Healer of Healers

There are some people who are unreplicable and irreplaceable. Rabbi Yosef Roth was one of the very few people I know who was just as unassuming as he was great, who was inwardly content and joyful, and who spoke to many people, including women, from his humble Satmar-stickered phone—helping them transcend all types of adversity.

Since his third yahrtzeit was on Pesach two weeks ago and his teachings are relevant to this time period of Geulah and self-work, I wanted to honor his incredible life and who he was as a person, a man bent over in old age but upright in his perspective on navigating challenges and strong in his unusual clarity.

This amazing man was not only an ultra-religious Yerushalmi chosid, he was a lighthouse for others in his enduring faith and joy throughout poverty, illness and many other difficult limitations. Rabbi Roth was also extremely devoted to helping the frum community in a practical way as a shochet first in Eretz Yisroel and ending his thirty years in the business at a slaughterhouse in Vineland, NJ (home to the Empire chicken industry).

Photo credit: Roth family.

Towards the end of his life, Rabbi Roth suffered very much from lung disease, which his doctors strongly suspected had developed from decades of exposure to chicken feathers and particles.

Relying heavily on oxygen in his seventies, he still managed and made it to all his family simchas, from upsherins to sheva brachos, wheeling along the titanium tank as he danced a small jig in front of chosson and kallah. Truly, nothing stopped his spirit, his love for mitzvos, and his imperative need to help those who felt so powerless in their situations. And nothing successfully put a damper on his inner peace and celebration of life.

I never met another Rav or man like him, and I probably will never meet anyone like him again. He was that special and unforgettable.

Photo credit: Roth family. “Tzaddik on a bench.”

One of the teachings he would impart to me every year on Rosh Chodesh Iyar, for the decade I knew him, was the power of this time period to believe in Gd in helping us out of our pain. אייר, he said, stands for אני ה׳ רופאך and comes on the coattails of Nissan, a month of big miracles and redemption. Iyar, he then shared, is a continuation of healing and transformation, as we head to Sivan and Shavuos—a time of open revelation of the Torah and the Shechinah.

With a blessing ready on his tongue, Rabbi Roth would end most of our phone calls with one of two blessings: either “refuos, yeshuos and nechamos”(healing, salvation, and comfort) or birchas Ha”GeFeN (Hatzlacha, Gezunt, Parnassah and Nachas), everything a Jew needed to have a full life and honestly the most well-rounded blessing you could possibly get from such a holy Yid.

Completely unassuming, Rabbi Roth went about his business every day, in and out of his matchbox apartment, alongside all his matchbox neighbors. Looking like a typical chosid on the noisy streets of Williamsburg, one would never know how generous he was in his time and spirit. His long, white peyos and large overlaying tzitzis never gave away his unique depth and the comfort that fellow chassidim (and others) felt in his presence to open up and share their pains no matter how dark or dismal.

Photo credit: Roth family.

In showing people how to lessen their emotional pain and believe in the good, he shared hopeful stories of self-work and salvation. But never did he give away the secret of how truly special he was—in his purity, in his constant support for others in their private struggles, and in his breadth of knowledge of the revealed and hidden (Gemara, Tanach and Kabbalah).

Ironically, I learned more about Rabbi Roth two years after he had passed away, when I moved to Lakewood and made friends with some Satmar neighbors, who shared stories of how he had uplifted them with his fresh perspectives and how he was so kind and full of the emes back in their days in Brooklyn. My neighbors and I realized we knew the same Rabbi Roth (as there were multiple in Williamsburg) from the one defining technicality about him: he was the only Rabbi Roth who had worked with lead and wax as a Kabbalistic practice in gaining insight into someone’s ordeals and removing his or her Ayin Hora.

Photo credit: Roth family. “A lichtige ponim.”

His absence in my life is still as gapingly strong as it was three years ago. Some people you will always miss and never get over. Rabbi Roth was such an endearing, enigmatic, and down-to-earth personality with an unequivocally lofty soul. He unburdened me with his kind ears and with his genuine, understanding gaze, he believed in me, and most importantly he showed me how to believe in good things to come.

יהי זכרו ברוך.