Cheese Blintz Friendship Reveals a 70-Year-Old Connection

While caring for his mother at Cornell Medical Center, Rabbi Moshe Bleich befriended a fellow visitor and uncovered an extraordinary connection between their families stretching back 70 years.

By Yochonon Donn – Ami Magazine

The intensive care unit at Cornell Medical Center isn’t typically a place to make new friends. Then again, Rabbi Moshe Bleich has never been typical. Over the years, the Chabad shliach in Wellesley, Massachusetts, has used a variety of methods to corral a minyan, put tefillin on someone for the first time, or get candlesticks or a Chanukah menorah into someone’s hands.

He recently told me a “crazy minyan story” that happened to him. Rabbi Bleich was reluctantly attending a Jewish Heritage Night event at Fenway Park—reluctantly because he was still in the year of aveilus for his father and needed to say Kaddish, and he had only gone because his son had begged him. As soon as he arrived and started asking around for minyan members, he realized that even in a crowd of 35,000 people, it would be harder than he thought.

“I went to my seat thinking that I would probably miss Kaddish for both Minchah and Maariv for the first time,” he said. “But Hashem had other plans.”

No sooner had he sat down than everyone in his section suddenly started screaming at him. “I had no idea what was happening,” he recalled. “Then I looked up and saw that we were on the Jumbotron,” the huge screen that randomly focuses on people in the audience. “Within 30 seconds, I got 25 texts and WhatsApps saying, ‘Rabbi, we just saw you on the Jumbotron!’ My response to all of them was: ‘Minchah at 8 p.m. sharp at Gate 18.’”

The result was that he had 50 men for Minchah and 40 for Maariv. He couldn’t find a minyan, so the minyan found him.

But the story he told me next was even wilder. It had started this past winter, when Rabbi Bleich began making weekly trips to Manhattan to stay with his mother, who had taken ill.

The Bleich family had been looking forward to their parents’ 70th wedding anniversary on Lag BaOmer. Reb Reuven and Sarah Bleich, née Lew, had gotten married in 1956 and were both relatively healthy, if somewhat frail. It had therefore come as a blow when their father was niftar last August, and their mother became ill shortly afterward. The Bleichs rallied, arranging 24-hour shifts around her hospital bed.

Moshe was my classmate in Yeshiva Karlin Stolin in Boro Park many years ago. It had been 30 years since he had spent significant time in New York, and the advent of Bikur Cholim rooms in New York hospitals was an eye-opening experience for him. His father had passed away at home and had never been hospitalized for a lengthy period. Moshe described the Bikur Cholim room concept to me as though Rip Van Winkle had awakened after his mythical 20-year nap.

“It’s a different world these days,” he said. “They have something in the hospital called a Bikur Cholim room, which is stocked with kosher food. It gets replenished maybe once or twice a day—milchig, fleishig, drinks, and snacks. It’s incredible! You meet all kinds of Jews there. We don’t have anything like that where I live.”

When Jews get together, they try to organize a steady minyan. Unfortunately, Cornell is a place where patients may stay for months at a time. As an aveil, Moshe had a chiyuv, so he started adding every new person he met in the Bikur Cholim room to a WhatsApp chat so that they could stay in contact for davening. Within weeks, some 50 people were on the chat.

The group came in handy for other purposes as well. Someone needed to say Viduy; it was posted on the chat, and within a short time, the person had a man with a siddur at his bedside. Someone who had left his tefillin behind wanted to daven; it was posted on the chat, and a pair of tefillin made its way to a room on the fourth floor.

“People are always leaving the group when they leave the hospital, baruch Hashem,” he said. “Each time I come back, I get new people to join, and it goes back up to 40, 50, or even 60. As soon as I walk into the hospital and see frum people, I say, ‘Hey, do you want to be part of a minyan?’ And that’s where my story begins.”

During one of his weekly sojourns at the hospital, Moshe was davening for the amud. It was during a ferocious snowstorm, and everyone there had been stranded at the hospital for 48 hours. After Moshe finished davening, he added a few mishnayos and said another Kaddish, as per minhag Chabad.

Someone in the crowd was apparently irritable after being stuck in the hospital for two days and called out, “Why are you adding a Kaddish? For most of us, it’s not our minhag.”

Somewhat taken aback by the man’s strident tone, Moshe was relieved when another person—a Litvak from Flatbush who was originally from Lakewood—spoke up. “Listen,” he said, “this is the person who’s been making the minyan here for the last couple of days. Cut him a little slack. If he wants to say an extra Kaddish, let him say an extra Kaddish.”

Later that night—it could have been 11, 12, or even 1 a.m.; time seems to stand still in hospitals—Moshe’s mother finally fell asleep, and the lights were turned off. He went to the Bikur Cholim room to finish his daily learning. A minute later, the man who had defended him came in. He introduced himself as Ben Mayer, and they started talking. During the chat, Ben went over to the freezer and opened it. Moshe peered inside and saw a single cheese blintz. Ben popped it into the microwave and ate it.

“You’re obviously here to visit someone,” he said to Moshe. “What’s going on?”

“Things are bad, and the worst part is that there aren’t any cheese blintzes left,” Moshe replied, trying to be funny.

“Where do you live?” Ben wanted to know.

“Massachusetts. We can’t get cheese blintzes like that up there.”

“No big deal. I’m going to send you some cheese blintzes.”

That was the beginning of the two men’s connection over cheese blintzes.

Ben Mayer became Moshe’s fast friend. The next time Moshe posted that he was coming back to the hospital, Ben texted him, “Meet me in the Bikur Cholim room.” In the freezer was an entire carton of cheese blintzes. Moshe took them back to Massachusetts, and everyone in his family enjoyed them very much.

Ben Mayer offered more than cheese blintzes; he always had a good vort to lift Moshe’s spirits and give him chizzuk. But the cheese blintzes soon became a joke in the extended Bleich family. His siblings teased him, saying, “Moshe, do you want to stay with Mommy on Tuesday night? They’re gonna have cheese blintzes there.”

Late one night, after staying at his mother’s bedside for a grueling 24 hours, Moshe was finally able to leave. On his way out, he passed the Bikur Cholim room and saw a woman frantically opening drawers, the refrigerator, and the freezer. “I can’t believe someone took my bag,” she was muttering to herself. “It had my name on it. Why would someone take it?”

Moshe leaned into the room and expressed sympathy. As he was about to continue down the hallway, the woman said to him, “Refuah shleimah.” Then she asked him why he was in the hospital.

This is usually a sensitive question, but he replied that his mother was ill.

“What floor is she on?” the woman wanted to know.

“The eighth floor,” he said.

“Oh, the eighth floor… You know, there’s a very friendly family up there. I don’t know if you’ve met them. The Bleich family.”

Moshe hesitated and then said, “As a matter of fact, that’s my family.”

She appeared surprised since he was dressed as a Lubavitcher; he’s the only Chabad member of his family.

“My mother-in-law’s maiden name is Hershkowitz,” she said. “Does that mean anything to you?”
“The only Hershkowitzes I know are the ones who were my parents’ shadchan,” he replied. “I didn’t really know them, but I knew they always came to family simchos.”

It turned out that her mother-in-law’s father, Rav Yonah Zev Hershkowitz—affectionately known in Yeshiva Torah Vodaath as Billy Hershkowitz—had been the shadchan. Rav Hershkowitz, a son-in-law of Rav Binyomin Wilhelm, the founder of Torah Vodaas, had also been Moshe’s mohel.

Moshe was stunned. “I couldn’t believe it,” he recalled. “Of all the people in the world to meet under those circumstances!”

He told her with emotion that his parents had gotten married 70 years earlier on Lag BaOmer and that everyone had been looking forward to celebrating their anniversary, but last summer his father had passed away, and his mother was now in the hospital.

“Your husband’s grandfather had an incredible zechus for introducing my parents, who went on to have almost 500 descendants, bli ayin hara,” he told her. Then he asked, “You told me your mother-in-law’s maiden name, but what’s your last name?”

“Mayer,” she replied.

“Mayer? Are you related to Ben Mayer?”

“Yes. He’s my husband,” she said. “How do you know him?”

“You won’t believe this, but he’s been supplying me with cheese blintzes for the past two months,” Moshe replied.

Shortly afterward, he picked up the phone and called Ben’s mother, the daughter of the man who had brought his parents together, and told her the story. Before he even had a chance to leave the Bikur Cholim room, he got a call from Ben.

“What’s going on?” he said. “My mother just sent me a text message saying, ‘I spoke to the cheese blintz guy from the Bikur Cholim room. What’s the story with him?’”

Apparently, the cheese blintzes were a joke in the other family, too.

As if that weren’t enough hashgachah pratis for one story, Moshe received a text message from Ben the next day: “Regards from your brother through my brother-in-law.” It turned out that Moshe’s brother, Rabbi Avrohom Bleich, the rav of Congregation B’nai Israel in Oak Park, Michigan, was a close friend of Ben’s brother-in-law Zevy Alter, who lives in Chicago. In fact, he stays in the Alters’ home for a week every summer.

A few days before Shavuos, Ben Mayer called Moshe with the news that his own ailing father, Refael Shmuel Aryeh ben Chana, had just been transferred to a hospital in Boston, a half-hour drive from Moshe’s Chabad House in Wellesley, Massachusetts. Moshe sent a case of food to the Mayers, who had traveled to Boston to stay with their father. In return, Ben sponsored the blintzes for Chabad of Wellesley’s annual Shavuos Kiddush.

Shavuos was a sad time for Moshe; his mother passed away only two days earlier. But the confluence of events that occurred in the months before her petirah left him inspired.

“There I was in the hospital, which is not a happy place to be, and I met a guy who was nice and friendly, a real breath of fresh air. Seventy years ago, his grandparents had made my parents’ shidduch, and 70 years later he was supplying me with cheese blintzes and being mechazek me when I needed it,” he marveled. “It goes to show you that all Jews are connected, and that chesed is the gift that keeps on giving!”

Originally published in Ami Magazine www.amimagazine.org

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