Yes, the interviewer asked, laughter might extend Reb Kalman’s life, but the eventual end was still inevitable, just a question of time. Was Reb Kalman scared?

“My dear young friend,” he said, “I have news for you: You are also going to die, with Hashem’s help. We are all going to die at the right time. I do not know anyone who has succeeded in avoiding that fate. My rebbe’s greatest student, Rav Nosson of Breslov, writes in one of his books that for any Jew who does not every day envision the last day of his life—the day when he will be laid down with his feet facing the door—there is no point in learning his seforim. I want beautiful images to emerge from here. I want people to understand that This World has a Master Who does not consult with doctors. You must recognize this: A Jew never dies. He simply goes home. And you can derive real joy from that awareness. ”

That interview helped launch a new career for Reb Kalman: He, and his Har Nof apartment, would become public property. He would welcome people who looked whole but were really broken, and those who appeared broken but were really whole. He knew some, but most of them were anonymous—and they wanted to hear his message, tap into his faith, see the same picture he did.

He would speak of a fitness room for smile muscles. “Look,” he would say, lifting the corners of his lips, “it’s like weights, today you can pick up five kilo, tomorrow seven, then ten. If you smile enough, it gets easier, and eventually, it can be natural. We need such fitness rooms in every home—smile conditioning!”

Secular Israelis were captivated by the message as well. Reb Kalman attracted media attention of all sorts, and videos of the Breslover mashpia became popular on social media. In hospital wards, Reb Kalman became a celebrity. The vast majority of the patients had never met him in person, but they were profoundly moved by his demeanor and attitude. Reb Kalman, it was said, was the Cancer Rebbe.

The Decrees

The panoramic view from the Goldschmidt family’s home is breathtaking, the Jerusalem Forest seeming to stretch out like a green carpet.

“You see over there?” Rav Kalman pointed out a building in the middle of the forest to the interviewer. “That is Yad Vashem. And there is a reason that Hashem has placed it in my window.” Reb Kalman was named for his paternal grandfather, a Polish Jew named Reb Kalman Goldschmidt, who lived in Lublin and had seven children.

“One of them was my father, who was born in the middle of the First World War,” the second Reb Kalman recalled. “It was decreed in Heaven that my father would be the only one of his seven siblings to survive. It was also decreed upon my father that he would not have the privilege of knowing Hashem.”

Reb Kalman himself was born into a completely secular lifestyle. “It was decreed in Shamayim that I would have to work a little in order to reach illumination. I was so disconnected from Yiddishkeit that during the Six Day War, even though I was part of the unit of combatants who liberated the Old City of Jerusalem, I couldn’t fathom the joy of liberating the Kosel. I was so far removed that I didn’t even make the effort to go there.”

After completing his army service, he traveled to South America, and then to the United States. In a stroke of hashgachah pratis, the young soldier encountered someone who identified his acting talents. With that, he began to study theater and drama.

“Most baalei teshuvah have a moment of sudden enlightenment,” Rav Kalman said. “But that’s not what happened to me. I had a very long path to travel, with multiple moments of inspiration. There were many small details and minor encounters that eventually led me to recognize that the world has a Master. At that stage, I wasn’t even a ‘believer.’ I simply had clear knowledge of Hashem’s existence.”

At the end of a long, challenging route, Reb Kalman found himself arriving in a Sephardic yeshivah in Bnei Brak, wearing the customary long hair and backpack. The yeshivah welcomed him; the Torah itself welcomed him. He connected with learning, eventually graduating from that yeshivah and moving on to Ponevezh, then Kollel Chazon Ish. But the journey didn’t end there.

“My rebbe, Rebbe Nachman of Breslov, simply drew me to him in his own way,” Rav Kalman related. It began with an encounter with the leaders of Breslov chassidus—the Yerushalmi tzaddik Rav Shmuel Shapira and Rav Levi Yitzchak Bender, zichronam l’vrachah. Following in their footsteps, Rav Kalman became a devoted student of the Rebbe.

“For as long as we can remember,” the Goldschmidt sons relate, “our father would get up every night at midnight and recite Tikkun Chatzos, weeping bitterly as he mourned the destruction of the Beis Hamikdash. That sight was powerful, a grown man weeping over the fact that Hashem was so far from us. His pain was palpable. Every year, on Tishah B’Av, he would sit in shul and cry. When we once asked him how he was able to have such a tangible sense of the Churban, he said, ‘It’s impossible to start crying on Tishah B’Av. At this point, it’s a little bit late. But if you get up at midnight every night, you will be able to attach yourselves a little bit to the pain of the Shechinah.’

“Aside from those scheduled periods of mourning, he spent the rest of the day in a state of joy, giving joy to others. When we were children, he had us dance with him almost every day, to a special tune that he composed. He would sing, ‘What did you learn today in cheder?’ and then we would answer, ‘We learned Chumash today. We learned Gemara today. We learned Mishnayos today,’ in his special tune.

Reb Kalman’s neighbors recall how he made his way home from shul on Friday nights. “He used to dance home from shul,” they recall. “When we asked him why he was walking that way, he would explain enthusiastically, ‘Do you understand what’s happening here? Chazal tell us that two angels accompany a Jew on his way home from shul. Think about it—this entire street is filled with angels now. This is the most sacred and exciting moment in the week!’”

His sons remember how every week, as Shabbos approached, their home was bathed in peace and light. “Our father would come back from the mikveh two hours before Shabbos. His face shining, he would sit in his shtreimel and beketshe and begin the process of greeting the Shabbos by singing pesukim in Shir Hashirim that expressed his love for Hashem.”

Reb Kalman Goldschmidt didn’t deal with lofty spiritual planes or sublime concepts. His simplicity was the secret of his success. He lived with simple, tangible faith, viewing everything through the prism of emunah and acting accordingly.

“Three months ago,” his son says, “I took my father to immerse in a private mikveh. He was in terrible condition at the time; he was extremely frail, and he was basically just skin and bones. He asked me to leave him alone; he wanted to perform 310 tevillos. I was worried at first, but when I heard him managing on his own, I decided to leave him alone.

“I went out into the hall, and when I came back, I found my father sitting on a chair, his face shining with joy. ‘Ah,’ he whispered in a tone of pure delight, ‘I had such a tremendous privilege just now! What great taharah.’

“Later, we learned that he’d slipped and fallen and gotten badly bruised.

“You know,” Reb Kalman told his children when they asked him about it, “Chazal tell us that a person doesn’t even stub a toe unless it’s decreed Above. Do you realize what happened here? Before you came in, there was a tremendous commotion in Shamayim. In the Heavenly Court, there was an announcement: ‘Klonimus Kalman ben Rachel is about to suffer a blow.’ What a privilege! They announced my name in Shamayim.”

The Cry

There were doubters as well, those who speculated that Reb Kalman’s brave and joyful display of faith wasn’t authentic. Reb Kalman didn’t deny that there were hard times over the last three years. “Of course I have difficult moments!” he would say, “I have moments that are very sad—but I also have Someone to talk to about it.”

Years ago, Reb Kalman’s son was learning in Ponevezh, and faced a personal crisis that seemed to have no solution.

“I picked up the telephone,” he remembers, “and I called my father. I was barely able to speak. I could only cry. On the other end of the line, my father was silent. When I finally calmed down, he said to me, ‘Why are you calling me? Why don’t you speak directly to our Father? Do you want me to help you? I’ll be happy to. Let’s do it together. I’m going to hang up the phone now and lock myself in my room, and I will ask you to find a quiet space as well. The two of us will talk to Him together. We will cry and we will plead with Him to work things out. You’ll call me back in an hour, and everything will be fine.’

“That was the way he taught us. And it wasn’t an isolated incident—it’s how he really lived. He went to sleep every night and woke up every morning with this attitude. That’s how he fought his illness, and what that he took with him to the grave.”

As the reputation of the chassid who was doing battle with his illness spread, Reb Kalman faced a new problem. “I have become a mefursam,” he would joke. In Breslov, being mefursam, or well-known, is no compliment.

On rough days, when the pain was particularly intense, he would jokingly refer to himself as “the Admor of Auschwitz”—his creative way of expressing this new role, rebbe to the sufferers. When his children protested that the steady stream of visitors was too much for him—too much for all of them—Reb Kalman exclaimed, “Now, when I myself am in such pain, I can understand people who are ill. I ask you, please take me to them. I must speak to them about faith. There is a language that only the sick can understand.”

The Concession

Rav Mota Frank is a close friend of Reb Kalman’s and, like him, a Breslover mashpia. He remembers the days back when Kalman Goldschmidt was a newcomer to the Breslover shul. “We called him Kalman Bokeia, because his tefillah seemed to be ‘bokeia reki’im’—he roared out the words in a way that could split the Heavens.”

Over the years, the two men became close friends and formed a sort of partnership, joining with Rav Gamliel Rabinowitz in hosting Leil Shishi gatherings—Thursday night shiurim and kumzitzen for bochurim who were on the fringe or out of the yeshivah system.

I ask if Reb Kalman had always displayed the level of emunah of his final years, and Reb Mota offers an interesting answer.

“You could see the emunah in his face, hear it in every word. But more than that, it was evident in the way he lived. He was so good, so generous—he just wanted everything for others, never worried about losing out on what was meant for him.

“We once sat together as bocherim, trying to help two litigants solve their dispute,” Reb Mota continues. “He urged both sides to give in to compromise, and they agreed. Later on, one of them turned to him and said, ‘I compromised out of respect for you. But why, really, do I have to compromise, since the emes is with me?’ Reb Kalman smiled and said, ‘Yes, the emes might be with you. But the emes l’amito is to be mevater and give in. That’s the truth of all truths. A person gets what’s coming to him.’”.

That kind of clarity comes from real emunah, and Reb Kalman was a great mevater.

Regarding vatranus, his sons have a recollection of their own.

“To appreciate it, you have to understand what the mitzvah of succah meant to our father. For seven full days, he hardly left the succah at all. He lived there. He ate, slept, and rejoiced in the succah.

“But one year, before Succos, we arrived and saw that the upstairs neighbor had built a new porch that covered most of the area of his succah. We were shocked—it was a flagrant violation of his rights. We asked our father if he had given permission for it, and he smiled broadly.

“‘Of course I gave him permission!’ he exclaimed.

“When we remained confused, he began explaining: ‘When my neighbor came to talk to me about building the porch, he told me that he had two options—he could build it outside his living room or outside his bedroom.’ The neighbor knew that a porch outside his living room would disturb our father, so they didn’t dare suggest that they would choose that option. But our father was aghast at their plan.

“‘There is no reason the neighbor should have to bring all of his guests through a bedroom to get to his succah!’ he exclaimed. And he said to the neighbor, ‘I’ll agree to sign for this construction only if you build the porch outside your living room. I’ll manage with a smaller succah.’

“On the first night of Succos, we watched as our father stepped into his succah, pointed at the cement ceiling created by the neighbor’s porch, and announced, ‘Master of the Universe, I have built a beautiful succah for You. I helped another Jew build a succah!’”

The Mitzvah Tantz

One thing Reb Kalman didn’t give into was his illness. He won round after round. The predicted weeks became months, then half a year and a full year. Then two years. The medical establishment conceded that his personal treatment regimen had been effective. He went another half a year and then, those precious last few months.

For three years, the laughter triumphed over cancer. Vatis’chak l’yom acharon—he laughed and laughed up until the very end. He remained the same Reb Kalman until the end, singing and teaching and laughing.

Avraham Fried was a regular visitor to Reb Kalman—the Lubavitcher music superstar and the Breslover mashpia sharing Torah and niggunim. Fried was there a week before Reb Kalman passed away.

“I was in Yerushalayim on a Motzaei Shabbos, and I went to see Reb Kalman,” Fried remembers. “He was so weak. The patient sat in his room, barely able to move. The larger living room was filled with people who’d come to the impromptu farbrengen, but Reb Kalman didn’t have the strength to be moved to the next room. They started to sing. One niggun, then another. Reb Kalman grew stronger, and he was lifted into his wheelchair.

“In the living room, a crowd waited and the simchah reached new heights. After about an hour in intense song, Reb Avremel and Reb Kalman started to dance. I don’t know what drove me, but I asked for a piece of cloth. I held one end, and handed the other to Reb Kalman,” recalls the singer, “and we began to dance that way—a mitzvah tantz.”

“With the family’s permission, Avremel took that gartel, the cord that bound This World to the Next in a holy dance, with him. I packed it carefully into a small bag and it’s been with me since. It’s a holy object, a memento of a holy man.”

The Faith Chamber

Reb Kalman had a close friend—his aide, Nino. Reb Kalman would call Nino’s family in the Philippines to thank them for sharing their exceptional husband and father with him, and make sure they knew what a good job Nino was doing.

Three days before Reb Kalman left This World, his sons came into the room to see their father sitting with Nino and marshaling the last of his strength to teach him the Seven Noachide Laws. Both men wept as Nino repeated, “Don’t eat eiver min hachai,” and accepted the commandment, along with all the other mitzvos that Hashem commanded to the nations of the world.

Until his final day, Reb Kalman kept speaking of his “project,” the Teveria kever of Rav Nachman of Horodenka, grandfather of Rebbe Nachman of Breslov. He urged people to daven there, raised funds for its upkeep, and petitioned the authorities in charge of holy sites for the right to build a formal ohel. He said that it’s a kever of emunah, where a person can develop faith, where he can find the gift of faith.

The bureaucrats relented, signing the approval that would make the kever an official holy site. As they were lifting pen to paper in Teveria, Reb Kalman, in Jerusalem, was forcing himself to sit up in bed. He asked for a glass of water and, with his last bit of strength, he recited the brachah, shehakol nihyeh bidvaro. With his son holding his hand, Reb Kalman completed the chapters of Tehillim of the Tikkun Haklali…and finished his work in This World.

Kol haneshamah tehallel Kah

—Shimon Breitkopf and Yisrael Groweiss contributed to this report

Here to Write the Will

I’ll never forget the first time I stood outside his door. I kissed the mezuzah, touched the name plate, but couldn’t bring myself to knock. The only knocking sound came from my own heart. I was tasked with interviewing Reb Kalman, but all I knew about him was the statement given to me by the editor of the magazine I worked for at the time:

“He was diagnosed two weeks ago. The doctors gave him a few weeks. We have to catch him before he’s gone.”

Three years later, the image is still vivid. The door opened, and there he stood—a chassidish man wearing a sweater over large wool tzitzis, tefillin straps wound around his arm and the shel rosh sitting above his blazing eyes. But the most unforgettable part was his smile. It was the broadest and most genuine smile I’ve ever seen. He pulled me into his apartment as if I were a lost son who had returned from the battlefield.

“Shalom aleichem!” he exclaimed, shaking my hand. “Come inside—after all, you are here to write my tzavaah!”

For most of our interview, I found myself looking at him through a haze of tears. It took only a few minutes for the role reversal to take place. He became the interviewer, and I found myself pouring out my own heart to him. He showered me with reassurance, and I choked on my tears. He was encouraging and cheerful, while I found myself preoccupied by thoughts of the eventual end of my earthly existence.

There was one moment when he took my hand, and in a sweet voice filled with emotion, he began to sing the famous Breslover niggun, “Oz v’hadar levushah, vatis’chak l’yomacharon.” The yom acharon—the final day—was the focus of his thoughts.

—Yisrael Groweiss

You Only Die Once

Why is it that we wait for them to become ill? Why do we only like hearing stories about Jews once they’ve passed on? Why didn’t we have the privilege of learning from him while he was still among us, healthy and strong and filled with faith and joy?

In fact, I’d known Reb Kalman Goldschmidt since I was a child. On Shabbos, he looked like a different person. It was as if he had grown a head taller. He would return from shul surrounded by his children, and his face seemed to glow with another worldly light. There wasn’t a single passerby who wouldn’t receive a hearty “gut Shabbos” greeting from him. He greeted everyone, from three-year-old boys to distinguished rabbanim in their eighties, with the same warmth and radiant smile and the same powerful handshake.

When he became ill, Reb Kalman began to spread his emunah to others.

“Do you know why Hashem sent me this precious illness?” he once asked me. I didn’t know what to say. How does one answer a man on his deathbed? What sort of chizuk could I possibly give him?

“Hashem made me sick because He wants to make me better,” Reb Kalman then said.“A healthy Jew cannot become healthy; he is already there. Hashem wants my tefillos. Yes, He desires the prayers of a simple Jew like myself. All of the suffering a Jew endures is for Hashem to take it away. I received this illness because Hashem wants to take it away from me Himself.”

Reb Kalman is a man who died only once. But there are many people who die, for all intents and purposes, as soon as they receive a diagnosis of illness. They may continue to breathe, but inside their hearts, it’s all over. They’ve reached the point of absolute death. And then they go on to die again and again, a thousand times a day. Reb Kalman introduced us to the idea that a person can die only once. He didn’t get overwhelmed by the doctors and their predictions; he refused to submit to despair. When Hashem decided to take him from This World, he would go with his head held high—and not a moment sooner.

Perhaps that’s what turned him into a phenomenon that attracted so much attention. Reb Kalman gave his visitors the clarity of knowledge that a human being dies only once. It’s all a matter of perception. How many sick people have made a complete recovery, and how many healthy people have suddenly passed away? When Reb Kalman was alive, he filled every second with vitality. He lived with joy, with gratitude to Hashem, as a stellar example of a believing Jew who never allowed his faith to lapse.

Rest in peace, Reb Kalman, and use your unbounded laughter and joy to bring us Mashiach

—Shimon Breitkopf

(Originally Featured in Mishpacha, Issue 716)