Petirah of Dr. Asher (Allan) Plaut z”l, Beloved Crown Heights Pediatrician
It is with great sadness that Matzav.com reports the petirah of Dr. Asher (Allan) Plaut z”l, the longtime pediatrician whose Kingston Avenue office in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, was a familiar address to generations of local families and who devoted more than four decades to caring for the community’s children.
Dr. Plaut was niftar on Shabbos following a short illness. He was 75.
Although he resided in Lawrence, New York, Dr. Plaut’s professional life was deeply intertwined with Crown Heights. His pediatric practice, located at 372 Kingston Avenue, became a fixture of the neighborhood, where parents brought their children for everything from routine examinations and childhood illnesses to the anxious moments that inevitably send a parent searching for a trusted doctor.
For many Crown Heights families, Dr. Plaut was not simply the pediatrician listed on an insurance card. He was the doctor they knew. Parents who had brought one child to him returned with the next, and as the years passed, his decades of practice meant that he cared for multiple generations of families throughout the community.
Dr. Plaut graduated from SUNY Downstate Medical Center in 1977 and went on to specialize in pediatrics. He was a board-certified pediatrician, with hospital affiliations that included Maimonides Medical Center and Long Island Jewish Medical Center. His medical career ultimately stretched for nearly half a century.
Day after day and year after year, he made the trip from his home in Lawrence to Kingston Avenue and continued serving a community that had come to depend upon him.
His commitment to Crown Heights did not go unnoticed. In 2018, Dr. Plaut received a Citation of Honor from New York State Senator Jesse Hamilton recognizing his exemplary service to the community.
But perhaps the greatest testimony to his work was something no citation could capture: the enormous number of children who passed through his office during more than four decades of practice.
There were the routine visits and annual checkups, the winter viruses and summer injuries, the worried telephone calls, the prescriptions, the referrals, and the countless questions from nervous parents. There were families who knew that when something was wrong with a child, Dr. Plaut’s Kingston Avenue office was where they turned.
The length of his tenure itself tells a remarkable story. A physician who remains in one neighborhood for more than 40 years does not merely accumulate patients; he becomes part of the community’s history. Children grow up, marry, and have children of their own, while the same familiar doctor remains behind the desk and in the examination room.
Dr. Plaut continued that avodas hakodesh of healing and helping others for decades, quietly carrying the responsibility that comes with being entrusted with the health of another person’s child.
Dr. Plaut is survived by his wife, Mrs. Dina Plaut, as well as his children and grandchildren, who continue the family he cherished.
The levayah is taking place this morning at Bais Medrash Ateres Yisroel, Rabbi Blumenkrantz’s shul, located at 8-27 Cornaga Avenue in Far Rockaway.
Kevurah will follow at King Solomon Memorial Park in Clifton, New Jersey.
Yehi zichro baruch.
{Matzav.comn}