When so many others threw up their hands in despair,Rabbi Yehudah Kazsirer's team stepped forward— because for them, “impossible” doesn’t exist
It was the summer of 2004, and Yehudah Kazsirer, a Beth Medrash Govoha kollel yungerman who’d just begun volunteering with Lakewood’s Bikur Cholim Lev Rochel, was sitting in his office in the little house on Prospect Street where the organization was headquartered, when a call came in from Hatzolah: Their ambulance was three blocks away, with a 72-year-old woman in cardiac arrest. Could he run over to Monmouth Medical Center across the street to let the staff know they were coming in?
He ran across the street and let a nurse know that Hatzolah was a few minutes away, whereupon she hit a button setting off a code blue alert that shook the whole building and sent doctors and nurses springing into action. They were all assembled in the emergency room, awaiting the patient, but… where was the patient? Finally, the anesthesiologist asked, “Who called the code?”
The nurse said, “The rabbi did.”
“Since when does a rabbi call code?” the doctor retorted.
That’s when the nurse said something Rabbi Kazsirer has never forgotten: “I don’t know if the rabbi’s supposed to or not, but if he does, you’d better be here when the patient shows up.”
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