Mentor of Generations

Reflections on Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik

KTAV Publishing House, Inc.

Copyright © 2008 The Commentator of Yeshiva University
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-60280-011-3

Contents

Preface: "And There Arose A New Generation That Did Not Know Joseph" Zev Eleff...................................................................xiAcknowledgements..................................................................................................................................xvIntroduction Norman Lamm.........................................................................................................................xixThe '30s: A Bostonian with Sights on New YorkLearning with the Rav: The Early Years at Yeshiva Henoch (Henry) Cohen...........................................................................3Lifelong Personal Encounter with the Rav Bernard Lander..........................................................................................7From Boston to New York William Millen...........................................................................................................10Personal Glimpses into the Persona of the Rav Alvin I. Schiff....................................................................................16The '40s: The Emergence of Halakhic ManThe Rov: A Memoir Nathan Epstein.................................................................................................................29The Rav: Public Giant, Private Mentsch Norman Lamm...............................................................................................38The Unique Phenomenon that was the Rav Bernard Rosensweig........................................................................................44The Halakhic Mind of the Halakhic Man: A Perspective on the Rav Sol Roth.........................................................................51How the Rav Stayed With Me Fred Sommers..........................................................................................................54The '50s: In and Out of the ClassroomThe Approach of the Rav to P'sak and Public Policy Saul J. Berman................................................................................61The Rav at Revel - The Rav at RIETS Robert Blau..................................................................................................67The Impact of the Rav's Presence on Yeshiva Yosef Blau...........................................................................................70Memories of the Rav Zt"l Herbert Bomzer..........................................................................................................74My Memories of the Rav Abba Bronspigel...........................................................................................................77The Rav and Dr. Belkin Zevulun Charlop...........................................................................................................82Reflections on the Rav: Life at RIETS Some 50 years Ago Samuel Danishefsky.......................................................................91The Lonely Man William Herskowitz................................................................................................................99The Rav: His Impact on My Life Haskel Lookstein..................................................................................................103Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik: A Guide to Life David J. Radinsky..................................................................................107The Rav: In and Out of the Classroom Aaron Rakeffett-Rothkoff....................................................................................116Our Rebbe Israel Rivkin..........................................................................................................................120My Rebbe, Rabbi Soloveitchik? Fabian Schonfeld...................................................................................................125The '60s: Mentor of GenerationsThe Rav - How He Developed Psak and His Views of Da'at Torah Julius Berman.......................................................................133Rav Yosef Dov HaLevi Soloveitchik (The Rov) ZT"L: Role Model Par Excellence Heshie Billet........................................................142Memories of Kindness Rivkah Teitz Blau...........................................................................................................153Learning from the Rav: Preparing for Shiur Shmuel Boylan.........................................................................................157Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik ("the Rav") as Pedagogue Michael Chernick...........................................................................161My First Year in the Rav's Shiur Menachem Genack.................................................................................................169Ma'aseh Rav - V'dok Daniel Greer.................................................................................................................175The Ray and Rav Ahron David Luchins..............................................................................................................179The Rov as Rov in Boston Seth Mandel.............................................................................................................183Reflections on The Rav Menahem Meier.............................................................................................................188The Rav and the Jewish Holdays Throughout the Year Shlomo H. Pick................................................................................193The Rav: My Rebbe; An essay on the Derekh Halimud of Rabbi Joseph B. SoloveitchikHershel Reichman..................................................................................................................................204The Rav and Torah u-Madda David Shatz............................................................................................................210The Rav and the Chief Rabbinate of Israel Charles Weinberg.......................................................................................218The '70s: A Legacy of Many PerspectivesA Special Zechut: Serving as the Rav's Shamosh Yosef Adler.......................................................................................225The Rav as a Melamed Azarya Berzon...............................................................................................................228How the Rav Changed My Spiritual Life Aharon Bina................................................................................................234Understanding the Rav's "Philosophy" Eugene B. Borowitz..........................................................................................238Teacher Not A Spokesman Shalom Carmy.............................................................................................................243The Rov zt"l: The Nigleh and the Nistar Mordecai E. Feuerstein...................................................................................250Personal Glimpses and Lessons Derived Rabbi Zev Friedman.........................................................................................268Hineni He-Ani Mi-maas Itzhak D. Goldberg.........................................................................................................272Initial Encounters Shmuel Goldin.................................................................................................................281Reflections of Two Generations of Shamashim Dovid Holzer.........................................................................................284Reliving Sinai Doniel Lander.....................................................................................................................288Tuesday Evenings with the Rav Morris Laub........................................................................................................291My Grandfather - The Rav Mayer Eliyahu Lichtenstein..............................................................................................297The Rav and the Tisha B'Av Kinot Jacob J. Schacter...............................................................................................303The Rav: A Boston Memoir Jeffrey R. Woolf........................................................................................................315The '80s: An Aging GiantTransformation Binyamin Blau.....................................................................................................................321The Rov as a Personal Rebbe Kenneth Brander......................................................................................................324The Rav as an Aging Giant (1983-1985) Howard Jachter.............................................................................................329On Translating Ish ha-Halakhah with the Rav: Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik's Supplementary Notes to Halakhic Man Lawrence Kaplan.....................334Glossary..........................................................................................................................................347

Chapter One

Learning with the Rav: The Early Years at Yeshiva Henoch (Henry) Cohen

It was the Rav who had initially made me. Others affected me, but he was different. His shiur bewildered you, captivated you, and solidified you in every way possible. Moreover, the Rav was the beacon of light to all generations from the thirties until today. All this was because he was a man of truth.

Before I learned with the Rav, I studied in Torah Vodaath where I met Rav Elchanon Wasserman. He said to me: "I don't know why people talk so unfavorably about Rav Yoshe Ber. I was there in Boston and I never saw somebody eat, sleep and dream Torah as he did." Even someone like Rav Elchanon (Hashem yenakem damo, may G-d avenge his blood]) was taken aback by the Torah dedication of the Rav. After that conversation, I knew that I had to study under the tutelage of Rabbi Soloveitchik.

I was sixteen when I began to learn by the Rav in Boston in the year that the Second World War broke out. All the other students-for example, Rabbi Michel Feinstein-were much older than I. (My father was a student of Rabbi Hershel Glicksen who was the Ray's uncle-the son-in-law, who was a Ger Chassid, of Rav Chaim).

In Boston the Rav was very much at home. Still, while he enjoyed a certain amount of peace, he was never comfortable with his complete role in Boston. The community gave him the title of Chief Rabbi, but it was always unclear what that truly meant. The rabbis in Boston related very differently to the Rav. Many of them were jealous of him. He broke the barrier however. Being in his thirties, the Rav was like none other. When he went to Israel as a candidate for the chief rabbinate of Tel Aviv, the people there absolutely loved his Torah. Even Reb Chaim was said to have commented about his grandson that he had never seen a head like that of Rav Yoshe Ber.

There was a lot of debate when Rabbi Moshe Soloveitchik, the Rav's father, passed away about whether or not the Rav would leave Boston to become a rosh yeshiva at YU. Not everyone went along with it in Boston and it therefore became a very trying time for the Rav. In the end, of course, the Rav accepted YU's offer, splitting his time between Boston and New York.

One had to go to college at this time. The Conservative movement was becoming very powerful; even daughters of the rabbanim of the Agudah married Conservative rabbis. Those who sought to enter the rabbinate required a college education in order to avoid the dynamic power of the Conservative movement. Certainly, at that time, Yeshiva was a strong option for those seeking a college education. RIETS had many gedolim, prominent scholars, such as Rabbi Moshe Bick and Rabbi Nosson Zvi Wachtfogel. One of the main reasons for this was that Torah Vodaath was still very young and small. When he arrived in New York, the Rav became a great asset among these Torah giants.

In Boston, there were those who might have followed the Rav to New York, but didn't because of the college. They didn't want to have anything to do with secularism. There were students like myself, though we were more yeshivish than the rest, who decided to attend Yeshiva because of the Rav. It was not easy going to YU. In some places, you weren't even allowed to hold a sefer Torah if you attended YU. To his credit the Rav avoided these politics as much as possible. He generally ran away from politics and lived in isolation. It took a long time, therefore, before he was recognized for who he was. He was always honest in what he stood for. He was his own man and meant everything he did. Sometimes, students who were grappling with secular studies would drag his name into the mud by saying things that he never said. However, he never wanted to go to war over this. He was a sick man. He shook a lot whenever he gave shiur or an address. He didn't have the strength to fight politics all of the time and sacrificed a lot of his own health in order to teach.

The Boston kollel was the first time that the Rav had a real opportunity to be a teacher and deliver shiurim. Still, his main source of income came from supervising the kashrut in Boston. It is well known, of course, that the Rav suffered a great deal from the corruption of the industry in Boston. When the Rav arrived in New York it was the first time that he was a rosh yeshiva. It was nothing new to him, though, because of his experiences in the kollel in Boston.

I was in the Rav's second semikhah class at YU. The Rav's semikhah tests were like a four-hour torture chamber. When you were through with it, you bentched gomel [said a prayer of gratitude for surviving the ordeal]. I remember after getting semikhah my parents wanted me to rest for the summer; they saw that I had been through an exciting but equally grueling experience. Unfortunately, some of my classmates from that semikhah class were geniuses who went astray. There was one who graduated from RIETS, went to Berkeley and became a major politician in the Eisenhower administration. When he came once to Yeshiva to see the Rav, nobody wanted to speak with him. The Rav saw this but could not do much to stop it.

The composure of Brisk, the Rav's style of learning, made him very tough at times. Very often my father had to remind me that this was nothing personal. It was just the intense style to which the Rav subscribed. On a number of occasions the Rav asked me to translate the long essays by Reb Chaim into English. After I painstakingly read through the Reb Chaim's sefer and translated every word, I would submit the translation to the Rav and he would check it to make sure that I understood Reb Chaim. Many people will tell you that the Rav was a cold individual, but that is not true. You just needed to know how to get a hold of him and then you would realize just how personable he was.

Things didn't always go as the Rav had anticipated, and he therefore became a very anxious person. Still, he raised a tremendous family. How many of the gedolim from that time can boast that their grandchildren would become talmidei hakhamim? A great part of this achievement is due to the Rav's wife, Tonya, a very independent and strong individual. He needed someone like her in many ways. I remember that when I was learning in the Rav's kollel and was sitting at the Rav's Pesach table, I was asked to say something. As I stood up to speak, I accidentally knocked over a glass and spilled wine on the tablecloth. I was so embarrassed, but the Rav's wife immediately comforted me and explained that it was not a big deal.

Aside from his personal accomplishments and his familial success, the Rav during his lifetime was well-respected by all of the major American rabbanim. One Sunday, when I was in my fifties, I returned to Boston to attend the Rav's special Tishah B'Av shiur at the Maimonides School. When I entered the building, I was shocked. There were Satmar hassidim waiting to hear the Rav deliver his shiur. I knew a few of them and asked what they were doing there. They answered that they simply wanted to hear what the Rav had to say on Kadshim. I asked them how they found out about the Ray. They answered that the Satmar Rav himself had sent them to hear the Rav. I didn't hesitate; the next morning I went to see the Satmar Rav to ask about this. He responded: "What's the matter with you! Who in the whole world knows Kadshim like Rav Yoshe Ber?"

Such was the great legacy of my teacher, the Rav.

Chapter Two

A Lifelong Personal Encounter with the Ray Bernard Lander

I was in Rabbi Moshe Soloveitchik's shiur at Yeshiva in the 1930s. The shiur was relatively small, no more than ten students. I recall among them were Rabbi Aaron Soloveichik, Rabbi Chayim Zimmerman, Rabbi Melech Schachter, Rabbi Joseph Weiss, and Rabbi Mayer Kobrin also known as the Iluy of Moscow. Rav Moshe gave shiur twice a week each one lasting an hour and a half. The shiur invariably focused on the Rambam; he would interpret the Rambam, often resolving a contradiction between the Rambam and the Gemara.

Rav Moshe was very close to Rabbi Aharon Yitzchak Zalmanowitz who was a Gerrer chassid and a rosh yeshiva at Yeshiva. In my mind's eye, I can see them walking the halls talking in Torah and inevitably, Rav Moshe would speak to Rabbi Zalmanowitz as he did with almost anyone, about his prodigious son, Rav Yosef Dov. I never saw a greater love of a father to a son than Rav Moshe's for Rav Yosef Dov.

Despite the stereotypical austere, forbidding image that one conjures when thinking of Brisk, Rav Moshe was a very warm and caring person. He was especially kind to me and concerned with my welfare. He invited me to all his family simchos [celebrations]. I remember Rav Aharon Soloveichik's wedding in which Rav Aharon gave a brilliant but extended dvar Torah about kedushas haaretz [the sanctity of the Land of Israel]. Rav Moshe once came to me saying that he wanted to propose my candidacy for the rabbinate at Boston's Bluehill Avenue synagogue which his son Rav Yosef Dov attended. At the time, I had been accepted at Harvard Law School and was seriously considering the move to Boston. However, I rejected the proposal because I questioned my fluency in delivering sermons in Yiddish to a crowd of several hundred worshippers and the thought of delivering a sermon in the presence of the gaon Rav Yosef Dov was daunting. In the end I became a rabbi in Baltimore, and switched my area of study from law to sociology.

Rav Moshe also helped my close friend, Rabbi Moshe Besdin, who would go on to found the JSS program at Yeshiva College, obtain his position as the rabbi of the Beth Medrash Hagadol in Washington Heights where Rav Moshe himself would often daven.

It was through my association with Rav Moshe that I came to know Rav Yosef Dov. I would often accompany the Rav on long walks in which I was stunned by the erudition of even his casual conversation. The topics he dealt with ranged from discussions in Christian theology to Western Literature, from Rambam and matters of halakhah to Kant and Rudolf Otto, from ancient academic texts to current issues in that day's New York Times. When the Rav visited my home while I was sitting shivah for my late father, he told me that I was the second friend that he had made in the United States.

In 1937 the Rav was the invited guest, with Dr. Revel presiding, at the chag hasemikhah [celebration of rabbinic ordination] where I was to receive my official semikhah. The Rav delivered a fiery speech decrying the association of Yeshivas Rabbeinu Yitzchak Elchanan and Yeshiva College. Yeshiva College was still new, having graduated its first class in 1932. He stated that a sefer Torah written in gold-tinted ink was invalid and that only a sefer Torah written with black ink on white parchment was acceptable. Dr. Revel was understandably surprised with this critique, as the Rav himself was a recipient of a PhD in mathematics and philosophy, and he refused to offer the Rav any position at the yeshiva. However, Rav Moshe surreptitiously encouraged me to organize a class in Jewish philosophy, given by the Rav, which met on a weekly basis in the dormitory building. In 1938, I left for Baltimore to accept the role as rabbi of Beth Jacob and the Rav established a yeshiva in Boston.

Our friendship resumed actively when I became dean of the Bernard Revel Graduate School which included Rabbi Soloveitchik amongst its distinguished faculty. As colleagues, we frequently shared our many views on the direction of Yeshiva College. Both of us vocally resisted Dr. Belkin's intended plan to bring Stern College to the larger campus of Yeshiva College in Washington Heights. With the Rav's opposition the idea was dropped.

In 1970 I was present at the chag hasemikhah and the luncheon in which the Rav dramatically opposed Dr. Belkin's decision to modify the charter of Yeshiva College to be non-sectarian, thus making the college eligible for government funds. RIETS would remain a religious school affiliated with Yeshiva University. The Rav was concerned that some time in the future the Yeshiva's change of status would ultimately compromise the Yeshiva's missions and standards. Though he had confidence that Dr. Belkin would not permit this to happen, the Rav recalled the ancient syllogism: all men are mortal; Aristotle is a man; therefore, Aristotle is mortal. This issue became a point of great tension between the Rav and Dr. Belkin.

The chagei hasemikhah of 1937 and 1970 bracketed the Rav's career at Yeshiva and demonstrated his deep commitment to the pristine nature of the Torah environment of Yeshiva. I do not mean, however, to suggest that the Rav was an obscurantist or opposed to secular knowledge. This was of course not the case. The Rav was a towering intellect; the breadth and depth of his knowledge in all areas was astounding. He believed that we must encounter and engage the general society.

The Torah records (Genesis 21:33) 'Abraham planted an eshel tree in Beer Sheva, and there he called upon the name of the LORD, the Eternal God.' The Rav explained that this tree was a metaphor for Abraham's and subsequently the Jewish people's approach to life. A Jew needs roots; he must be deeply rooted in the experience and traditions of the past. The past for the Jew is always alive and relevant. It's that past that animates the present and inspires our future, represented by the branches and foliage of the tree. The Rav personified that Abrahamic eshel. While open to the wisdom and culture of the modern world, he remained always anchored in the rich tradition of Brisk. He believed that no Jewish philosophy was valid unless it was shaped by the methodology and spirit of the halakhah.

He once commented that the current problem confronting the Christian world was the clash of religion and science. He thought that for the Jew this was an irrelevant and trivial issue. For Judaism the challenge was to maintain the uniqueness and singularity of this relationship. To the uninformed there would seem to be tension between these two worlds of Rabbi Soloveitchik; but the reality was that within the greatness of the Rav's personality, as that of his philosophical antecedent Maimonides, these worlds were integrated and dedicated to the service of Hashem.

Chapter Three

From Boston to New York William Millen

Raised in Boston and studying later at Yeshiva, I made sure to take shelter under the influence and care of our late teacher, Rabbi Joseph Dov Soloveitchik. Even today, as I no longer have the luxury of turning to the Rav for a question here or some advice there, I take solace in that I am conducting my life in the way he would have wanted. In fact, when I don't live up to my own expectations, I can see the Rav in my mind chastising me, saying, "I'm not going to tell you what to do, but if I were you ..."

I was fortunate to have a very close relationship with the Rav for two reasons. First, my parents were very involved with the Soloveitchiks. My mother was the second president of the Maimonides School's Women's Auxiliary (the Rav's wife, Tonya Soloveitchik, was the first) and my father was the Ray's personal driver in Boston. Second, I was one of the three original students enrolled in the Maimonides School he founded in Boston in 1937. I attended the school for the first six years of its existence. I was forced to attend public school after the sixth year because the school could not sustain a seventh grade. After a few years at a Boston public school, I asked my parents to allow me to attend Yeshiva University's high school. I recall begging my parents to allow me to go to New York for high school, but they consistently refused. Finally, after my diligent protests, my parents asked the Rav for his opinion on the matter. The Rav did not approve of my request. I found out later that this was because he was under the impression that the high school's dormitory supervision was poor and he was afraid that I would be influenced by the New York night life. Shocked after my father reported the Rav's decision to me, I insisted on speaking with the Rav directly. During that conversation with the Rav, he tried to persuade me to wait until college to study in New York but I maintained that Boston was no place for a boy my age. And besides, all of my Boston friends were already there in New York!

(Continues...)

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