Q&A: 35,000 Hospital Visits Later, a Chicago Volunteer’s Continued Dedication

Chicago resident Marcy Goldberg has been directing a chapter of Lubavitch Chabad of Illinois’ hospital visitation program near her home for 26 years now. During the course of a detailed conversation, a great deal about the inspiration of this energetic and deeply compassionate woman came to life.

Q: How did you first get involved in hospital visitation?

A: In 1990, I had a life-changing conversation with the late Rabbi Daniel Moscowitz, whom I had known for many years and who had been a profoundly positive influence on me. I said that I knew Chabad has a visitation program on erev Shabbat in some suburban and Chicago hospitals, and that I’d like to visit patients at Northwestern Memorial Hospital, near my home in downtown Chicago.

With a twinkle in his eye, he told me “absolutely,” and, by the way, since that hospital did not have a program yet, that I should contact the hospital’s chaplain, set one up, raise the funds and find the volunteers! He also told me where to order challah rolls and individual grape-juice bottles.

I thought I was signing up to make deliveries every Friday or maybe pack gift bags. Instead, I found myself raising money, recruiting volunteers, speaking to chaplains and running the whole program. That’s how Rabbi Moscowitz was. He had this ability to get you to do more than you knew you were capable of.

Goldberg credits the late Rabbi Daniel Moscowitz as being "a profoundly positive influence on me."

I made an announcement in my synagogue asking for volunteers. Some wonderful people came forward; some of whom are still involved to this very day. Mike Cherry—whom I knew from a couples’ class with Rabbi Moscowitz that I hosted and he attended—wrote a check to cover the first few months’ supplies. We prepared pretty bags to hold the challah and juice, and added a ‘Get Well’ card. A young man named Jeff Aeder volunteered to make some deliveries and brought his friend, Menahem Deitcher, to make deliveries, too, and ended up doing much more than that. I remember the time a mental hospital called and asked if we could send someone to conduct a Passover seder for their patients. Jeff had a date for that seder night, so he took her with him to conduct a seder in a mental hospital. Today, married with teens, he is still an integral part of funding the program—not only by writing a check, but also by getting others to do that mitzvah as well.

Many of the other volunteers have also been a blessing in my life. How can I not be inspired by Lena Mendelsohn, then in her 80s, who used to come every week with her walker to pack bags? Of course, Rabbi Moscowitz, and now his son, Rabbi Meir Moscowitz, have been supportive in a number of ways throughout the decades.

Q: What’s it like visiting people, some of whom are very ill, before Shabbat? What kind of response do you receive?

A: Every visit is different. One of the very first weeks, I remember walking into a room and seeing a woman who was very close to death. I introduced myself and told her I was with Lubavitch Chabad, wishing her a ‘Shabbat Shalom.’ She just threw her arms around me. When you are in a hospital, there are so many people coming into the room for so many reasons—tests, shots, medicines and other things—but we are just coming to visit them. You connect on a very primal human level.

A hospital visit by Lubavitch Chabad volunteers back in the 1980s in Highland Park, on the North Shore of the Chicago metropolitan area.

Another time, I came into a room in the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago and saw a man wearing akipah. I soon realized that he was a stroke victim, and was probably not able to speak or eat the food I brought. I spoke to him for a few minutes and was out the door. When I was down the hall, I heard him say “thank you.” It took him that long to get the words out. Of course, I went back to his room to tell him, “You’re welcome.”

There was another woman whom I would see every week. One week, she responded in kind to my “Shabbat Shalom.” I was then told that it was the first thing she had said in months. You just never know …

People often relish the Jewish connection and discuss whatever Jewish ideas associations they may have with me. I once visited a woman who was in the hospital with her husband. We chatted, and she told me how much she just wished she could have some poached salmon. I told her I had just made some at home, and that she had nothing to worry about since Rabbi Moscowitz had koshered my kitchen. Sure enough, I brought her some fresh poached salmon. She was just thrilled.

For the most part, it’s simply a matter of telling people that we are there, we recognize them and what they are going through, and that we care about them as a part of the extended Jewish family.

The truth is that I myself did not realize how special it was until my father was ill in Detroit and Rabbi Moscowitz arranged for Rabbi Herschel Finman, a colleague from Chabad in Michigan, to visit me there. It was such a nice feeling, and Rabbi Finman became a person close to our family, officiating at funerals and simchas [happy occasions].

Q: Looking back, how many visits do you think you and your volunteers have made?

Jessica Schwartz, who volunteers as part of Goldberg’s group, gives challah to a hospital patient.

A: It’s really impossible to know, but we estimate that we’ve made as many as 35,000 visits. Every week is different, but we may average two dozen bags a week. Also, we’ve gone to a number of different hospitals and facilities through the years. For example, right now, the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago asks us to supply them with packages but arranges for their own volunteers to do the visiting. Through the years, our volunteers have visited other hospitals weekly, such as Mitchell Hospital at the University of Chicago and at Columbus Hospital.

Q: Our conversation began with you offering to Rabbi Moscowitz to help with hospital visits. How did you meet him, and what got you interested in this kind of volunteering?

A: I grew up in Detroit in a home that I’d describe as Reform. I went to Sunday school through confirmation, but I cannot say it was very inspiring.

In 1963, when it came time for college, my parents drove me to Evanston, north of Chicago, where I was to attend Northwestern University. It was the morning before Rosh Hashanah, and I promised my mother that I’d attend services that evening. Well, I went to Hillel, and there was nowhere to sit, no spare books; I could not even get into the room where services were being held, and I was hot and uncomfortable in my holiday clothing. I closed my eyes and told G‑d, “I believe in You, but I will no longer attend synagogue services that I find meaningless.” I walked out thinking I would never attend synagogue again.

But then, you know the Yiddish saying: “Man plans and G‑d laughs.”

I got married in 1968 and before I knew it, we needed a place to send our daughter, Rachel, for preschool. I was—and still am—in the life-insurance business, where I met a fine couple, Cantor William and Judy Silber, who have been involved with the Chabad community for a long time. Judy suggested that I send her to a traditional Jewish preschool. I told her, “But I don’t light candles or do anything like that.” She told me it was no problem, and that I should send her anyway; Rachel would learn about the holidays, a few songs, maybe even a little Hebrew.

Schwartz with another patient. The note on the challah bag says: “A get well wish from Chabad.”

Whenever my daughter learned about a new mitzvah or holiday at school, I learned as well. I remember thinking, “I hated Hebrew school, and now my daughter is loving her Jewish education.” We kept her in all the way through high school.

At the same time, my husband and I were becoming more and more involved in Jewish leadership and developed a relationship with a very young rabbi named Daniel Moscowitz, who actually led a couples’ group in our home. At one point, I asked myself: “How can I be a leader of the Jewish community and yet every Jew cannot eat in my home?” It was then that we decided to kasher our home; it was also a way to have our child remember, at least three times a day, that she was Jewish. With intermarriage rates at 58 percent, we realized how important it was, while Rachel lived at home with us, to emphasize a Jewish lifestyle.

Rabbi Moscowitz came over with a group of guys to kosher the kitchen. Then, on the way out, almost as an afterthought, he said: “You know, in order to keep your kitchen kosher, you need to make sure not to cook in these pots and pans on Shabbat or holidays.” That was that. We’ve kept kosher and Shabbat ever since. And our 10-year-old daughter loved it; she invited friends to sleep over every Shabbat and commented: “It’s like a having a birthday party once a week—something special to celebrate!”

In fact, Shabbat was a major influence in my life in the most unexpected way.

Around 13 years ago, I began tutoring a first-grader named Jeremiah from the crime-ridden Cabrini-Green housing project. At the end of the year, he was going to flunk because he was absent so much. I spoke to school administrators and told them I would tutor him in the summer and help him get up to grade level so that they could pass him.

Goldberg with Sha’La, whom she's been caring for and wants to see graduate from medical school.

Progress was slow, and I asked his mother if Jeremiah could stay over at my house on Friday nights since I couldn’t drive to the project where he lived to tutor him on Shabbat. Since age 6, Jeremiah has spent every Shabbat of his life at my dinner table. I became very involved in his life and in the lives of his three siblings. At one point, they moved to the South Side of Chicago. I did my research and found that one public school there was testing in the 43rd percentile in reading and math in Illinois achievement tests, and the other school’s students were testing in the 17th percentile. Of course, their address was closer to the school in the 17th percentile. I drove over to South Shore on a Friday afternoon, just hours before Shabbat, to try to get the kids into the better school. I ended up renting a one-bedroom apartment in the district with the better school—and it worked. By Monday morning, I had the lease papers, and the kids were enrolled.

When Jeremiah was 12, he and two of his siblings moved into my house for seven years. At that time, his father was in prison and his mother, who was morbidly obese, was in bed a lot of the time.

One day when I was visiting my daughter—who’s been living in Israel with her husband and children for the past seven years—I received a call from the siblings to tell me that Jeremiah’s 13-year-old brother was a father. The mother was 15. Their little girl, named Sha’La, began coming for Shabbat with her dad. When she was around 3, I noticed that whenever I read to her, her attention span disappeared, and I sensed that it was because she spent many hours watching videos while her grandmother slept. The last three years she has been living with me, doing beautifully in school and has made lots of friends. I say that having a little girl at home at my age is keeping me young and making me old all at once!

Jeremiah and his siblings all got their education and have steady jobs—something that no one would have predicted years ago.

I thought I would be living in Israel by now, but I feel I need to stay here until Sha’La, who’s 6, at least finishes medical school. G‑d works in mysterious ways.

Marcy Goldberg in a family photo with her daughter, Rachel, center right, her son-in-law Jonathan Polin and grandchildren Hersh, 14; Leebie, 12; and Orly, 9. In front is 6-year-old Sha’La, who lives with Goldberg.