Rav Eliezer Zev Hager brings healing when all seems hopeless
Rebbes don’t usually speak on cell phones, certainly not in public. Yet this Rebbe can often be spotted with the tip of the small flip-phone peering out from under the heavy silver atarah of his tallis, on the phone with doctors, technicians, worried family members and patients, taking calls 24/7 — even on Shabbos — on matters of pikuach nefesh.
Jews across the world know that when a loved one is ill, their address for support, advice, and medical connections is Rav Eliezer Zev Hager, known as the Vizhnitz-Yerushalayim Rebbe (although he is based in New York). And for good reason: Leave a message and he’ll call back. For the past three decades, countless Jews have sought his advice, and rabbanim and rebbes have referred complex medical cases to him, the kind that require rare insight and a heavy sense of responsibility.
Even physicians who’ve never previously met a chassidic grand rabbi are left in awe by this man in distinctive chassidic garb who’s willing to forego a night’s sleep as he waits for the test results of someone he doesn’t even know, or who will run to the hospital during Leil Haseder or before breaking his fast on Yom Kippur to check on one of “his” patients. For the Rebbe, every case becomes personal.
Rav Eliezer Zev Hager is the fifth son of the Toldos Mordechai (“Rebbe Mottele”) of Vizhnitz-Monsey ztz”l. In 1989 Rebbe Mottele sent his son Rav Eliezer Zev to head the Vizhnitz kehillah in Jerusalem, and although he returned to his father’s court several years later, he became known as the “Yerushalayim Rebbe” after his father’s petirah in 2018. in his tzava’ah, the Vizhnitz-Monsey Rebbe appointed seven sons and one grandson as rebbes (the Rebbe had eight sons and six daughters, and although one son predeceased him, this son’s son became a rebbe), and they each head various Vizhnitz communities around the world.
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