A Lifetime of Learning

Volozhin was a unique place, never equaled. The finest minds of the young people in Lithuania attended this yeshiva, and great rabbis, gaonim, scholars emerged from it. But out of that yeshiva also came communists, socialists, many leading Zionists, and poets such as Chaim Nachman Bialik. The yeshiva, as he phrased it, was ‘‘the intellectual factory of the Jewish People.’’

My Zaidy was in love with Eretz Yisrael. He was sorry that he had to leave it. He always wanted to go back. He went back in 1935 to see Rabbi Kook when the rav was deathly ill. When he came back to America, somebody said to him, ‘‘Rebbe, did you see? Did you see the chalutzim [pioneers] who were working there in the fields? And they work bare-headed, and they’re secular, and they don’t wear tzitzis?’’ And my Zaidy answered him, ‘‘You know, when I saw Jews working the fields in Eretz Yisrael for the first time in two thousand years... my eyes filled with such tears that I couldn’t see anything.’’

My father told me a fascinating story about Rabbi Kook. His yeshiva was so popular in the Jewish world that when there was a position for a rav open, the lay leaders of the congregation came to Rabbi Kook to get a rav from the yeshiva. There was one student, whom my father knew well, who was an outstanding talmid chochom. A community in Lithuania wanted him to become their rabbi, and they recruited him. He said that he cannot accept the position unless he had the blessing of Rabbi Kook. The recruiting committee thought that was only a formality; Rabbi Kook will certainly give his blessing to placing one of his students in this major position. The young man went to Rabbi Kook and told him about the offer for this prestigious position in Lithuania. This was around 1928. Rabbi Kook answered, ‘‘Listen, my young man. It’s better to be a grocer in Jerusalem than a rav in Lita.’’ ... And the young man took the rav’s words to heart. He went into the grocery business and became one of the largest grocery wholesalers in Yerushalayim. During the siege of Yerushalayim in 1947, his warehouses sustained the Jewish community because he was the only one who still had food. Rabbi Kook’s statement that it’s better to be a grocer in Yerushalayim than a rav in Lita had far-reaching impact. Remarkable. Those in leadership today are midgets standing on the shoulders of giants.

Dr. Revel brought in talmidei chachomim who did not agree with him that there should be a college connected to the yeshiva. They did not agree with secular studies. They did not agree to be politically Mizrachi. But to Dr. Revel that made no difference. The only thing that mattered was, ‘‘I want you to teach Torah.’’ He maintained that ‘‘We’re not here as a political institution. We’re here to teach Torah.’’ That attitude, unfortunately, has been somewhat lost in our time.

We have a concept: ‘‘v’hoyu einecha ro’eh es morecha.’’ [Your eyes should look up to your teacher.] That doesn’t only mean that you have a picture of your rebbe in your house. Everybody has pictures. It means that at a moment of decision, at a moment of sacrifice, at a moment of hardship, you ask yourself, ‘‘What would my rebbe say? What would my teacher say? I see him in front of me.’’ That is what the medrash says about Yosef HaTzadik. That, at the moment of a test, he saw the ‘‘d’mus dyukana shel aviv’’ [he saw Yaakov Avinu in the window]. Now, Yaakov Avinu wasn’t there. We are not talking about a miracle. But he ‘‘saw’’ him, and he thought, ‘‘How can I do this? How can I do this to my father? How can I do this to the future of the Jewish People?’’

Another popular misconception about the Chofetz Chaim dissolved in my mind when my father-in-law said, ‘‘You know, one of the legends is that the Chofetz Chaim didn’t have a temper.’’ Apparently, that was not true. My father-in-law told me that sometimes things happened in the house or in the community that raised the Chofetz Chaim’s ire; that made him feel that he was going to get angry. Whenever he felt irritation coming on when in a conversation with someone, he would interrupt the discussion and walk to the corner of the room. Then he would talk to himself: ‘‘Yisroel Meir, you’re getting angry? It’s going to help you? Will anger accomplish anything here? Yisrael Meir, don’t be a fool!’’ He would talk and talk until he felt calm, and then he went back and finished the conversation without anger. That was such a remarkable story, and I knew my father-in-law told it to me for a reason. I have practiced this technique many times in my life.

My father-in-law always used to tell me, ‘‘Avraham Avinu – you think he was a nice guy? Mr. Milquetoast? Always saying, ‘Come in; let me give you something to eat!’ The Torah purposely teaches that he fought a war, and he kicked out his own son from the house. But he was able to overcome not being a nice guy with his middos hachessed that he trained within him.’’ That is a great insight, because it applies to all of us. Nobody is perfect, but that does not mean we have to give in to our negative traits

That dedication defined the Chofetz Chaim. He wrote a sefer called Likutei Halachos L’Nidchei Yisrael, for American Jews who were working on Shabbos – how to work on Shabbos, yet not to be mechalel Shabbos min haTorah. A remarkable piece of rabbinic literature. Other people wrote all sorts of things on the importance of Shabbos, which certainly is true. And you should never go to work on Shabbos, which certainly is true. But he addressed the situation as it was. The reality was that they were going to work on Shabbos. He wanted to make it possible for them to still be partially shomrei Shabbos, until the situation would change

He visited a very wealthy man, and told him that he needed money to build the yeshiva and to maintain it. The man answered him, ‘‘Rebbe, right now I can’t give you any money; but don’t worry, I’ll put you in my will.’’ The Chofetz Chaim said ‘‘thank you’’ and left. A few years later, the rich man died, and the Chofetz Chaim got a letter from the executor of his estate. The man had an enormous library of seforim. The letter said that the man had left his money to his children, and the books to the yeshiva. At this, the Chofetz Chaim reflected, ‘‘I thought he was wiser than that. He should have left the books to his children and the money to the yeshiva.’’

There was a Conservative rabbi in Detroit who was the son of a Rosh Yeshiva in New York. My father-in-law had a relationship with him because he knew his father. Unfortunately, gittin [the Bills of Divorce], given by the Conservative rabbis don’t approach being kosher. But there was no machlokess. As long as Rabbi Levin was in charge of granting the gittin in Detroit, the Conservative rabbinate did not issue any Bills of Divorce. They referred them all to my father-in-law and his Beis Din: every gett in Detroit was a kosher gett. As a sign of appreciation, my father-in-law would buy an esrog every year before Sukkos to give to this Conservative rabbi. And he wrote on the esrog box, ‘‘Rabbi [So-and-So]’’ and it would be delivered to him. But one year, there was a certain person in the house who was very zealous for the cause of Torah, and he objected to the fact that the box was labelled ‘‘Rabbi [So-And-So.]’’ He took a pen and scratched out ‘‘Rabbi.’’ When my father-in-law became aware of it, he admonished the man. ‘‘You may think that your act of zealotry is a positive thing, but you should know that by so doing, you increase the chances that there will be illegitimate children in the Nation of Israel, because now he’ll feel insulted, and he’ll start to issue gittin, and his won’t be proper. The couple, thinking they are divorced, will each get married, giving rise to all sorts of problems. I want you to take a new box and write the name, ‘‘Rabbi [So-And-So].’’ And that’s exactly what happened

R' Herzl Kaplan was always half-smiling; and so, we were also always half- smiling. It was not that he told jokes, but that he projected a wry view of life. He never talked down to us; he treated us as adults. One of the things he told us was that you must relate to a child as if he were an adult. If you have expectations of him as an adult you will raise him, elevate him to a mature level. But if you treat him as a child, as a baby, he will still be a baby at the age of forty

that Purim one of the boys brazenly asked Reb Herzl, ‘‘Rebbe, all the guys here are going with their tzitzis out, and you don’t have your tzitzis out. Why not?’’ He didn’t answer. The greatness of the Lithuanian rabbonim was that they didn’t answer immediately. They let the matter rest until the proper time and the proper circumstance, when the answer would be meaningful, and it wouldn’t be off-the-cuff. Two weeks later, the shiur was almost over, and somebody mentioned to Reb Herzl that he planned to become a lawyer. Reb Herzl said, ‘‘If you’re a lawyer, you have to go into the courtroom, yes?’’ ‘‘Yes, Rebbe, you have to go into the courtroom.’’ In those days, the early 1940s, you didn’t go into a courtroom with a yarmulke on. It was against the dress code. And you certainly didn’t go with your tzitzis out. Reb Herzl explained, ‘‘Now you understand. I wear my tzitzis in, so that you will realize that you can be mekayem the mitzvah [you can fulfill the mitzvah] of tzitzis wearing your tzitzis tucked in. If you thought the only way you could do it is to wear the tzitzis outside, there will come a period in your life that you won’t be able to do that, so you won’t wear tzitzis at all. Now you can remember that you had a rebbe who wore his tzitzis inside.’’ What foresight!

Reb Elchonon was a talmid of the Chofetz Chaim, but unlike his mild-mannered mentor, he was a very, very strong personality. I would say, out of all the Roshei Yeshiva in the 1930s, he was the iron rod. He wrote a sefer called Ikvasa Demeshicha [In the Footsteps of the Moshiach], which is a powerful critique of secular Zionism. I know many people that were shaken by it. I read it a few times. It helped me put things into perspective

One of the great rules in life is that there is always another opinion. If you are able to hear it and not be disturbed by it, you will grow in character. You don’t have to agree with it, but you have to know that there is another opinion.

Reb Mendel was not a Zionist, to put it mildly. On the other hand, he loved the Jewish People and he loved Eretz Yisrael. When David Ben Gurion came to Chicago, I think it was 1952 or ’53, it was the first attempt to sell Israel bonds. The yeshiva gave off a day for everybody to go sell bonds. They had a big kick-off event in the Sherman Hotel, a kosher banquet. As Ben Gurion was scheduled to speak, there was a very large attendance. Some of us skipped college that night. We went to the hotel and stood in the back of the room – we couldn’t afford to sit at a table – to see what was going on. Lo and behold, on the way out, we saw Reb Mendel was there. We couldn’t understand that. We still didn’t quite understand his perspective. But the next day, in yeshiva, Reb Mendel said, ‘‘Last night, I went to an event where I saw the children of Avraham Avinu stand in line to give money to build Eretz Yisrael.’’ The children of Avraham Avinu building Eretz Yisrael ! That was his definition of the evening. He never mentioned Ben Gurion

The yeshiva also exhibited this attitude. Our neighborhood was entirely Jewish, so there were no Christmas trees or Christmas lights. The only Christmas tree in the neighborhood was in the yeshiva, in the basement where Abie lived with his family. That the yeshiva would tolerate a Christmas tree in the basement, with lights that could be seen outside, had a meaningful impact on us. Incongruous as it was, nobody felt that it was a desecration of the yeshiva.

There is a famous story in this vein that has been quoted in my name, and I want to say that, like most of my stories, it is completely true. I will repeat it here. I have a cousin, a wonderful cousin in Detroit, Gary Torgow. Once, when I was in Detroit, Gary invited me to dinner in his home. One of the guests for dinner was the chief editor of the Detroit Free Press. Detroit then had two newspapers: the Detroit News and the Detroit Free Press. The Detroit News was very anti-Israel. The Detroit Free Press was very pro-Israel. At dinner, someone commented, ‘‘We appreciate your favoritism towards Israel,’’ and the editor answered, ‘‘I’ll tell you why. My mother was a maid in the house of a very wealthy Jew here in Detroit, an Orthodox Jew. She lived in the house. Once, during the Christmas season, the owner of the house and his wife went away on a trip, and they said, ‘Mary, you and your family should stay in the house and take care of things.’ As they were not due to come back for several weeks, she put up a Christmas tree in the house and lights outside. When the owner came back, the neighbors told him that he had the only Christmas tree in the neighborhood. My mother was afraid she would lose her job, so she came to him and apologized. She said she didn’t realize it would disturb the neighbors. She meant no insult. He said to her, ‘Mary, don’t worry. You observe your religion. I have no problem with that. Everything is good. Please stay with us. You’re doing a good job.’ My mother told me, ‘Whatever you do in life, don’t ever write a negative thing about Jews.’’’ He became the editor of the Detroit Free Press, and he never wrote negative things about Jews. Life is complicated. If you go to a rabbi and ask him, ‘‘Can I have a Christmas tree in my house for my maid?’’ I’ll give you three guesses what the answer will be. But as it says in Psalms 2:4, ‘‘Yoshev bashamayim yischak, HaShem yilag lamo.’’ [The Ribbono Shel Olam mocks us. He laughs at our petty righteousness.] Note: Love the translation at the end

Rabbi Rogow used to talk about his experiences with the chickens. He used to say that the rav had to look not only at the chicken, but also at the person who brought the chicken. If she was poor and destitute, they put the elephant through the eye of the needle. Of course, if it was completely treif, they couldn’t do anything about it. But if they could find one leniency somewhere they would say, ‘‘It’s fine. You can eat it!’’ Most Jews today have no idea that these considerations are actually part of the legitimate halachic process. Today, it seems to be the other way around. If you can find one stringency anywhere, don’t eat it

That was Rabbi Kaganoff’s attitude toward the Yoreh Deah shiur. He would declare, ‘‘I’m not here to teach you Yoreh Deah! I am here to produce lomdim and poskim who can decide matters of kashrus correctly and without fear of what others would say.’’ He taught me a priceless lesson that there always would be another rabbinic opinion, but that I should not fear nor compromise my position because of that

A family member shared the following story during the shiva after Reb Yaakov’s passing. Reb Yaakov’s house was right in the middle of a heavily Jewish neighborhood. The only exception was just a few doors away from him, a Catholic old age home for nuns. The sister in charge of the old age home came over to say she was sorry to hear that he had passed away. She told the family, ‘‘That little man was the only one who said, ‘Good morning’ to us when he walked by.’’

Once, while I was at Reb Yaakov’s home, a man came in and asked to speak to him. I started to leave, but the visitor asked me to stay, because he thought perhaps, I could help him, too. I said, ‘‘If you’ve got Rabbi Kamenetsky, you don’t need me.’’ He said, ‘‘Okay, but you can stay.’’ So, I stayed. The man was in his late twenties. He explained that he had gone out on shidduchim many times, unsuccessfully. But, this time, he had been dating a woman for the last eight months. He said that he liked her and that they seemed to be compatible. He knew the medrash that says that forty days before a child is born, it is announced in Heaven, ‘‘Bas ploni l’ploni.’’ [This woman is suitable for this man.] He asked Reb Yaakov, ‘‘So how can I know that she’s the one they announced?’’ With a twinkle in his eye, Reb Yaakov said, ‘‘That’s what they call love. If you love her, then she is the one that they announced.’’ I had not expected such an answer from the great sage. Yet, there it was: wise, practical, human

Rabbi Rosenberg explained to me that every hechsher is based on trust. If the business owner can’t be trusted, a hundred mashgichim couldn’t guarantee the kashrus.

When I visited him in the days after the yahrzeit shiur, he would ask me, with a twinkle in his eye, ‘‘So, Rabbi Wein, did you like the drashah?’’ And I would answer, ‘‘It was great, Rebbe, just great.’’ Because we had an open and honest relationship with each other, he said to me, ‘‘They all say that, but they don’t mean it. Tell me, was it too long?’’ I answered, ‘‘Rebbe, I could have stayed another two hours.’’ And with a soft smile, he said, ‘‘I didn’t ask you that.’’

I told the Rebbe once in a joking manner that if he would stay permanently in Miami Beach, his Hasidim would behave themselves. I had observed that they were very pleasant people while visiting Miami Beach. He answered me, ‘‘But what about the guys in Brooklyn? If I’m here, who’s going to take care of them?’’ He knew the score exactly. In Brooklyn, conditions were very different. His followers tended to be more aggressive and contentious, and it was necessary for him to keep a tight rein on them. He never fooled himself, and he never let anyone else fool him.

As we were sitting and talking about Eretz Yisrael, we were joined by a Satmar Hasid who had also just come back from there. The Hasid said that he had taken a tour and that they showed him the grave of the prophet Samuel. And then he said, ‘‘What do they know? They’re liars; how do they know where Shmuel HaNavi is buried? It’s all a fake.’’ The Rav looked at him sternly and said, ‘‘I don’t know if Shmuel Hanavi is there or not, but one thing is for sure. He’s not in Brooklyn.’’

Among his many acquaintances, he knew David Ben Gurion and had an excellent relationship with him. After the State of Israel came into being, Rabbi Kahaneman was asked whether the Ponevezh Yeshiva celebrated Yom Ha’atzmaut. His answer, which has become a classic line, was, ‘‘We do like Ben Gurion – no Tachanun, no Hallel.’’ On the very first Yom Ha’atzmaut the Israeli flag was flown over the roof of the yeshiva, and the Bnei Brak morals squad was incensed. They came to remonstrate with him about the inappropriateness of the Israeli flag flying over the yeshiva. His answer? In Lithuania, the Lithuanian flag was flown from the roof of the Ponevezh Yeshiva on Lithuanian Independence Day. ‘‘Und doh is nit erger.’’ [And here it is not worse.] I often think of that story and marvel at the Ponevezher Rav’s clarity of thought. He had such a wonderful attitude: for all the criticism you might have of the State of Israel, it’s not worse than it was in Lithuania. If you flew the flag there, you could fly it here.