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Short Summary
Main recommendation: Chaplains and anyone in a helping role should turn toward others' needs and act on them even when it is inconvenient, as Rabbi Paysach Krohn argues this quality (not intellect) earned Moses leadership and is what sustains the world. The speech is a tribute to the NYS Jewish Chaplaincy graduates, illustrated with concrete hospital and emergency situations where chaplains intervened.
Key Points
- Rabbi Krohn cites Rabbi Aaron Kotler's teaching that the world exists through people who feel responsibility for the public, and says the graduates embody that.
- He reads the phrase "Ki yar Hashem" in the burning bush story as showing Moses turned to look at others' problems, which is why he was chosen as leader.
- Examples given: a chaplain paid for a kosher meal for a patient, and another obtained tefillin so a patient could pray during his healing.
- A chaplain reportedly helped a driver who was wrongly charged with hit-and-run (after a drunk pedestrian walked into his car and he drove off) avoid serious trouble with law enforcement.
- A chaplain reportedly got a patient moved from a crowded Saturday-night emergency room curtain area into a room within about half an hour.
- A chaplain reportedly restored a child to his mother within twenty-five minutes after staff, unaware of the situation, held the child during a divorce-related mandated-reporter concern.
Details Worth Noting
- Concrete instructions: The speaker gives no step-by-step procedure for chaplaincy work. Actionable guidance he offers is: respond to calls at any hour without hesitation (he says "if you get a call at two o'clock in the morning, or during the Pesach seder, don't hesitate, go"); help anyone who calls regardless of religion ("whether it's a Hindu or a Catholic person"); and avoid being confrontational with staff, so you reach people rather than pushing them away.
- Rabbi Freifeld's "four D's," which the speaker credits to the Chazon Ish, are desire, dedication, drive, and determination, presented as the qualities needed to accomplish any goal.
- The speaker adds that a goal is "a dream with a deadline," and that "things come to those who wait, but only the things left over by those who hustle."
- Esther Jungreis's late husband, Rabbi Shlomo Jungreis, wrote the index-card line, "A long life is not good enough, but a good life is long enough," which she found after his death and the speaker quotes as guidance for living well.
- The speaker says the Divine name Yud-Hei-Vav-Hei is a palindrome, which he links to the principle that giving to others returns to the giver.
- The closing story describes a family whose generosity in covering an EMT friend's trip led that friend to save a toddler's life in a pool.
Bottom Line Being a chaplain, in this speech, is less about credentials than about the habit of noticing other people's distress and acting on it promptly and generously, which the speaker frames as both a communal responsibility and a source of personal reward.
