Bearing the Burden with Your Friend 

The year was 1972. My mother a”h was in the final stage of a terminal illness. This was well before the term “end-of-life issues” had entered our lexicon. Nevertheless, my older brother, Rabbi Yosef Wikler, and I had an end-of-life sh’eilah regarding our mother’s care. But whom should we ask?

Yosef suggested we consult the Bostoner Rebbe of Boston, Rav Levi Yitzchok Horowitz ztz”l, because of his expertise in medical matters. As I had a closer kesher with the Rebbe, my brother asked me to make the call, which I did.

“I’m more than willing to pasken this sh’eilah for you,” the Rebbe told me over the phone. “But for such a sh’eilah, you’d feel better about it, when you look back years later, if you’d consulted the gadol hador, Reb Moshe. Of course, if you have any trouble getting through to him, be sure to call me back, and I will pasken for you.”

When I reported to Yosef what the Rebbe advised, he told me he knew of a way we could bypass all of Rav Moshe Feinstein’s gatekeepers and get through to the gadol directly. At that time, Reb Moshe used to spend one morning a week learning on the second floor above the beis medrash of the Yeshiva of Staten Island. It gave the bochurim and kollel yungerleit major chizuk to know that the gadol hador was learning upstairs — which is why he made the weekly trip from the Lower East Side.