Moshe Wallach

Moshe (Moritz) Wallach (; 28 December 1866 – 8 April 1957 A strictly Torah-observant Jew, he was also an activist in the Agudath Israel Orthodox Jewish movement. He was buried in the small cemetery adjacent to the hospital.

Biography Moshe Wallach was one of seven children born to Joseph Wallach (1841–1921), a textile merchant originally from Euskirchen, and Marianne Levy of Münstereifel. His parents moved to Cologne following their marriage in 1863. Joseph Wallach was a founder of Adass Jeshurun, the Cologne Orthodox community, which he later served as president. In 1890 he was chosen by the Frankfurt-based Jewish Conference for the Support of the Jews in Palestine to emigrate to Palestine and carry out its plans to open a modern Jewish hospital in Jerusalem. Wallach first opened a clinic and pharmacy in the Armenian Quarter of the Old City. He also worked in the Bikur Holim Hospital as a women's and children's physician, ophthalmologist, and surgeon specializing in neck surgery. and performed many ritual circumcisions. Upon his return to Jerusalem, he purchased a 10-dunam (2.5 acre) plot of land located outside the Old City Walls on what would become Jaffa Road. with 20 beds, an outpatient clinic, and a pharmacy. With most of the hospital's patients living in the Old City, a 20-minute donkey ride away, During the milk shortages of World War I, Wallach bought several milk cows and built a cowshed and grazing field for them behind the hospital. and became a source of revenue, especially for kosher-certified milk sales for Passover.

Wallach, who for several decades was the only in-house physician at Shaare Zedek, He set aside part of the field adjacent to the hospital to the growing of wheat for shemura matzo and supervised the baking of matzos for Passover. For Sukkot, he erected a by sukkah in the hospital courtyard to accommodate both eating and sleeping.

Schwester Selma

Schwester Selma (second left) presides at a graduation ceremony for the Shaare Zedek nursing school, circa 1954. Wallach opened the hospital with two trained nurses, Schwester (Nurse) Stybel and Schwester Van Gelder.

Schwester Selma was Wallach's right-hand person in the running of the hospital. She accompanied him on house calls and stood in for him as hospital director when he was away. Rabbi Yosef Chaim Sonnenfeld, Rav of Jerusalem, and Rabbi Solomon Eliezer Alfandari, who lived in the Ruchama neighborhood (today Mekor Baruch). He also treated King Abdullah I of Jordan. The Rebbe had suffered a kidney attack, and Wallach was aboard and treated him and cared for him until he regained his strength. Soon after, Wallach approached Rabbi Schneersohn to request a manner of penance ("kapparah"). When asked for what, he replied that his presence caused the Rabbi's illness, given that God would not have allowed such an important leader needed by all Jews to become seriously ill without a doctor nearby. The Rebbe recounted this incident to his son-in-law, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, who in turn recounted it in a public talk in 1987, as an example of true humility and contriteness.

Personal Wallach was a dedicated physician and a demanding and exacting employer. He was known to shout at nurses and patients alike who did not follow his instructions to the letter. However, Wallach also had a sense of humor. Once he was leaving the hospital late at night when he encountered a woman waiting by the locked gate. She did not know who he was, but begged him to let her in for a few minutes to see her husband, who had had an operation the previous day. "Quick, before that crazy man Wallach comes", she said. Dr. Wallach let her in, and received her profuse thanks when she came out again. "What is your name?" she asked. "You are such a kind person". "I am the crazy man Wallach", he replied.

Despite his outer gruffness, Wallach had a kind heart. He adopted a young Syrian girl named Bolissa who had been brought to the hospital by her father and was subsequently abandoned there. and did not charge indigent patients. He also helped members of his extended family in Germany immigrate to Palestine after the rise of Nazism in the 1930s.

Wallach was scrupulous in his own mitzvah observance. Whenever he traveled on house calls, he brought along a Book of Psalms to recite on the road.

Wallach never married. A wealthy German donor to the hospital, Yehoshua Hearn, wanted him to return to Germany to marry his daughter, but after consultation with Rabbi Sonnenfeld, Wallach determined that he would not leave the land for any reason. Later, when the girl agreed to travel to Palestine, Wallach arranged a shidduch between her and his brother Ludwig, who worked as a clerk at Shaare Zedek Hospital. Wallach resided in rooms in the hospital until his final day.

Final years and legacy Dr. Wallach (standing) at a graduation ceremony for Shaare Zedek's professional nursing class, circa 1954. Seated to his left is Dr. Falk Schlesinger, his successor as hospital director. Wallach retired at the age of 80. He was succeeded as director of Shaare Zedek by Dr. Falk Schlesinger, another German-Jewish physician. Two banquets were held in honor of his eighty-fifth birthday – one in the hospital, attended by the Sephardic Chief Rabbi of Israel, Ben-Zion Meir Hai Uziel, the Minister of Health, representatives of the Doctors Union, and representatives of the Old and New Yishuvs; and the second in the office of the Jerusalem mayor, Shlomo Zalman Shragai, who bestowed a commendation on Dr. Wallach for his years of public service. In honor of his ninetieth birthday, Wallach was awarded an honorary degree from the medical faculty of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The city of Jerusalem also named him a Yakir Yerushalayim (Worthy of Jerusalem); however, Wallach died the day before the presentation ceremony took place. After the war, most of the 200 graves in this cemetery were relocated to permanent cemeteries, but a handful of graves remained, including that of Rabbi Yosef Tzvi Dushinsky, the first Dushinsky Rebbe, who died in Shaare Zedek Hospital in 1948. Per his request, Wallach was buried beside the Dushinsky Rebbe, whom he considered his mentor. The Jerusalem municipality named the small street west of Shaare Zedek Hospital "Moshe Wallach Street" in his honor.

Prime Minister of Israel Yitzhak Rabin paid tribute to Wallach in a 1995 address in the United States Capitol rotunda inaugurating the Jerusalem 3000 celebrations. In a speech titled "My Jerusalem", Rabin began: "Jerusalem has a thousand faces – and each one of us has his own Jerusalem. My Jerusalem is Dr. Moshe Wallach of Germany, the doctor of the sick of Israel and Jerusalem, who built Sha'arei Zedek hospital and had his home in its courtyard so as to be close to his patients day and night. I was born in his hospital. I am a Jerusalemite".