By Dovid Zaklikowski for COLlive and Hasidic Archives
It was in Vienna, Austria, that the Rebbe Rayatz first met Dr. Joseph Wilder, who practiced psychotherapy at the Neuropsychiatric Hospital Rosenhugel.
In 1940, when Dr. Wilder immigrated to New York, he once again began to treat the Rebbe Rayatz whose health was very poor.
“When I was feeling weak and had heart pains, at evening, my primary care doctor from Vienna … Dr. Wilder, one of the great and outstanding doctors there [came to see me],” the Rebbe wrote to the philanthropist and thinker Alexander Cowen in 1944. “After taking medicine [he prescribed], the pain eased, and thank G-d I joined the Chassidic gathering…”
In America, Dr. Wilder was a clinical professor emeritus of neurology at the New York Medical College and was a founder and the first president of the Association for the Advancement of Psychotherapy.
Despite his busy schedule, the doctor visited the Rebbe Rayatz regularly. During one of these appointments, he mentioned the new research that indicated smoking might be detrimental to health.
“It was known that the Rebbe would smoke ‘without matches,'” recalled Shmuel Popack, at the time a student at the Lubavitch yeshivah, “that is, lighting the first cigarette from a new pack with the last one from the previous pack, without using a match.”
At the end of his examination, Dr. Wilder took out a cigarette for himself and offered one to the Rebbe Rayatz. The Rebbe Rayatz looked at him with surprise. The doctor may not have internalized the news he had relayed, but the Rebbe Rayatz had already made a life-changing decision.
“You don’t know? I do not smoke.”
In regards to his health, the Rebbe Rayatz wrote later that year, in spring 1940 that there is nothing to rejoice in regards to his health, noting that he was on a regimen of vitamins prescribed by Dr. Wilder, “There are things that I am very careful not to have, such as smoking, which I have totally stopped…”
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No vaccine is 100% effective. And some people *can’t* be vaccinated. But if everyone who can be is, then there’s enough immunity for everyone to be protected. Every person who can be vaccinated but chooses not to be damages the general immunity and endangers everyone.
So what’s the point of vaccinating if you can get the diseases anyway?🙄
what is the source to your writing:
At the end of his examination, Dr. Wilder took out a cigarette for himself and offered one to the Rebbe Rayatz. The Rebbe Rayatz looked at him with surprise. The doctor may not have internalized the news he had relayed, but the Rebbe Rayatz had already made a life-changing decision.
You’re funny. I mean, to take a Rebbe at such face value is a joke. Have you any idea of the greatness of our Rebbeim? The exactitude of their every word? Why, the Rebbe said full sichos on alone that one of the Rebbeim said as a child, or in passing. Learn self control from this story – we all have so little of it. Just to propose, the Rebbeim did not need doctors to heal them- as seen by how they heal everyone else. Why do they use doctors? For reasons unbeknown to us. However, this may be because… Read more »
to listen to a doctor when it comes to health because only doctors have the power to heal Gemara Berachos 60a and not some guy who ‘did his own research’
I don’t usually write comments here, but am doing so in hopes that I can change the opinion of even one anti-vaccinator. If any person who does not vaccinate catches a usually vaccinated disease – even if they cure themselves successfully – they can pass it on to someone who has been vaccinated. I myself have had several vaccinations for a disease, none of which have worked. I am a young, generally healthy bachur. Doctors told me that I will never be immune to this disease, and will always catch it when I come into contact with it. Baruch Hashem,… Read more »
…The Rebbe’s opinion can change according to the information that gets to him. During the time the Rebbe answered people regarding vaccines it was not known how much the pharmaceutical companies who stood to gain enormous profits from the administering of vaccines, had influence on the FDA and the medical establishment.