Rabbi Meshulom Weiss, 79, OBM

By COLlive reporter

Rabbi Meshulam Dov Weiss, a Lubavitcher chossid who served as an educator and kosher supervisor in the United States, passed away on Wednesday night, Tammuz 26 5774.

He was 79.

While living in Miami Beach in 1957 after his marriage, his wife Dr. Eileen Weiss, then 18-years-old and a graduate of Beis Yaakov Schools, was told that she has an infantile womb.

“Your womb never developed and therefore, it is physically impossible for you to become pregnant. You’re going to be sterile for the rest of your life,” one of the leading gynecologists in Miami told her.

Rabbi Weiss quickly called the Rebbe‘s secretariat at Lubavitch Headquarters – 770 Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn, asking for a blessing. “A month later my wife become pregnant with our oldest son, Mordechai,” he said in an interview with JEM’s My Encounter team.

The couple went on to be blessed with 15 children. Years later, during a routine check up, a doctor told Mrs. Weiss “I see you have an infantile womb which tells me you never had any children. It must be disappointing to you.”

“The Rebbe gave you a blessing two days before your wedding that Hashem will bless you with many children and that’s why you have your children, because of the Rebbe’s blessing,” Rabbi Weiss explains.

In another story, Rabbi Weiss was diagnosed with skin cancer on his lower lip. “I had the cancer removed, along with 1/3 of my lip,” he tells and notes that “I am extremely careful not to cut any part of my beard.”

Years later, in 2006, he noticed a sore developing on his lip again. Dr. William Remington of the Winneshiek Medical Center in Iowa diagnosed it as a skin cancer and said a surgery was needed not just on the lip like the first time, but also down toward the chin.

“My wife asked Dr. Remington if he would have to shave my beard, and he said that he would have to remove at least part of my beard. I was in shock,” Rabbi Weiss recalled. The doctor agreed to shave whatever needed with electric shaver, instead of a razor.

“I left the doctor’s office trembling,” Weiss wrote in the L’Chaim Weekly. “I wasn’t upset about the surgery, nor even that my cancer had returned. What sent me to tears was that my beard, even part of it, would have to be shaven. Until that moment I never realized how important my beard was to me.”

He called Ohel Chabad Lubavitch Center to go on his behalf to the Rebbe’s Ohel resting place and ask for a blessing. “I added that I wanted them to tell the Rebbe how sorry I was that part of my beard would have to be shaved,” he said.

That evening, the sore on his lip stopped hurting. By Monday night the entire discoloration under his lip started to fade. “I woke up Tuesday morning, looked into the mirror, and to my amazement I could see no trace of anything,” he said.

Shocked over the medical miracle, Dr. Remington asked, “What medicine have you been taking?”

Weiss told him “none.”

Remington asked, “What ointment did you put on your lip?” Again Weiss said, “None.”

“You had to have done something,” Remington said, “cancer doesn’t go away by itself.”

“Well,” Weiss said, “I prayed a lot and I called my Rebbe in New York to pray on my behalf.”

“Pray? You prayed? And that’s why you were cured?”

” I guess so.”

He is survived by his wife Dr. Eileen Weiss, their children Rabbi Mordechai Weiss, Mrs. Esta Sitrin, Isaac Weiss, Shimmy Weiss, Rabbi Yosef Weiss, Avrumi Weiss, Yehoshua Weiss, Dovid Weiss, Rabbi Mendel Weiss, Leah Brown, Rabbi Moshe Weiss, Devorah Lunger, Shaina Knobloch, Yaakov Weiss, and Shmulie Weiss; grandchildren and great grandchildren.

A gathering was held Wednesday night at Shaarey Zedek Congregation in Valley Village, California. The levaya and kevurah will be at the Eretz HaChaim Cemetery in Beit Shemesh, Israel, on Friday afternoon.

Condolences may also be emailed to [email protected].

Baruch dayan haemes.

VIDEO
Rabbi Meshulam Weiss speaks in JEM’s Joy of Children film about the miracle from the Rebbe in 1957.