Moshe Feldman, Crown Heights physician who cared for the Lubavitcher Rebbe, has died at 80

(New York Jewish week via JTA) — Moshe Feldman, a beloved doctor in Crown Heights who for years tended to Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the leader of the Lubavitch Hasidic movement, has died at 80.

Feldman was a pediatric specialist who practiced medicine for nearly 50 years in the Bronx and later in Crown Heights. He was still seeing patients at nearly 81, 27 years after his most famous patient died.

Commenting on an obituary posted by COLLive, a local Crown Heights news site, Feldman’s patients remembered him as an “old school doctor” who always took the time to listen to his patients.

“He was a kind sensitive person. He was genuine and caring. He treated his patients as if they were his own children,” one commenter wrote. Another wrote that she had been scheduled to see Feldman this week before his office informed her that he was unable to see patients.

When Schneerson had a heart attack on the Jewish holiday of Shemini Atzeret in 1977, Feldman was one of about a dozen doctors in the room. In a video published by Chabad.org, Feldman spoke about tending to Schneerson in his office that day.

“The rebbe looked at me and said ‘How are things going?’ So I thought to myself, he knows more about his cardiac status, his physical status, than I probably do, so somehow the idea came into my mind to tell him ‘I still see the Hasidim dancing and singing, I still see people dancing and singing in the streets.’ The rebbe smiled and shook his head yes,” Feldman said.

Feldman lost a son, Yitzchak Feldman, at the age of 54 in December 2020, followed by his wife, Miriam, just three weeks later at the age of 78. Yitzchak Feldman’s obituary notes that people in his household had been exposed to the virus.

Moshe Feldman’s obituary does not include a cause of death. It does say that his funeral procession would pass by 770 Eastern Parkway, the center of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement in Crown Heights.