Putting “Hospitality” in “Hospital”: Rabbis Dovid, Shloime & Rebbetzin Chanie, Chana Greene

00:00 Speaker 1 I was in a dark place. It was very dark, and, uh, it got darker in time. But every time I saw him, he made me feel a lot better.

00:13 Speaker 2 That's Oz Eliezer. Six years ago, Oz was waiting for a liver transplant at Mayo Clinic. The he to which he refers is Rabbi Dovid Greene, the Rebbe's emissary at Chabad of Southern Minnesota.

00:27 Speaker 1 He was, uh, a point of light in great darkness.

00:33 Speaker 2 Oz had been diagnosed with a chronic liver disease that threatened his life and caused constant excruciating pain. While he awaited a donor, Rabbi Dovid and his wife Chani, their children, and even some of their grandchildren cared for him. But by the end of 2017, Oz Eliezer's health took a rapid turn for the worse.

00:56 Speaker 1 I'm very ill. I don't look good. I'm skinny. I'm flesh and bones. I was feeling pain all the time. I wasn't able to move, and the doctor said I will be dead in a couple of days.

01:10 Speaker 2 Oz says that he'd known a little about Chabad before his hospitalization in a city halfway around the world from his home and his family, but he hadn't known that the Lubavitcher Rebbe's directive for Chabad emissaries to care for every Jew in every place would help bolster his will to live just long enough to save his life. I'm Gary Wolk and this is Lamplighters, stories from Chabad emissaries on the Jewish frontier. Life as a Chabad emissary is often joyous, but it can be unpredictable and even dangerous. Chabad has become a ubiquitous presence in every corner of the world, but behind every Chabad house are emissaries, regular people striving to transcend their circumstances and a community that supports and relies on them. These are their stories. Here's a great opportunity for you. You rely on the Lamplighters podcast to bring you inspiring stories of Chabad emissaries all over the world. Now you can help keep our series going strong. To dedicate an episode, please email us at podcast@lubavitch.com to explore dedication opportunities. That's podcast@lubavitch.com. To subscribe digitally to Lubavitch International Magazine or to receive it at your doorstep, please visit lubavitch.com/subscribe. Velvel Greene was a scientist and academic who worked in public health, bacteriology, and astrobiology research with NASA. But he was perhaps best known for his long and fascinating friendship with the Lubavitcher Rebbe, which was fostered by Minnesota head Shliach, Rabbi Moshe Feller, and for becoming a baal teshuva. In 1977, Greene sent his 15-year-old son, Dovid, off to yeshiva in Montreal, but he wasn't

03:25 Speaker 2 thinking about shlichus.

03:27 Speaker 3 No, no. It was about learning and about the insight of Hasidism, seeing the world from God's perspective.

03:37 Speaker 2 It wasn't until he earned his rabbinic coordination in 1984 that Dovid Greene began to consider Jewish outreach.

03:45 Speaker 3 And then couple years later was introduced to this, uh, fine young lady.

03:50 Speaker 2 Mm-hmm. The fine young lady Greene refers to is his wife, Chani. She grew up and attended seminary in Crown Heights, and hails from a family known far and wide for its kosher fish store. So Chani Greene, me askin', did you spend time in the fish market when you lived in Crown Heights?

04:12 Speaker 4 Funny you're asking. Yeah, I act- we actually did help out my father and my mother out there years ago.

04:17 Speaker 2 Dovid and Chani Greene were married in 1986 and lived and worked in New York for a couple years. So one can assume that since Dovid was not considering shlichus, that she was, right?

04:31 Speaker 4 Honestly, no, actually. I wasn't the one to think about going out, far out to who knows where. I was happy f- being home and near my family, and I was pretty much Crown Heights girl, yeah.

04:42 Speaker 2 But then the Greenes were recruited by Rabbi Moshe Feller. They had considered offers from around the world, including Australia, but the pull of Dovid's home state and his relationship with the Fellers was too strong.

04:56 Speaker 4 Rabbi and Rebbetzin Feller asked us, right?

04:59 Speaker 3 Yeah.

05:00 Speaker 4 And came to talk to us about it, and it sounded good, so we wrote into the Rebbe and we got an answer.

05:06 Speaker 2 The Rebbe approved the Greenes' move to Rochester, a southern Minnesota city with a then population of just under 100,000. Part of their mandate was to support all of the Jews of southern Minnesota. So in the summer of 1988, they purchased a house in the heart of downtown Rochester, equidistant to Mayo's two main campuses. It would serve as the Greenes' home, office, and hospitality center. But there was another part of their mandate.

05:39 Speaker 3 Maintain Chabad house that caters to the needs of 30,000 Jews who annually visit Rochester.

05:44 Speaker 2 Those 30,000 come for medical treatment at a branch of the world-renowned Mayo Clinic. Most are outpatients, but some are inpatients with serious illnesses that require long stays in Rochester. The Greens were immediately called upon to help

06:06 Speaker 3 The first day

06:07 Speaker 4 We would get calls. Even before we kashered our oven, we actually had a call and kind of just kashered the stove tops. I remember making some food that was easy to make on top, schnitzel, kugel, whatever it was, gefilte fish. There was no kosher food here in Rochester, so we would stock up our freezers with, uh, you know, the raw goods right away at the beginning, actually.

06:30 Speaker 3 And as time goes on, you learn more about where do you get materials to be able to package it, and what are people looking for? What are the easier things to, to give to people? The challenge was, how do you let people know that you're here?

06:42 Speaker 2 Mayo Clinic receives thousands of international visitors each year, including from Israel and from Jewish communities around the world. So the Greens made a sign and displayed it at the airport in Rochester.

06:55 Speaker 3 It said, "Bruchim habaim" in Hebrew, and we would have our phone number, the Chabad House phone number, so people would call.

07:02 Speaker 2 More and more people called, so the Greens began renovating their Chabad House to provide maximum hospitality for Jewish visitors. They created a library and a lounge with couches, a fully-stocked fridge, and a coffee station.

07:18 Speaker 4 It was kind of, you know, something for them to come in to feel secure, feel comforted.

07:23 Speaker 2 But just as often, the Greens would go to them.

07:27 Speaker 4 We would visit them in the hospitals.

07:28 Speaker 3 When a person would call, we'd go and visit. People heard about us, and once they meet us, then they would introduce us to other people.

07:34 Speaker 4 And we started having them over for Shabbat-

07:36 Speaker 3 And we were invited

07:36 Speaker 4 ... for Shabbat dinners, and just getting together. It was word of mouth. People knew us. We went to visit, and then people would call, and so forth.

07:44 Speaker 2 The Greens also began running Shabbat and Yom Tov services that first year. Local Jews attended, but so did some of the visiting patients and the family members who were with them.

07:56 Speaker 3 There was one Jewish fellow from New Jersey. His son was in the hospital. He came on Yom Kippur to daven, so it was just him and me-

08:07 Speaker 4 And his wife came up

08:07 Speaker 3 ... and his wife came. Um-

08:09 Speaker 4 And me and-

08:09 Speaker 3 I didn't look up on the other side of the

08:10 Speaker 4 It was the four of us

08:11 Speaker 3 ... it was just the four, and the guy opened up a machzor, and all he did was cry. So it was very powerful.

08:18 Speaker 2 The Greens were beginning to see firsthand what their support and services meant to patients and their family members. One day in 1989, Rabbi Green was visiting an Israeli patient at Mayo Clinic. Someone must have overheard him conversing in Hebrew, so the head of the Language and Cultural Services Department asked him to interpret for another patient, which he gladly did. Afterward...

08:47 Speaker 3 She said, "Okay, I want you to take your Social Security card, go to this office, and register to be paid for this." I said, "No." I was very altruistic. "No, what do you mean? I want to volunteer my time." But she says, "No, no, no, Rabbi. I want to be able to call you at any time that I want."

09:08 Speaker 4 Mm-hmm.

09:08 Speaker 3 "So I want you to be on the payroll, 'cause then I'm not asking you a favor."

09:12 Speaker 2 The doctors also took notice that Rabbi Green was a Hebrew speaker and interpreter. He had gained basic understanding of the language when he was in Israel studying in yeshiva. That came in very handy at Mayo.

09:26 Speaker 3 And I got to know the doctors because of this, even the non-Jewish doctors.

09:30 Speaker 2 Green interpreted, and he offered words of Torah and comfort to hundreds of patients. Chanie would also visit patients and act as a sort of an unofficial dietician/surrogate Jewish mother.

09:43 Speaker 3 "Okay, who's here? What can they eat?" My wife is an expert in food restrictions, dietary restrictions. No salt in our soup until you have to add it yourself, you know?

09:53 Speaker 2 The Greens' networking was working. Rabbi Green earned certification as a patient advocate and health crisis counselor. Now the patients and their family members find the Greens as often as the Greens find them. Sometimes their work was not exactly pleasant. But the Greens always did their utmost to help.

10:16 Speaker 4 I mean, Rosh Hashana one year, someone actually came in-

10:19 Speaker 3 Knock on the door

10:19 Speaker 4 ... knock on the door. Their father passed away.

10:21 Speaker 2 Because of the holiday, there was nobody to guard the body before burial, as required by Jewish law.

10:28 Speaker 4 A few of us arranged that we had people to do shmirah the whole time, for two days. You know, there was a couple that came, and he went in for a heart surgery, and he ended up, ended up passing away-

10:38 Speaker 3 Yeah

10:38 Speaker 4 ... here at Mayo, and we were with the kids. We were going to go to a park or something. We ran home, dropped the kids off by a friend that lived here, and we went to console a wife who didn't think this was going to happen. To be there for them, that was definitely hard, but we, you know, y- we try our best.

10:54 Speaker 2 The Greens say they don't really know how many Jewish patients they've fed, housed, talked with, interpreted for, offered words of Torah to, cried with, or cried over for the past 36 years, but it must be in the tens of thousands. And the story is ongoing, not only because of the Greens' energy and dedication, but because they got help from almost the very beginning from those closest to them.

11:22 Speaker 4 Our kids were little. We would take them to the hospital to visit people.

11:26 Speaker 2 The Greens are blessed with five children. As they began to grow, they also became emissaries, focusing their care and love on visiting families.

11:36 Speaker 4 Some of them had children, so we would play together, make some play dates. When our kids got a little older, we had a little playgroup called Kindervelt twice a week, just actually having our kids s- m- meeting other Jewish kids. That's how we kind of did our, if you want to say, outreach, getting to know people, you know, inviting them for Shabbos, visiting patients.

11:56 Speaker 2 And then those children grew some more. One of them returned to Rochester seven years ago.

12:03 Speaker 3 My name is Shloime Green.

12:05 Speaker 2 Shloime remembers growing up as the son of Chabad emissaries.

12:09 Speaker 3 I lived in the home

12:11 Speaker 5 That the Chabad House was founded in. Growing up with my family in the Chabad House, the energy that my parents gave off to us always was, no matter what time of day it is, you always have an opportunity to help another Jew.

12:24 Speaker 2 Remember, the Greenes located permanently in Rochester not only to provide support services for Mayo patients, but also to support local Jews, running Shabbos and holiday services, teaching Torah, and hosting Shabbos and holiday meals.

12:40 Speaker 5 I always remember it quite fondly. The atmosphere was quite loving.

12:45 Speaker 2 Like his parents, Shloime at one time didn't think he wanted to go out on shlichus. After he received rabbinic ordination in Israel, the right person came along.

12:55 Speaker 6 So my name is Chana Greene. I grew up in Seattle, Washington. My parents are shluchim, the Kornfelds, and I grew up in a shlichus environment, and that was always something that I had wanted to do.

13:08 Speaker 2 Chana studied in Seattle, Tzfat, Israel, and Crown Heights.

13:13 Speaker 6 So I met my husband in Brooklyn, Crown Heights, and we met in 2014, and we dated for a few months, got married in summer 2014.

13:27 Speaker 2 For three years, Chana and Shloime worked in Lebanon, New Jersey at her brother's Chabad house, teaching Hebrew school, summer camp, and running youth and holiday programming.

13:38 Speaker 5 And my wife and I spoke about it, and I started having these strong feelings that if I take everything that I learnt in New Jersey and in Hebron from all these amazing shluchim and really hone it and make it my own in a place that is in need of that sort of Jewish vibrancy, that we could really make a change.

13:58 Speaker 2 Shloime didn't yet know where that would be, but one day he talked with his parents, who were looking for help starting a new preschool. He and Chana moved to Rochester in 2017.

14:11 Speaker 6 But then on moving here, I think we really realized that the entire city is intertwined. It's intertwined. That's the beauty. The local and visiting community is one. It's one community. It's not, "Oh, okay, this is the part of our shlichus that's hospital-centered, and then when I go to my preschool and make curriculums, that's community-centered." It's really all intertwined.

14:39 Speaker 2 Chana Greene shares the recent example of a women's baking event.

14:44 Speaker 6 And I was looking around, you know, at 18 women. We had people who have lived in Rochester for 35 years. We had a group of medical students. We had research students.

14:54 Speaker 2 And there were patients.

14:55 Speaker 6 And it wasn't like, "Oh, this section is the people who are here for Mayo, and this section are the people that live in Rochester." It's one community. That's really, really, really how I view our shlichus. I have people over for Friday night. I visit people in the hospital. So to be able to hear from people and to be able to connect them to a community and be able to say, "Hey, this is something that's really challenging for you. What are things we could do as a community to make things easier, more welcoming, give you that sense of community?" Those are the things that we're doing.

15:28 Speaker 2 Because of that, the younger Greenes soon found themselves very much involved in patient support, in addition to their roles as educators.

15:38 Speaker 5 Patient advocacy and medical advocacy and networking within the medical community to assist with patients coming to town.

15:45 Speaker 2 About a year ago, Shloime Greene met an Israeli patient who needed open-heart surgery. Greene uses a pseudonym to protect the patient's privacy.

15:55 Speaker 5 So right away, I'm chatting with Pinchas. Let's say he's, he's not necessarily requesting specifically kosher food items or observance, uh, requests, but certainly a community, someone to be with. He's coming with his two kids. They're going to be there for a month.

16:12 Speaker 2 The Greenes arranged for the man's children to attend the preschool.

16:16 Speaker 5 So he was very excited to hear that, right? The kids only speak Hebrew.

16:20 Speaker 2 It was around Hanukkah. Chabad of Southern Minnesota held a community menorah lighting that drew 300 people, including government officials, Mayo executives, doctors, members of the local community, and patients, including the Israeli patient.

16:36 Speaker 5 And it was prior to his open-heart surgery where he was able, before en- encountering a, a huge surgery, to be plugged in immediately with the beautiful Jewish community.

16:45 Speaker 2 The man had open-heart surgery to stop blood leakage, but doctors needed to take three separate echocardiograms to determine if he'd need yet another operation.

16:56 Speaker 5 I mean, you can imagine the toll that would take on a family. He came to the Chabad House, and for, for the entire period that he was there, I kept, we kept on, he kept on asking me, you know, he wants to put on tefillin, and it just didn't work out here and there, running back and forth, back and forth. Finally, he comes to the Chabad House to put on tefillin, and that evening he comes in to announce to everybody that he had his last echo, and the doctor said that everything was fine. I haven't heard from him since. Let's put it that way, in a positive way.

17:24 Speaker 2 There are many stories of how the Greenes accommodated visiting patients by integrating their resources.

17:31 Speaker 6 There was actually a little girl who had a very rare medical condition, a little adorable three-year-old girl who was going through testing at Mayo Clinic, and it was back-to-back appointments, and her parents were quite overwhelmed. And her mother said maybe she could just play at preschool just while they go outside for one hour a day. And the mother was like, "You have no idea what a 45-minute break in a day of appointments for a little girl who's going through something that no child should ever have to go through," and that she was able to come, take a break, be welcomed into a warm environment, do circle time with other children, daven with other children. It was a really, really beautiful experience. She only came two or three times, but in a week of back-to-back appointments where a child is in a medical setting for six, seven hours a day, that was a really beautiful thing. So you kind of see how even a seemingly local endeavor or community-focused endeavor is really so connected with everything that's going on here.

18:35 Speaker 2 And sometimes the Greens support patients from far, far away. Oz Eliezer lives in Herzliya, Israel with his wife and three children. In 2016, he began to experience extreme abdominal pain.

18:52 Speaker 1 It was relentless. It was 24 hours, seven days a week of constant pain.

18:59 Speaker 2 But doctors in Israel failed to offer a diagnosis. After one emergency room visit, Oz was told simply to take a painkiller. That didn't help, but he didn't give up.

19:13 Speaker 1 I went through, uh, hundreds of tests here in Israel, and they figured out that I have some sort of obstruction in my ducts in my liver, but they weren't able to figure out if it's cancerous or not. But it wasn't looking good.

19:30 Speaker 2 After six months of unrelenting pain, uncertainty, and fear, doctors threw up their hands.

19:38 Speaker 1 They recommend that I go to Mayo Clinic to get it checked out, and that I come to Rochester for two weeks to stay and go to a series of tests.

19:51 Speaker 2 Later that year, Oz arrived in Minnesota with his wife, Tamar. Oz was still in pain and uncertain about navigating Mayo's huge campus. A staffer asked him...

20:02 Speaker 1 Do I need a translator? I wasn't sure my English was adequate regarding medical stuff. So I said, "Yes, I'll need a translator." This is how I met Rabbi Green, because he was the translator, and through that we developed a very deep relation. I was in a dark place, and it got darker in time, but every time I saw him, he made me feel a lot better. He was a point of light in great darkness.

20:37 Speaker 2 Oz went through a two-week intensive battery of tests. Mayo doctors diagnosed him with a serious illness, primary sclerosing cholangitis, a chronic liver disease that causes inflammation and scarring of the bile ducts. Doctors placed a liver stent to increase bile flow, and that helped the pain. He was told he'd need a liver transplant, and would need to return to Rochester every two months, staying two weeks for each new stent implant. By October of 2017, Oz was in desperate need of a transplant. He arrived in Rochester to wait for a donor. He got a hotel room for an indefinite stay. Tamar would visit from Israel with the kids when she could, and sometimes Oz's sisters were there. But mostly, he was alone in his hotel room.

21:33 Speaker 1 And every Yom Shishi, every Friday, Shlomo and his son came by and gave me challah and candles for the Shabbat. And they were extremely kind. They took care of me. I was feeling not alone.

21:53 Speaker 2 But in just two months, Oz Eliezer's health rapidly deteriorated.

21:58 Speaker 1 I don't look good. I'm skinny. I'm flesh and bones.

22:03 Speaker 2 But as always, the Greens were there for him.

22:06 Speaker 1 It was Hanukkah, and things were very bad for me, and I remember craving a donut for, uh, Hanukkah.

22:16 Speaker 2 Sufganiyah.

22:17 Speaker 1 Sufganiyah, yeah. And, uh, I get a knock on the door, and Chanie brought me a package with sufganiyah and candles for Hanukkah.

22:28 Speaker 2 Oz waited out the harsh Minnesota winter. On Purim, Bochurim visited Oz in his hotel room to read Megillah for him. Chana Green remembers their report.

22:40 Speaker 6 And they were like, "Wow, he really has so much belief. He believes that he is going to get the transplant and be able to go back to his family, and everything is going to be good." And it was amazing, 'cause when people are in that kind of waiting game, to leave your family and sit through Rochester winters, it's really, really difficult.

23:03 Speaker 2 But underlying Oz's optimism was a grim reality.

23:07 Speaker 1 I was feeling pain all the time. I was a dark place with my mental and physical health. I was on deathbed. The doctor said if I'll go to the transplant, everything will be okay, so fine. If not, I will be dead in a couple of days.

23:27 Speaker 2 Finally, on February 10th, 2018, Oz received word that there was a donor. He learned that at 6:00 PM. Transplant surgery began at 8:00. It was a success.

23:46 Speaker 1 I had two days of, uh, extreme pain, but I was hungry again. In the hospital, I gained 10 kilos. It took about a week, and it was quite fast. It was like a, a new life.

24:05 Speaker 6 And it was such an amazing feeling and such amazing news. Everybody in the community was like, "Oh my gosh, wow." And it's amazing to see them come out on the other side. It's really one of the most amazing things in the world.

24:20 Speaker 2 About a month after the transplant, Oz returned to Israel to be with his family. He runs his own tech business there. For four years, Oz returned to Rochester for annual checkups. He no longer needs to.

24:35 Speaker 1 They told me, "Everything is fine. Go live your life." Life is great now. I'm quite healthy. I'm with my family. It's a miracle. You value life after a, a thing like that. I wasn't supposed to come back.

24:53 Speaker 2 Oz does check in with the Greens from time to time. They've actually gone to visit him in Israel. Oz, had you known anything about Chabad and its mission before your medical ordeal?

25:05 Speaker 1 I knew about Chabad, but generally. I didn't know anything specific. Usually, when we travel, there's of Chabad houses, so it's always nice to know there's Jewish presence in the town or the country you visit, but nothing else.

25:27 Speaker 2 How about now?

25:28 Speaker 1 I learned that it's a whole world. It's a way of life. It's, uh, something else, a dedication and shlichut people take upon themselves to be for others that I wasn't aware of before.

25:49 Speaker 2 There are more and more travelers to Rochester who are aware now. In their 36 years in Rochester, Dovid and Chanie Green, with major help from their children, Shloime and Chana, along with administrator Tatiana Woodbeck and kitchen manager Shannon Walters, have created a comprehensive care system for Jewish patients, lodging through what they call Musia Hospitality after the rebbetzin. And there's patient advocacy, translation, kosher food through pre-order and delivery, also a grab-and-go kitchen.

26:25 Speaker 7 The grab-and-go actually is amazing. I'll meet someone who's had nothing but a banana and a bag of popcorn for 48 hours and be able to hand her a hot kosher soup and sandwich, chicken and rice, or whatever it is that she wants.

26:40 Speaker 2 Also kosher apartments and Shabbat and Pesach kits. The Greens have developed relationships with Airbnb owners and hotels to expand lodging options. Shloime Green says Chabad of Southern Minnesota supports around 1,500 patients and family members per year. But they want to accommodate even more. Chabad of Southern Minnesota currently operates out of three locations, soon to be four, because the elder Greens are moving out of the house they've lived in for almost four decades to make room for more patients. But there's even more to their dream of caring for every Jew who comes to Rochester.

27:23 Speaker 8 To have a community center that is able to serve as a synagogue and a mikvah and a kosher cafeteria and a lounge that has an educational wing, and at the same time have space for lodging for patients that are coming, kosher lodging.

27:39 Speaker 2 To that end, the Greens are in the midst of a $10 million expansion campaign to integrate all facets of their patient care into one state-of-the-art campus. The Greens say that all this is possible because of the Lubavitcher Rebbe's directive to provide material support and unconditional love to every Jew in every place.

28:02 Speaker 8 Everybody's looking for their miracle to take place when they come to Rochester. Everybody's looking for Hashem. People come to experience healing, and I'm going to help those around me heal. I think that that's all part of the Rebbe's vision.

28:16 Speaker 7 The Rebbe's vision for the world was every mitzvah is a mitzvah on its own, and I tell people this all the time. We are in the mission of mitzvahs, and every single person that does a mitzvah is bringing Mashiach closer, and that's our goal here in Rochester. It's very, very simple.

28:38 Speaker 9 You know, we're here because the Rebbe sent us, and we're here to do whatever we can to bring Mashiach closer.

28:47 Speaker 2 Oz Eliezar says that those mitzvahs performed every day, and often under challenging circumstances, still astonish him.

28:56 Speaker 1 That's something you don't see every day. You don't see people that are there for the other person with no regards to who he is or if he's religious or not. It's something that I wasn't expecting.

29:17 Speaker 2 I'm Gary Wolik. Thanks for listening to Lamplighters, stories from Chabad emissaries on the Jewish frontier. We welcome your questions and comments about what you've just heard on Lamplighters. Please email us at podcast@lubavitch.com. And if you know of a great story involving Chabad emissaries or the people they inspire, please let us know about them. That's podcast at L-U-B-A-V-I-T-C-H.com. To subscribe digitally to Lubavitch International Magazine or to receive it at your doorstep, please visit lubavitch.com/subscribe. This is a Lubavitch International podcast.