and is now shteiging in the Mir, or an old friend who couldn’t commit to a healthy lifestyle and is now on the right track having avoided a heart attack, or a rosh yeshivah who finally found his personal gadol. The Lelov-Piotrkov Rebbe, who passed away last week, was an admor for every Jew.

But somehow for me, it felt even more personal. The Rebbe always seemed to find time for me in his days that were already packed with avodas Hashem, intensive learning, and helping his fellow Yidden. And it consistently happened at the times when I could use it the most after a long day in the clinic and in need of his varmkeit and Torah pearls. How many times did the Rebbe instruct his gabbai to call me just as I was driving past his beis medrash and ask me to come in?

We studied Noam Elimelech, Yismach Yisrael, and Beis Aharon, but we mostly learned what the Rebbe referred to as “Maseches Dovid Lelover,” stories and lessons of the otherworldly chesed and ahavas Yisrael that the Rebbe’s holy ancestor Rav Dovid of Lelov was famous for — and which he bequeathed to his progeny through the next generations.

Rav Yissachar Dov Biderman is the seventh generation after Rebbe Dovid Lelover, who was a close talmid of the Chozeh of Lublin. It’s a bit confusing how today there are dozens of Lelover Rebbes, and that’s because in addition to the seven generations of rebbes from Rebbe Dovid to Rebbe Yissachar Dov’s father, Rebbe Moshe Mordechai of Lelov, there were branches created by sons and sons-in-law over the 200 years since Rebbe Dovid’s passing, as well as the fact that all seven of Rebbe Moshe Mordechai’s sons (Rebbe Yissachar Dov and his brothers) became either rebbes or heads of batei medrash.

There are many famous stories told about Rebbe Dovid, like how, as a six-year-old, he gave his own fur coat to a poor child in cheder during an especially harsh winter because he couldn’t bear to see another Yid in pain, even if it meant he’d suffer in their place.

The Rebbe would repeat these stories to me, and before Succos one year, he told me an especially moving one: Rebbe Dovid Lelover had painstakingly saved money all year in order to buy an esrog. On his way to the market, he saw another Yid standing on the side of the road next to a dead horse. As the Yid told him about how his parnassah as a woodcutter was dependent on the horse and how he’d be unable to feed his family without a means of transportation, the two of them cried together. And then Rebbe Dovid put his hand in his pocket and gave the Yid all the money he’d saved during the year, telling him, “Everyone will be blessing their esrogim and I’ll be blessing your horse.”

Reb Yissachar Dov was so moved by this story that he began to cry. He took his tears and wiped them on his forehead, teaching me that this was a very powerful means of washing away one’s aveiros. He then took his finger to dry his eyes once more before reaching across the shtender and wiping his tears upon my own forehead.

“This will help you to be a good chassid, an even better chassid, a great professor, and a great Yid,” he said. I can’t describe those moments in words, but I definitely felt the holiness doing its work.

(I once began to tear up when discussing a patient of mine who had suffered tremendously in his life. The Rebbe took his finger, wiped away an escaping tear, and put it on my forehead, telling me, “This will help.”)

Rebbe Yissachar Dov loved to teach me specifically about Dr. Chaim David Bernhard, the most famous talmid of Rebbe Dovid Lelover, who was the personal doctor of the Polish king. Dr. Bernhard’s father was a chassid of Rebbe Elimech of Lizhensk, who blessed him that his son would light up the world. But Chaim David himself had other plans. As a young man, he left the traditions of his fathers and was pulled into the glitter of secular high society and nobility, eventually serving as the chief physician of Polish counts and even the king.

But then, through several Providential events, he had an encounter with Rebbe Dovid Lelover, and by the time it was over, he was recommitted to Yiddishkeit, slowly relearning the ways he’s set aside long ago. Eventually “Rabbi Dr.” Bernhard became a mashpia and rebbe in his own right.

“Rebbe Dovid Lelover came back to the world just to bring Dr. Bernhard back to Yiddishkeit and chassidus,” the Rebbe told me one evening as he closed his sefer. “So perhaps I’m only here in this world to teach you a bissel chassidus.”

He repeated the story as he graciously put up a mezuzah on the door of my new clinic in Jerusalem. “You shouldn’t need to be a doctor. You should just teach chassidus like Dr. Bernhard.” he said. “But if you need to be a doctor, then you should be as good a doctor as Dr. Bernhard!”

And I felt it, the unique attention that he gave me, which made me feel as though I was the only person on the entire earth when we spoke. It wasn’t only the hours he gave me or even the tish beketshe that he took off of his own body and handed to me in order to uplift my own Shabbos. It was the look in his eyes that told me very clearly that I was his favorite chassid.

But the amazing thing was that every single person he had contact with felt the exact same way. I remember watching dozens of times over the years as the same elderly neighbor came to the door to schnor a cigarette and how the Rebbe jumped to his feet and ran to give him one in spite of his own physical pain due to multiple medical conditions. This neighbor also felt as though he was the Rebbe’s favorite chassid, in the same way that we all did.

And this love wasn’t limited to frum Yidden. I remember the day after Simchas Torah, October 8, 2023, when the Rebbe called me from his personal cell phone (I didn’t know he even had one, and didn’t recognize the number) no less than 20 times before I finally picked up.

“Come immediately,” he told me. “I have a mitzvah for you to do.”

When I arrived, the Rebbe handed me a wad of bills and told me, “Go as fast as you can and buy a huge quantity of almonds, nuts, and garinim, and run to give them to Jewish soldiers. Tell them that I love them, and that they should be strong and not lose faith when they do their mitzvah of protecting their fellow Yidden. Tell them that if I had the koach that I would hug and kiss each young soldier and tell them how much I love them.”

(The Rebbe really didn’t have koach. He suffered from a severe chronic lung disease, and at one point when I looked at his CT scans, I was shocked. Based on his scans, his lungs had essentially stopped functioning four years prior. He was one of those tzaddikim that was able to stretch time and bend physics.)

Following the Rebbe’s instructions, I spent thousands of shekels on all sorts of pitzuchim for soldiers over the next few days and told them that it was from the Rebbe. Many young men cried and told me that indeed, at this point in their precarious mission, they felt a deep connection with every Jew. I’m sure this was Rebbe Yissachar Dov’s intention. Every Yid was his favorite chassid.

One Friday afternoon, I was leaving a levayah for a soldier who was the son of a neighbor. Although it was Erev Shabbos in the winter and the clock was ticking, the Rebbe called as he always did just as I was driving past his home, to see if I would come to learn a bit of Torah with him before Shabbos. I told him that I had a car full of people, and he said, “Good, then bring them, too. We can all give each other chizuk.” To the soldiers who were with us, the Rebbe said, “You should know that you are on a big shlichus to protect your fellow Yid, and when you wear tzitzis it will protect you, so make sure to have your friends wear them, too.”

Like his heilige ancestor Rebbe Dovid, giving chizuk to his fellow Yid was the Rebbe’s greatest concern. He went through many personal challenges in his own life, including losing his first wife in a deadly fire, but would see those tragedies as blessings as well, saying that his pain made him able to feel the pain of others, the pain of Klal Yisrael. During one of the many Covid lockdowns here in Israel, I remember the Rebbe’s gabbai calling me to ask for my gardener’s phone number. The Rebbe wanted to know if he could pay him to plant a single lemon tree in his courtyard, “because he probably doesn’t have so much parnassah right now and it will give him chizuk.”

The gardener — a man whose Persian roots and status as a former IDF commando made him an unlikely chassid — was excited to find some extra work during a time where luxuries, like his services, were hardly being utilized. While the physical work took only an hour, the Rebbe spent twice as long discussing the halachos of orlah and shemittah with his new chassid. Less than a month later, the Rebbe took a minyan of chassidim out to visit the gardener on a hilltop not far from the Psagot Winery where they discussed the brachos inherent in Eretz Yisrael and davened as they watched the skyline view of Jerusalem.

The Rebbe’s learning and his davening were mesmerizing to watch, but his avodas Hashem in everyday activities was something I imagined to see in a different time, perhaps the era of the Baal Shem Tov’s talmidim. I remember watching the Rebbe wash his hands before taking terumah and maaser on grapes that he had asked me to bring him. Time froze as he prepared for the mitzvah.

He once told me, “There is a special ‘L’sheim Yichud’ tefillah you say for every action in the world, whether it’s for separating terumah, for eating, or even for being a psychiatrist! You have to connect the gashmiyus with the ruchniyus. So you daven and ask Hashem to help you to do right. I remember as a child that when I washed before eating, I used to always say, ‘Hashem, I’m only eating so that You will give me strength to do more mitzvos.’ I still try to do that today.”

Yet as lofty as his avodah was, the Rebbe never considered it an interruption to help another Yid. In fact, for the Rebbe, that was the ultimate tachlis.

“My zeides always had a sefer open,” he told me. “Either they were learning from it or running to help another Yid and didn’t have time to close it.”

The Rebbe grew up with a personal role model for avodas Hashem and ahavas Yisrael. His father, Rav Moshe Mordechai Lelover, who moved his beis medrash to Tel Aviv in the early 1940s, was known as true gadol and tzaddik both inside and outside the frum world.

“My father was the rebbe of Menachem Begin,” he told me. “He introduced Begin to his friend the Baba Sali, but Begin relied on my father and always asked him everything. In 1981, he came to get a brachah before he gave the order to bomb the Iraqi nuclear reactor. My father gave him a big brachah that this should be a great help for Am Yisrael, and at the exact moment the bomb fell, my father had a stroke and never spoke again. It was like his last sacrifice for Am Yisrael.” Rebbe Moshe Mordechai passed away six years later.

IFyou want to know who Rebbe Yissachar Dov of Lelov-Piotrkov was with one quick vort, maybe this is it: “If you see a Yid who’s doing something that doesn’t seem so good,” he once told me, “you should know that either it’s not really the way it looks, or that it’s not really him doing it at all. This is the teaching of my holy ancestor Rebbe Dovid Lelover — that a Yid never does something intentionally that’s not good. It must be the yetzer hara, because how could the essential neshamah do something not good? Perhaps he didn’t say the brachah shelo asani goy with enough kavanah that morning, but it wasn’t really him.

My rebbe passed away at age 84 on Erev Tu B’Shevat while in the mikveh, something he had always said would happen, to ensure that he left this world as pure as he came. Heartbroken, I pulled my car off to the side of the road and tore kri’ah. After a few moments, though, I thought of those words the Rebbe said so often: Even this couldn’t be bad because Hashem only creates good. I took the tears that were running down my face and wiped them across my forehead — and thought about how I could help my fellow Yidden in his merit.

Yehi zichro baruch. 

Dr. Yaakov Freedman is a psychiatrist and a business consultant practicing in Jerusalem. His newest book, Stories and Halachah from The Psychiatrist’s Couch, is available from Adir Press.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1099)