I always look forward to meeting new patients when I see my list at the start of the day in clinic. That being said I couldn’t help feeling a special anticipation for my 11 a.m. intake who happened to bear the same name as a great Sephardic chacham from the turn of the 20th century.
Was it merely a coincidence? Or was it a great-great grandson of this tremendous tzaddik that I’d have the zechus to help?
Working in Boston over the years and carrying the Harvard name on my business card got me my share of VIP patients. I’d been the psychiatrist for at least a few professional athletes the wife of a Nobel Prize-winning scientist and a startup millionaire or two. The key to treating these individuals was just to do the same thing I’d do with a regular patient: provide them with exceptional evidence-based care and not get stuck on their external personas.
But here I was getting butterflies in my stomach as a young man with the same name as a chacham whose seforim rested on my shelves walked into my office. Admittedly he didn’t look particularly different than any of my other patients. He was a relatively tall avreich in his mid-20s with a short beard and a nervous smile. He introduced himself formally and sat down. When I asked him what brought him in he told me right off the bat that his grandfather’s grandfather was the famous tzaddik whose name he bore.
