A nay bintl briv: Personal Reminiscences of Baruch ha-Levi Epstein and Aaron Walkin from the Yiddish Republic of Letters

A nay bintl briv:

Personal Reminiscences of Rabbis Baruch ha-Levi Epstein and Aaron Walkin

from the Yiddish Republic of Letters

Shaul Seidler-Feller

Editor’s note: The present post is part two of a two-part essay. Part one can be found here.

Second Letter

Approximately eight and a half years after his column on the Hafets Hayyim appeared, Aaron B. Shurin penned another essay, entitled “The Mistake of the Austrian Emperor” and about the meaning behind the observance of the Three Weeks, which was published 18 Tammuz 5756 (July 5, 1996), a day after they had begun.[1] In the first line, he quoted Rabbi Baruch ha-Levi Epstein (1860–1941/1942) as citing a story about Austrian Emperor Franz Joseph I’s (1830–1916) negative response to a group of Hungarian nationalists who wished to establish a day of mourning for the loss of their independence in 1848, using the Jews’ observance of Tish‘ah be-Av as a model.[2] This prompted Simon Paktor to write in:

SCHENECTADY 9.5.96.

זייער געערטער און חשובער .הרב ר״ אהרון בן ציון שוּרין נ״י

עס איז מיר זייער פארדראסיג וואס כ׳האב ניט בעוויזן צו שרייבן מאמענטאל, און זיך הארציג בעדאנקען פאר .אייער ארטיקל ״פאָרווערטס״ דעם -5טן יולי ה.י

ווי געוויינליך ווען די אידישע צייטונג קומט אן צו מיר, איז עס ביי מיר ווי א גוטער פריינד וואלט געקומען פון דער אלטער אומפארגעסליכער ..פארשניטענער היים… און מיר ריידן א[וי]ף יידיש

איך האב ממש א ציטער געטאן ווען כ׳האב אין אייער ארטיקל וועלכן איך לייען שטענדיג מיט דעם גרעסטן אינטערעס דערזען אין דער ערשטער שוּרה דעם טייערן נאמען ״הרב ר׳ ברוך עפשטיין (מחבר פון פירוש ״תורה תמימה״ אויף חומש) דערציילט אין [3](זיין זכרונות ספר ״מקור ברוּך״ א.א.וו

איך האב געהאט די זכיה צו קענען אט דעם ״אִיש פֶלֶא״ כבין געווען א פריינד פון א פינסק-קארלין משפחה וועלכע האט זיך געיחוס׳ט מיט קרובישאפט. דער פאטער פון דער פאמיליע האט בעת א שבת׳דיגן וויזיט צוגעטראגן צו מיר דעם ספר ״מקור ברוך״ און בעוויזן אז ר׳ ברוך

2

ווייזט אן אז אין שׁימל פון ברויט ליגט רְפוּאָה ווי PENECiLiN. דער פאטער אלתר סלוּצקי איז געווען א לאַווניק אין שטאט ראַט און די טאכטער האט געארבעט אין דער יידישער אפטיילונג. אזוי ווי פינסק האט געהאט א פנקס פון 800 יאר האט זיך זי געהאט די א מעגליכקייט אויסגעפינען און אנטקעגן קומען ר׳ ברוך עפשטיינס ביטעס אין די ארכיווע אויסצוזוכן. ער פלעגט זיך שטענדיג בעדאנקען צו איר דורך שיקן א ״באָמבאניערקע״ דא הייסט עס א באַקס שאקאלאד)… איך) .מיט טרערן אין די אייגן און מוז א וויילע איבערייסן

ער האט מיר אויסגעלערנט אן אריטמעטיג פארמוּלע. איך דערמאן זיך ווען כ׳האב שבת נאכן דאוונען אין פינסקער גרייסער שוּל אראבגעגאנגען צום ברעג פון אונזער שיינער טייך PiNA און בעמערקט ר׳ ברוך עפשטיין ז”ל זיצט אויף א באַנק כ׳בין צוגעגאנגען צו עם און געזאגט

״גוט שבת ר׳ ברוּך גום ברוך יהיה״

ער האט געענטפערט ״גם אתם״ און צובייגענדיג צו מיר געפרעגט ״אפשר האט איר די פאָלקס צייטונג״ (א בונדיסטישע צייטונג וואס איז ארויס אין ווארשע) (ווען איך האב עס דערציילט א היגן רָב (ניט קיין ראביי האט ער צו מיר געזאגט יעצט זע איך

3

אז ער איז געווען ״אם לא למעלה מזה״… איך בין יונג געווען און קיין שכל ניט געהאט און ניט פארשטאנען צו צוהערן זיך און פאָלגן וואס אונזערע חכמים האבן געזאגט ״והוי מתאבק בעפר רגליהם״

איך פלעג עם זייער אָפט טרעפן גייענדיג צו (הרב הגאון ר׳ אהרון וואלקין ז״ל השם יקום דמם הרב וואלקין האט עם ר׳ ברוך עפשטיין זייער מְקַרֵב .געווען אין זיין עלנדקייט

איך האב געהאט דעם טרויעריגן זכות זען אט דעם גאון ר׳ אהרון וו. הארט פארן אימה׳דיגן חורבן ווי ער איז געזעסן אין א ווינקל פון א סטאָליאריי אַרטיעל נאכדעם ווי די סאוויעטן האבן עם ארויסגעטריבן פון זיין בית דין שטוב. געזעסן ארומגערינגלט מיט ספרים …בליֵיך ווייס ווי שניי. א ״מַראה כהן״

ווייטער האב איך שוין ניט געווּסט כ׳בין געווען אין די .לאַפּעס פון נ.ק.וו.ד

איך האב זיין ר׳ ברוּך׳ס ספר ״בָרוּך שֶאָמַר״ פירוּש תפילות ישראל. ר׳ ברוך עפשטיין ז״ל איז געשטארבן אין געטא אין הונגער, צער א צוּווייטאגדיגער. און מיין האַרץ ..וויינט אין מיר טאג און נאכט

4 מיין הארציגן דאנק צו אייך פאר דערמאנען אין אייער ארטיקל (דער טעות….) אט דעם טייערן .נאמען

כווינטש אייך געזונט און אריכת ימים ושנים צו שרייבן אזעלכע ״צום האַרצן״ ארטיקלען אין יידיש

מיט דאנקבארקייט און כבוד צו אייך .לשנה טובה תכתבו ותחתמו .שמעון פאקטאר Schenectady NY.

Schenectady 9.5.96

To the highly esteemed and eminent Rabbi Aaron Benzion Shurin, may his light shine,

I am greatly displeased that I did not manage to write immediately to offer my sincere thanks for your column in this year’s July 5th issue of the Forverts.

As is usual when the Yiddish newspaper is delivered, I felt then as if a good friend had arrived from the unforgettable, obliterated old country… and we were having a conversation in Yiddish…

I literally shuddered when I noticed in the first line of your column – which I always read with the greatest interest – the dear name “Rabbi (author of theTorah temimah commentary on the Pentateuch) relates in his memoir Mekor barukh,” etc.

I had the good fortune to know that “amazing man.” I was friendly with a family in Pinsk-Karlin that took pride in its kinship with him. The head of the family, during a visit of mine one Sabbath, brought me the book Mekor barukh and showed me that R. Baruch 2 points out that medicine akin to penicillin can be found in moldy bread.[4] The father, Alter Slutzky, was an alderman on the city council, and his daughter worked in its Jewish division.[5] Since Pinsk had a communal register going back 800 years,[6] she had the opportunity to learn of and accommodate R. Baruch Epstein’s requests to search in the archive. He would always thank her by sending a bombonierka (here, we would call it a box of chocolates)…[7] I write this with tears in my eyes and must pause for a moment.

He taught me an arithmetic formula. I remember how one Sabbath, after services in the Great Synagogue of Pinsk,[8] I descended to the banks of our beautiful Pina River and caught sight of R. Baruch Epstein, of blessed memory, sitting on a bench.[9] I approached him and said, “Good Sabbath, R. Baruch – may you, too, be blessed [barukh].”[10] He responded, “The same to you”[11] and, leaning over to me, asked, “Maybe you have a copy of theFolkstsaytung ?” (a Bundist newspaper published in Warsaw). When I recounted this story to a local rov (not some non-Orthodox rabbi),[12] he said to me, “Now I see

3 that he was ‘if not even higher than that’[13]…”[14] I was young and foolish and did not realize that I should really listen to and follow that which our Sages taught: “And sit in the dust of their feet.”[15]

I would very often meet him on his way to thega’on Rabbi Aaron Walkin, of blessed memory (may God avenge their blood). R. Walkin drew quite close to R. Baruch Epstein in his loneliness.

I had the tragic fortune to see that ga’on, R. Aaron W., right before the horrific Holocaust, sitting in a corner of a carpentry workers’ cooperative after the Soviets had banished him from his rabbinic courtroom. He sat surrounded by books, his complexion pale white as snow, like leprosy shown to a priest…[16]

I knew nothing more of him; I was caught in the clutches of the NKVD.

I have R. Baruch’s book Barukh she-amar, a commentary on the Jewish prayers.[17] R. Baruch Epstein, of blessed memory, died in the ghetto a distressed man, starving and suffering. And my heart cries within me day and night…

4

My sincere thanks to you for mentioning in your column (“The Mistake…”) that precious name.

I wish you health and many long days and years so that you might continue writing such “heartwarming” columns in Yiddish.

With gratitude and esteem, May you be inscribed and sealed for a good year, Simon Paktor Schenectady, NY

Although the author of our letter offers precious few details about himself in the body of the document, we know from other sources that he was born to Moishe and Gittel Paktor on January 18, 1913 in Pinsk (then part of Russia, now in Belarus).[18] At the time, Pinsk was one of the most Jewish (percentage-wise) of the major cities in Eastern Europe, with a Jewish population in 1914 of 28,063 out of 38,686 total residents (approximately 72.5%).[19] Presumably because Paktor was young and politically active, the NKVD (Soviet secret police) arrested him toward the beginning of World War II, when Pinsk was occupied by the Red Army, and sent him eastward to a Siberian labor camp, thereby inadvertently saving his life.[20] When he was released, he traveled to Munich where he met and married his first wife, Helen (1925–2019), and the two of them, together with their young son David Leon (b. 1949), immigrated to the United States in 1952.[21] Sometime thereafter the couple divorced, and in 1973 Simon moved to Schenectady to serve as the Ritual Director at Congregation Agudat Achim, a Conservative synagogue (located at 2117 Union Street).[22] There, in 1976, he married Anne Smuckler (1914–2014), whose own husband had passed away three years prior,[23] and continued serving the shul faithfully until his retirement in 1993.[24]

Paktor’s letter, like Dickman’s before it, transports us back in time, providing rare firsthand testimony that sheds light on several aspects of interwar Eastern European rabbinic culture. It deals primarily with the figure of R. Epstein, a brilliant Talmudist and polymath who decided not to enter the rabbinate but instead to support his family as a banker, all the while composing important works in a non- professional capacity.[25] Perhaps the most eclectic of these is Sefer mekor barukh (Vilna, 1928), a multivolume compilation of his novellae and studies in various fields of Jewish scholarship, as well as personal reminiscences about members of his family. Paktor’s letter briefly discusses this book but also, en passant, and intriguingly, references Epstein’s research in the Pinsk Jewish communal archive; could he have been working there on his never-published bilingual (Hebrew and Yiddish) treatise on the history of Pinsk, written in the aftermath of World War I?[26]

Also interesting is Epstein’s request for a copy of the daily Folkstsaytung, not only on account of the paper’s strictly secular orientation – indeed, it, like the Forverts, was published on Shabbat andyom tov[27] – but also because halakhah, according to a number of interpretations, generally disapproves of reading printed matter like newspapers on Shabbat[28] (some would say during the week as well[29]). In apparently seeing nothing wrong with this practice, Epstein was following the example of his maternal uncle and eventual brother-in-law, Rabbi Naphtali Zevi Judah Berlin (Netsiv; 1816–1893), lastrosh yeshivah of the famous yeshivah in Volozhin (present-day Vałožyn, Belarus), who, by Epstein’s own account, would regularly peruse a newspaper on Shabbat day.[30]

In addition, the letter opens a window onto the relationship between Epstein and Rabbi Aaron Walkin (alternatively spelled Wolkin; 1865–1941/1942).[31] By the period in question, Epstein had suffered a number of tragedies and personal setbacks: his wife Sophia (Sheyne), the daughter of Eleazar Moses ha-Levi Horowitz (Reb Leyzer Pinsker; 1817–1890), former chief rabbi of Pinsk, had passed away due to influenza in 1899 before the age of 40; the Mutual Credit Society, the large private bank at which Epstein had worked as an officer, closed at the beginning of World War I; and three of his four children were no longer in Pinsk.[32] Though his daughter Fania (Feygl) remained in the city,[33] Epstein was lonely and lived in a hotel.[34] Into this void stepped Walkin, who arrived in Pinsk circa 1923,[35] becoming its chief rabbi in 1933[36] and there growing close to Epstein. The two men had much in common: both had studied at the feet of Netsiv in Volozhin, married around the age of 18, endured great misfortune, visited America but decided to return to Europe, and sympathized (at least somewhat) with the Zionist movement.[37] As Paktor testifies, Epstein, who lived (as of 1930) at 89 Dominikańska (present-day Gor’kogo [renamed by the Soviets]) Street,[38] would often visit Walkin at his home at 71 Dominikańska, a claim confirmed by the latter’s son, Rabbi Samuel David (1900–1979),[39] who refers to Epstein on at least one occasion as yedidi ne’eman beitenu (my friend, a confidante of our household).[40]

Finally, the letter touches directly on the last years of Walkin’s and Epstein’s lives. Shortly after Soviet forces entered Pinsk on September 17, 1939, they banned Hebrew language instruction, abolished the traditional Sabbath and Jewish holidays, and converted the Great Synagogue into a theater.[41] We know from Paktor’s letter and other sources that Walkin, who had been imprisoned by the Russians previously,[42] largely escaped persecution at the hands of the Soviets and even managed to continue performing his rabbinic functions, including scholarly writing, in secret.[43] Epstein, by contrast, was evicted from the hotel in which he had been living and was forced to wander, further weakening him in his old age.[44]

With the Nazi advance into Pinsk on July 4, 1941, an already dire situation was made even more terrifying: Jews were wantonly robbed and beaten, forced to wear Stars of David, ordered to provision the German occupiers, forbidden to leave the city, and detained for labor or ransom. About a month later, on August 5–7, the first Aktion took place, in which the Nazis murdered approximately eight thousand Jewish men outside the city. The following May 1, a ghetto meant to concentrate the approximately twenty thousand remaining Jews was established in the poorest and most crowded part of town; this was later almost completely liquidated in the second Aktion of October 29–November 1, 1942.[45]

What became of Walkin and Epstein during this frightful time? Theories about each man’s demise abound. R. Samuel David refers to his father on several occasions with the acronym reserved for martyrs, H[ashem] y[ikkom] d[amo], following his name.[46] Indeed, at least two Pinsk natives have written that R. Aaron perished together with his flock (presumably in one of the two major Aktionen).[47] Others have hazarded guesses dating his passing to around Passover 1941 or to the summer of 1942.[48] Similarly, as surveyed recently in part by Shemaryah Gershuni, hypotheses regarding Epstein’s date of death range from 1940 to 1942 and, regarding the circumstances of his death, from natural to painful to violent.[49]

In his letter, Paktor himself could not say what had happened to Walkin, while with respect to Epstein, he claimed that he had died in the Pinsk ghetto (he, too, addsHashem yikkom damam after mentioning them).[50] However, so far as I have been able to ascertain, and as already pointed out by Gershuni, the only eyewitness testimony to have come down to us – that of a nurse named Mila/Michla Ratnowska (b. 1916) who, together with her mother Zlata (1890–1962) and four others, survived the Nazi occupation of Pinsk in hiding – records that both men died (at home) due to illness in the winter of 1941–1942.[51] This timing is corroborated, if only implicitly, by the absence of Walkin and Epstein from the list of over eighteen thousand Jews living in the Pinsk ghetto, drawn up by the Germans “sometime in 1942.”[52] Until additional evidence surfaces, it would seem prudent to accept this as the most reliable version of the events leading up to the passing of these great men, about whom we can say (with a bit of poetic license) that they were “beloved and cherished in their lifetimes, and they never parted, even in death” (II Sam. 1:23).

Conclusion

Like the giants about whom they wrote, Shurin, Dickman, and Paktor have all passed on (in 2012, 2011,[53] and 2003, respectively). How fortunate we are, though, that their memories are preserved for us in this nay (new) bintl briv! Through these simple documents – penned in an age (not too long ago) when people still took the time to correspond thoughtfully with journalists after reading and reflecting on their essays – we are able to reconstruct, if only partially, the lives and deeds of some of the most prominent leaders of Eastern European Jewry in a prewar world now lost.

* I would like to thank Yehuda Geberer for respectfully commenting that he felt I had made a mistake in the first part of this essay, in which I had identified the Chaim Lieberman who assisted Shurin in landing a job at the Forverts as “the famed historian and bibliophile” who lived 1892–1991 (and who often spelled his name Haim Liberman in English). While Geberer is almost certainly correct that Shurin was actually helped by the man of the same name (1890–1963) who, according to his entry in the Leksikon fun forverts shrayber zint 1897, 42-43, worked as a teacher of Yiddish literature and Forverts Yiddish literary critic, I was influenced (apparently unduly so) in my (mis)identification by Yisroel Besser who, in his Mishpacha article (p. 30), writes as follows: “He went to meet the person he considers the greatest Orthodox writer of the century, Chaim Lieberman. Lieberman was a bibliophile, researcher, and historian, who suggested that young Shurin leave him some writings to peruse.”

I also wish to thank Yehudah Zirkind for kindly bringing to my attention another Yiddish-language memoir about the Hafets Hayyim, in which the author, a Radin native, tells a number of interesting stories about the great sage and also notes that he passed away “before reaching his ninety-fourth birthday”; see Abrashka-Kives Rogovski, “Der khofets-khayim in radin,” Oksforder yidish 3 (1995): 193-200, at col. 200.

[1] Aaron B. Shurin, “Der toes fun estraykhishn keyzer,” Forverts (July 5, 1996): 9, 20. [2] See Baruch ha-Levi Epstein, Sefer mekor barukh, pt. 2 (Vilna: Romm, 1928), 515a-b, citing what he heard from Isaac Hirsch Weiss of Vienna (1815–1905). Epstein refers to the ruler as Franz Joseph II, but in point of fact the relevant Austrian emperor at the time was Franz Joseph I (whose official grand title, interestingly, included the style “King of ”). [3] The quotation of the original Yiddish here is not exact but is certainly close enough. [4] I have so far been unable to locate the passage referred to. [5] Jacob-Alter Slutzky was a prominent Orthodox lay leader of the Jewish community of Pinsk who was s/elected to serve on the city council at several points during the interwar period when Pinsk was under Polish rule; see Azriel Shohet, The Jews of Pinsk, 1881 to 1941, ed. Mark Jay Mirsky and Moshe Rosman, trans. Faigie Tropper and Moshe Rosman (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2012), 469-470, 552-556, 559, 580-581. For the original Hebrew, see Wolf Zeev Rabinowitsch (ed.), Pinsk: sefer edut ve-zikkaron li-kehillat pinsk-karlin, vol. 1, pt. 2 (Tel Aviv; : Irgun Yotse’ei Pinsk-Karlin bi-Medinat Yisra’el, 1977; also available through the New York Public Library Yizkor Book online portal [accessed August 19, 2019]), using the index. See also Slutzky’s mini-bio in Nachman Tamir (Mirski) (ed.), Pinsk: sefer edut ve-zikkaron li-kehillat pinsk-karlin, vol. 2 (Tel Aviv: Irgun Yotse’ei Pinsk-Karlin bi-Medinat Yisra’el, 1966; also available through the New York Public Library Yizkor Book online portal [accessed August 19, 2019]), 538, where it is noted that Slutzky, like Epstein, was a member of Netsiv’s family (see below) and that he had two daughters, Zhenya and Eve. Based on a daf-ed filed by the former’s sister-in-law, Sonia Goberman (accessed August 19, 2019), it appears that Zhenya was the one who worked in the Jewish division. For Epstein’s endorsement of Slutzky during a campaign season, see Eyn“ goldene keyt fun maysim toyvim,” Unzer pinsker lebn 3,42 (102) (October 16, 1936): 5. [6] An old Pinsker tradition has it that the Jewish community was founded some time in the tenth century; see Benzion Hoffman (ed.), Toyznt yor pinsk (New York: Pinsker Branch 210, Workmen’s Circle, 1941), ix-x (notice the book’s title), and Tamir, Pinsk, 249, 252. Some have averred that an exact date for the start of the community cannot be established at present, given the number of times the Great Synagogue, and any historical documents it may have housed, burned down (on which, see n. 8 below); see, e.g., Saul Mendel ha-Levi Rabinowitsch, “Al pinsk-karlin ve-yosheveihen,” in Judah ha- Levi Levick and Dovberush Yeruchamsohn (eds.),Talpiyyot (me’assef-sifruti) (Berdychiv: Joseph Hayyim Zablinsky, 1895), 7-17, at p. 7. In any event, the current mainstream position holds that it began around 1506, the year in which a privilege issued by Fyodor Ivanovich Yaroslavich, Prince of Pinsk, granted local Jews land for a synagogue and cemetery in perpetuity; see Mordechai Nadav, The Jews of Pinsk, 1506 to 1880, ed. Mark Jay Mirsky and Moshe Rosman, trans. Moshe Rosman and Faigie Tropper (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2008), 13-14. [7] For a similar story, see Hillel Seidman, “Ha-rav r. barukh epstein – pinsk,” in Isaac Lewin (ed.), Elleh ezkerah: osef toledot kedoshei [5]700-[5]705, vol. 1 (New York: Research Institute of Religious Jewry, Inc., 1956), 142-149, at p. 145; reprinted with some variations in Seidman’sIshim she- hikkarti: demuyyot me-avar karov be-mizrah eiropah (Jerusalem: Mossad Harav Kook, 1970), 108-116, at p. 111. Relatedly, see the Rosh Hashanah greetings sent to Epstein by the typesetters and printers of the Pinsker vort 2,40 (86) (September 30, 1932): 1, and of ibid. 3,38 (138) (September 20, 1933): 1. [8] For some of the turbulent history of the Great Synagogue of Pinsk, which fell victim to fires on multiple occasions, see Nadav, The Jews of Pinsk, 1506 to 1880, 463-465; Shohet, The Jews of Pinsk, 1881 to 1941, 217-220, 300-301, 463, 648, 656; and Tamir, Pinsk, 249-252. For photographs of the synagogue, see here and here (accessed August 19, 2019). For a map of Pinsk from 1864 illustrating the location of the Great Synagogue, see Hoffman, Toyznt yor pinsk, 88-89 (in Yiddish), and Nadav, The Jews of Pinsk, 1506 to 1880, 498-499 (in English). For later maps of Jewish Pinsk, see Hoffman, Toyznt yor pinsk, 232-233, and Tamir, Pinsk, foldout preceding p. 97. [9] Epstein generally prayed not in the Great Synagogue but in the Pinsker Kloyz, a beit with a firmly mitnaggedic orientation. Ze’ev Rabinowitsch reports that, “in years past, it was said that the walls of the Pinsker Kloyz do not give out in deference to R. Baruch Epstein…” (“Akhsanye shel toyre,” in Tamir, Pinsk, 264). See also Rabinowitsch, Pinsk, 412. [10] See Gen. 27:33. [11] In Yiddish, one appropriate response to a greeting like gut shabes! is gam atem!, using the plural atem even when only one person is being addressed. See Sol Steinmetz, Dictionary of Jewish Usage: A Guide to the Use of Jewish Terms (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2005), 53. [12] American Yiddish will often distinguish between Orthodox and non-Orthodox (particularly Reform) rabbis by referring to the former as rov/rabonim (singular/plural) and the latter as rabay/rabays (singular/plural). As essentially transliterations from the English, these terms for non- Orthodox rabbis are usually intended somewhat derogatorily in the mouths of frum Yiddish speakers. [13] Oyb nisht nokh hekher or, as the phrase appears here in Hebrew, Im lo le-ma‘lah mi-zeh, is the title of a short story by the famous Yiddish and Hebrew classicist I.L. Peretz (1852–1915) about a Litvak who refuses to believe that the Nemirover Rebbe (a fictional character probably based on Rabbi Nathan Sternharz of Niemirów [1780–1845]) ascends on High during the annual period of selihot, as his Hasidim claim he does, instead of coming to the synagogue. Determined to find out where the Rebbe disappears to, he hides under the Rebbe’s bed one night and is amazed to discover that the Rebbe wakes early in the morning, dresses as a Polish peasant, and goes out to the forest to chop firewood for poor bedridden Jewish widows. He thereupon decides to join the Rebbe’s Hasidim, and from then on whenever anyone claims that the Rebbe flies up to Heaven to petition on behalf of his flock before Rosh Hashanah, this Litvak-turned-Hasid responds, “If not even higher than that.”

The story was first published in Yiddish in 1900 as “Oyb nisht nokh hekher! A khsidishe ertseylung,” Der yud 2,1 (January 11, 1900): 12-13. The following year, it appeared, in the author’s own Hebrew adaptation, as “Im lo le-ma‘lah mi-zeh,”Ha- dor 1,17 (1901): 207-211; for the Hebrew text, see here (accessed August 19, 2019). For editions using modern Yiddish orthography, see here and here (accessed August 19, 2019). For side-by-side Yiddish with English translation, see “Oyb nisht nokh hekher/And Maybe Even Higher,” in Itche Goldberg and Eli Katz (eds.), Selected Stories: Bilingual Edition, trans. Eli Katz (New York: Zhitlowsky Foundation for Jewish Culture, 1991), 270-281. For extensive discussions of the story’s subversive messages, historical sources, and inspirations, see Menashe Unger, “Mekoyrim fun peretses folkstimlekhe geshikhtn,” Yidishe kultur 7,3-4 (March–April 1945): 54-59, at pp. 56-57; Samuel Niger, Y.l. perets: zayn lebn, zayn firndike perzenlekhkeyt, zayne hebreishe un yidishe shriftn, zayn virkung (Buenos Aires: Confederacion pro Cultura Judia, 1952), 286-289; and Nicham Ross, Margalit temunah ba- hol: y.l. perets u-ma‘asiyyot hasidim (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 2013), 17-83 (ch. 2).

In our context, the phrase is deployed by Paktor’s rabbinic interlocutor to express his realization that Epstein was even greater than he had originally thought. [14] Paktor apparently also shared this story about Epstein and the Folkstsaytung with Mark Jay Mirsky; see the latter’s introduction to Shohet, The Jews of Pinsk, 1881 to 1941, xxix- xxx.

[15] mAvot 1:4. [16] The Hebrew phrase deployed here ismar’eh kohen, a reference to the requirement that those afflicted with biblical tsara‘at must consult with a priest before the healing/atonement process can move forward (see Lev. 13). The expression, as used by Paktor, does double-duty by playing on the title of the well-known piyyut recited on Yom Kippur, which refers to the priest’s (radiant) appearance, not that of the biblical skin disease. [17] Barukh she-amar was the last book Epstein printed before he passed away. It originally appeared in Pinsk in 1939 (publisher: Drukarnia Wolowełskiego), but, according to Aaron Z. Tarshish, Rabbi barukh ha-levi epstein[,] ba‘al “” (Jerusalem: Mossad Harav Kook, 1967), 189, even though the work achieved great popularity within the city, it did not spread beyond. Epstein sent a single copy to the famous Strashun Library in Vilna, which then passed it on to YIVO, and the latter institution transferred it to its headquarters in New York (see the online catalog record for this copy here [accessed August 19, 2019]). This, then, was apparently the only exemplar of the book to survive the war, and when it was discovered at YIVO some time thereafter, it was used to print the photo-offset reproduction published in Tel Aviv in three parts: vol. 1 on the haggadah (1965), vol. 2 on Pirkei avot (1965), and vol. 3 on the itself (1968). (For a slightly different account of Barukh she-amar’s original publication and rediscovery after the war, see Seidman, “Ha-rav r. barukh epstein,” 148. Based on a helpful personal communication from Lyudmila Sholokhova, Director of the YIVO Library, it would appear that Tarshish’s version of the story is the more accurate one.)

I assume that Paktor owned a copy of the Tel Aviv reprint, not the original Pinsk edition. [18] See the obituary for Rev. Simon Paktor published in the Albany Times Union (March 2–3, 2003), available here (accessed August 19, 2019).

Franz J. Beranek, in his Das Pinsker Jiddisch und seine Stellung im gesamtjiddischen Sprachraum (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter & Co., 1958), discusses certain distinctive features of the dialect of Yiddish spoken in Pinsk. Upon examination of our letter, we find some of the markers of this litvish (Northeastern Yiddish) dialect reflected in such forms as eygn (eyes; see p. 33, §38, 1), greyser (large; see p. 25, §26), arobgegangen (descended; see p. 53, §48, 2a), em (him; see p. 21, §18, 1), etc. (I suspect that his use of the forms idishe [Jewish/Yiddish], reydn [to speak], and fardrosig/hartsig/shtendig/etc. [displeased/sincerely/always/etc.], instead of the expected yidishe, redn, and fardrosik/harstik/shtendik/etc., is the result of Paktor following common journalistic orthographic conventions and is not reflective of his actual pronunciation of those words.) (For a recent look at Beranek’s relationship with some of his Yiddish scholarly contemporaries, see Kalman Weiser, ‘One“ of Hitler’s Professors’: Max Weinreich and Solomon Birnbaum confront Franz Beranek,” Jewish Quarterly Review 108,1 [2018]: 106-124.) [19] See Mordechai Nadav, “Pinsk,” in Shmuel Spector (ed.), Pinkas ha-kehillot: polin, vol. 5 (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 1990), 276-299, at p. 276 (available in English translation here [accessed August 19, 2019]). See also Dov Levin, Tekufah be-sograyim, 1939–1941: temurot be-hayyei ha- yehudim, ba-ezorim she-suppehu li-berit-ha-mo‘atsot bi- tehillat milhemet ha-olam ha-sheniyyah(Jerusalem: Hebrew University of Jerusalem; Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 1980), 26, for a chart comparing the populations of cities in eastern Poland in 1931. [20] See the aforementioned obituary for Paktor published in the Albany Times Union. On NKVD activity in Pinsk during the Soviet occupation, see Pesah Pakacz, “Shilton ha-soviyyetim be-pinsk,” in Tamir, Pinsk, 315-320, at pp. 317-320, and Shohet, The Jews of Pinsk, 1881 to 1941, 639-650. On NKVD activity among occupied Polish Jewry in general, see Yosef Litvak, Pelitim yehudim mi-polin bi-berit ha-mo‘atsot[,] 1939–1946 (Jerusalem: Hebrew University of Jerusalem; Tel Aviv: Ghetto Fighters’ House; Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 1988), 118-156. As noted by Eliyana R. Adler, the similar situation of Baltic Jews exiled to the east by the Soviets demonstrates that had they not suffered that fate, they most likely would have fallen victim to the Nazis when the latter invaded the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941; see her “Exile and Survival: Lithuanian Jewish Deportees in the Soviet Union,” in Michal Ben Ya’akov, Gershon Greenberg, and Sigalit Rosmarin (eds.), Ha-kayits ha-nora ha-hu…: 70 shanah le-hashmadat ha- kehillot ha-yehudiyyot be-arei ha-sadeh be-lita: historiyyah, hagut, re’aliyyah (Jerusalem: Efrata College Publications, 2013), xxvii-xlix, at pp. xlv-xlvi. [21] See the Holocaust remembrance seminar announcement published in the Clifton Journal (October 30, 2015), p. 36 (available here [accessed August 19, 2019]; make sure to click “View Details”). The Air Passenger Manifest recording the Paktors’ arrival in New York, available to subscribers through the MyHeritage database (accessed June 20, 2019), is dated May 19, 1952; curiously, it lists Simon’s wife’s name as Sabina. [22] According to Michael C. Duke, “Historian Is CBY Scholar In Residence, Oct. 8–10,” Jewish Herald-Voice (October 7, 2010) (accessed August 19, 2019), Paktor was trained as a rabbi. While I could find no direct corroborating evidence for this claim elsewhere, it is true that he is sometimes referred to in writing with the title “Reverend.” His work at the shul, for which he came to be well loved and respected, included serving as cantor and Torah reader, running the daily minyanim, preparing youth for their bar and bat mitzvahs, and even teaching Yiddish classes; Stephen M. Berk, Year of Crisis, Year of Hope: Russian Jewry and the Pogroms of 1881–1882 (Westport, CN; London: Greenwood Press, 1985), xv, credits Paktor with introducing him to the world of Yiddish scholarship. See also the aforementioned obituary in the Albany Times Union and the above article by Duke. I thank Robert Kasman, Stephen M. Berk, and Mendel Siegel for the information they provided me on Paktor’s life and service to the shul in personal communications. [23] See the obituary for Anne Paktor published here (accessed August 19, 2019). [24] Henry Skoburn, The Agudat Achim Chronicle: Commemorating 120 Years[,] 1892–2012 (Schenectady: Congregation Agudat Achim, 2012), 10, 12. [25] The only book-length biography of Epstein is Tarshish’s (above, n. 17), though, as noted by Eitam Henkin, “Perakim be- toledot ba‘al arukh ha-shulhan: mishpahto ve- tse’etsa’av,” Yeshurun 27 (2012): 879-895, at p. 879, this work is in need of a thorough update that takes a scholarly- critical approach and considers the abundant literature on Epstein and his oeuvre that has appeared over the past fifty- plus years. For a shorter essay on Epstein’s life, see Seidman’s “Ha-rav r. barukh epstein” (above, n. 7). And for a famous photograph of Epstein in his younger years, see Hoffman, Toyznt yor pinsk, 335; reproduced (seemingly with modifications) as the frontispiece of Tarshish’s biography and in Zvi Kaplan, “Hiddushim ba-halakhah shel gedolei pinsk ve- karlin,” in Rabinowitsch, Pinsk, 367-406, at p. 393. (I find it hard to believe that the person in the portrait accompanying the Epstein mini-biography printed in Tamir, Pinsk, 489-491, is actually him but would be happy to be corrected.) [26] See Baruch ha-Levi Epstein,Sefer mekor barukh, introduction (Vilna: Romm, 1928), 2 n. 1. [27] The Folkstsaytung (People’s Paper) was the official organ of the General Jewish Workers Union in Poland, also known as the Bund. As such, it espoused a secularist, socialist Weltanschauung and polemicized against Communists, Zionists, and Orthodox Jews, among others. In addition to covering politics and workers’ issues, the paper devoted space to science and technology, sports, culture, and (Jewish and non-Jewish) literature. At its height in 1935, the Folkstsaytung had an approximate circulation of eighteen thousand. See Jacob Shalom Hertz, “‘Folkstsaytung’ 1918–1939,” in David Flinker, Mordechai Tsanin, Shalom Rosenfeld et al. (eds.), Di yidishe prese vos iz geven (Tel Aviv: Veltfarband fun di Yidishe Zhurnalistn, 1975), 151-169, and Boris Kotlerman, “Folks-tsaytung,” trans. I. Michael Aronson, in the digitized YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe (accessed August 19, 2019). According to Seidman, “Ha-rav r. barukh epstein,” 144-145:

[Epstein] had an expansive [intellectual] horizon. He was interested in and familiar with all that was happening in the world. He read Russian and German newspapers. He also visited Vienna and Berlin in the ’20s, meeting with scholars and intellectuals there, and maintained an epistolary correspondence with the towering Jewish figures of the generation. When they visited Pinsk, he would host them. In 1914, Rabbi Hayyim Soloveichik visited Pinsk and stayed with Rabbi Baruch Epstein for Shabbat.

In addition to regularly reading the paper, Epstein also contributed to a number of (rabbinic and general Jewish) periodicals, including Havatselet, Yagdil torah, Ha- levanon, Ha-maggid, Ha-melits, and Ha-pardes; see Baruch ha- Levi Epstein, Sefer mekor barukh, pt. 3 (Vilna: Romm, 1928), 701b, and Shemaryah Gershuni, “Rabbi barukh epstein – ba‘al ha-torah temimah: beirur nesibbot petirato,” Yeshurun 29 (2013): 885-892, at pp. 886 n. 13, 889 n. 25. He even wrote a weekly column on the parashah for the Pinsker shtime; see Seidman, “Ha-rav r. barukh epstein,” 145, 148-149. While I have not examined issues of the Pinsker shtime, I know that Epstein’s parashah columns in a different local paper, Pinsker vort, were entitled Fun gebentshtn kval (=Mi-makor barukh); see the announcement in the February 20, 1931 edition, p. 1.

[28] For a summary of some of the halakhic literature on the topic and a defense (in most cases) of the widespread contemporary disregard of this prohibition, see Eitam Henkin, “Keri’at divrei defus be-shabbat be-yameineu le-or din shetarei hedyotot,” Melilot 3 (2010): 49-63 (the pagination in the printed version is slightly different from that of what I presume to be the prepublication copy available on Henkin’s website). [29] Indeed, the Hafets Hayyim was particularly vociferous in his opposition to the practice of many of his contemporaries to regularly read newspapers, not only because of their often- improper content (heresy, scoffing,leshon ha-ra, licentiousness, etc.), but also due to the drain on one’s time involved in their consumption. See, e.g., Israel Meir ha- Kohen, Kunteres zekhor le-miryam (Piotrków: Hanokh Henekh Fallman, 1925), 8b; Aryeh Leib Poupko, Mikhtevei ha-rav hafets hayyim z[ekher] ts[addik] l[i-]: korot hayyav, derakhav, nimmukav ve-sihotav, 1st ed. (Warsaw: B. Liebeskind, 1937), 96-98 (second pagination; no. 42); ibid., 42-43 (third pagination; par. 82); idem, Mikhtevei ha-rav hafets hayyim z[ekher] ts[addik] l[i-berakhah], ed. S. Artsi, 2 vols. (Bnei Brak: n.p., 1986), 2:157-158. Relatedly, see also idem, Mikhtevei, 1st ed., 27-29 (second pagination; no. 9). It is clear, however, that the Hafets Hayyim was, at times, exposed to periodical literature; for a letter he sent to the Haredi paper Kol ya‘akov, responding to an earlier issue thereof, see idem, Mikhtevei, ed. S. Artsi, 1:297-298 (no. 122). [30] See Baruch ha-Levi Epstein, Sefer mekor barukh, pt. 4 (Vilna: Romm, 1928), 895b, 897b-898a. Epstein’s report about his uncle’s behavior in this connection has aroused a good deal of controversy, as discussed by, e.g., Eliezer Brodt, “The Netziv, Reading Newspapers on Shabbos & Censorship,” Seforim Blog, pt. 1 (March 5, 2014) and pt. 2 (April 29, 2015). Like Brodt, Marc B. Shapiro, “Clarifications of Previous Posts,” Seforim Blog (January 16, 2008) (accessed August 19, 2019), believes that one can rely upon this account. On the general question of the historical accuracy of Sefer mekor barukh, see, e.g., Eitam Henkin, “R. yehi’el mikhl epstein ve-ha-‘tsemah tsedek’ ba-adashat ha- sefer ‘mekor barukh’,” Alonei mamre 123 (Winter 2011): 189-215, and Moshe Maimon, “Od be-inyan ba‘al ha-torah temimah u-sefarav,” Kovets ets hayyim 12,1 (2018): 409-420 (among many others). [31] Probably the two most authoritative biographies of Walkin to date are that appended to the beginning of the second volume of the New York, 1951 photo-offset edition of his responsa, Sefer she’elot u-teshuvot zekan aharon, composed by his son, Rabbi Samuel David (on whom, see below), and entitled “Toledot maran ha-ga’on ha-mehabber z[ekher] ts[addik] v[e- ]k[adosh] l[i-berakhah]”; and Hillel Seidman, “Ha-rav r. aharon walkin – pinsk,” in Lewin,Elleh ezkerah, 64-71; reprinted with some variations in Seidman’sIshim she- hikkarti, 20-28. Eliezer Katzman used these two sources in compiling much of his own profile of Walkin – “Ne‘imut ha- torah: ha-g[a’on] r[av] aharon walkin z[ekher] ts[addik] v[e- ]k[adosh] l[i-berakhah,] a[v] b[eit] d[in] pinsk[,] ba‘al beit aharon, zekan aharon v[e-]ku[llei],”Yeshurun 11 (2002): 891-904; 12 (2003): 727-739 – but added some material not found in either. (It seems that unacknowledged verbatim use was made of Seidman’s and/or Katzman’s work in the Walkin biography printed in Daniel Bitton’s editions of Sefer beit aharon on Bava kamma [Jerusalem: Mekhon ha-Ma’or, 2003] and of Sefer hoshen aharon [Jerusalem: Mekhon ha-Ma’or, 2005].) For additional appreciations of Walkin’s Torah, see Kaplan, “Hiddushim ba-halakhah,” 399-406, an earlier version of which had appeared as “Ba‘al ha-‘battim’,” Ha-tsofeh 10159 (June 24, 1966): 5, 7; and of his religious persona, see the excerpt from Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik’s letter to R. Samuel David, dated 8 Shevat [5]712 (February 4, 1952) and printed at the foot of the introduction to Aaron Walkin, Sefer beit aharon al massekhet gittin, 2nd ed. (New York: S. Walkin, 1955).

For photographs of Walkin, see Anon., Shlukhim“ fun agudes yisroel shoyn do,” Yidishes tageblat (December 11, 1913): 8; Anon., “Visiting Rabbis Explain International Jewish Union,” The Pittsburg [sic] Press (January 27, 1914): 3; Anon., “Noted European Rabbis Greeted by Orthodox Jews of Greater Boston,” The Boston Post (February 7, 1914): 16; Kaplan, “Hiddushim ba-halakhah,” 399; Moshe Rosman, “Pinsk,” in the digitized YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe (accessed August 19, 2019); Marc B. Shapiro, “A Tale of Two Lost Archives,” Seforim Blog (August 12, 2008) (accessed August 19, 2019); the Jewish Pinsk memorial page here (accessed August 19, 2019) (Walkin is leading the Agudah procession); and David Zaretsky, “Rabbah ha-aharon shel pinsk: le-hofa‘ato me-hadash shel ha-sefer sh[e’elot] u- t[eshuvot] ‘zekan aharon’,” in Zikhram li-berakhah: ge’onei ha-dorot ve-ishei segullah (Israel: n.p., 2015?), 33-39. [32] See Jacob Goldman’s obituary for Sophia Epstein, entitled “Allon bakhut,” in Ha-tsefirah 26,60 (March 24, 1899): 293. See also the report issued by Aaron Tänzer, “Von Brest-Litowsk nach Pinsk,” Allgemeine Zeitung des Judentums 80,1 (January 7, 1916): 6-10, at p. 9, in which he mentions Epstein’s widowhood and the bank closure. Of Epstein’s four children – Cecilia (Tsile), Meir, Eleazar Moses, and Fania – Tänzer makes specific reference only to the last, suggesting that the other three were no longer in Pinsk by that point. Indeed, we know that Cecilia’s husband Nathan (Nahum) Bakstansky (Bakst) arrived at Ellis Island in 1907 (see his Geni record here [accessed August 19, 2019]); that they and their children Aaron and Jacob were registered voters as of 1924 (see Anon., “List of Registered Voters for the Year 1924: Borough of —Sixteenth Assembly District,” The City Record [October 16, 1924]: 2); and that Cecilia is registered as the copyright holder for the New York, 1928 edition of her father’s Torah temimah (see Anon., Catalogue of Copyright Entries: Part 1, Group 1 […] for the Year 1929 [Washington: United States Government Printing Office, 1930], 1825-1826). In addition, according to family records made available to Henkin, Eleazar Moses had moved to Leningrad (present-day St. Petersburg, Russia) (see the corrections appended to the online version of his aforementioned article, “Perakim be- toledot”). And if Seidman is correct that one of Epstein’s sons wound up working as a physician in New York (see the Ishim she-hikkarti version of his article, p. 110), that may mean Meir, like Cecilia, made it to America as well. (I find the idea that Meir and Fania died in their youth, as reported on Henkin’s website, difficult to believe, considering that Tänzer makes no mention of this in 1916, based on a visit to Pinsk in November 1915; see also next note. But until additional information becomes available, this will be virtually impossible to definitively reject [or accept].) In this connection, see also Maimon, “Od be-inyan,” 418-419, for an interesting interpretation of a passage in Sefer mekor barukh, pt. 4. [33] Fania was instrumental in founding a Jewish girls’ gymnasium in Pinsk in the fall of 1915, reportedly with her father’s approval. See Tänzer, “Von Brest-Litowsk,” 9, and Shohet, The Jews of Pinsk, 1881 to 1941, 34, 183, 350-351, 596-597; see also Tamir, Pinsk, 510-512. She apparently passed away during World War II, given that she (like her father) is listed among the martyrs of Pinsk in Tamir, Pinsk, 627. (It is unclear to me whether or not the Meir cited there was R. Baruch’s son.) [34] As of Tänzer’s visit, it seems that Fania attended to the needs of her father’s house (“Von Brest-Litowsk,” 9). Tarshish notes, however, that at a certain point he began living in a local hotel, whose proprietors took care of him honorably and with dedication (Rabbi, 127; though cf. below, n. 38). Seidman adds that he ate his meals at a restaurant in the city while living in the hotel (“Ha-rav r. barukh epstein,” 144). Three hotels, all under Jewish ownership, are named in the “List of Subscribers of the Telephone Network of the Postal and Telegraph Directorate in Wilno in 1939” (select p. 52 from the drop-down menu) (accessed August 19, 2019). I have not been able to ascertain at which of these three Epstein lived. [35] See Kaplan, “Hiddushim ba-halakhah,” 399; see also Ben- Mem, “Ha-ga’on r. aharon walkin z[ekher] ts[addik] l[i- berakhah],” in Tamir, Pinsk, 499-500, who notes that Walkin eulogized Rabbi Jacob Mazeh of Moscow (1859–1924) within the first year of his arrival in the city. Cf. the introduction to Aaron Walkin, Sefer beit aharon al massekhet bava kamma (Vilna: Shraga Feivel Garber, 1923), which the author signed (seemingly in 1923) while living in the Jewish community of Amtshislav (present-day Mscisłaŭ, Belarus). Cf. also Anon., “Horav r. arn wolkin vegn zayn raykher lebns- fargangenheyt,” Unzer grodner ekspres 2,79 (April 2, 1929): 1, the second part of an interview with Walkin, which claims that he emigrated from Russia in 1922; as well as Aaron B. Shurin, “Tsvey shayles utshuves sforim fun letstn pinsker rov,” Forverts (October 14, 1977): 3, 6, at p. 3, who writes that Walkin came to Pinsk in 1924. (On his way from Russia to Poland, he had an extended stopover in Danzig; see M. Lyubart, “Vegn yidishn lebn in danzig,” Pinsker vort 2,11 [57] [March 11, 1932]: 5.) [36] See Anon., “Horav walkin oysgeveylt als rov fun pinsker kehile,” Pinsker vort 3,32 (132) (August 11, 1933): 6, and Shohet, The Jews of Pinsk, 1881 to 1941, 571. Cf. Ben-Mem, “Ha-ga’on r. aharon walkin,” 500, who gives the date as [5]688 (1927–1928). (His election to the rabbinate of neighboring Karlin had taken place over a year earlier; see Anon., “Horav walkin als karliner rov,” Pinsker vort 2,6 [52] [February 5, 1932]: 6.)

Relatedly, see Dov Rabin (ed.), Grodnah-Grodne (Jerusalem: Encyclopaedia of the Jewish Diaspora, 1973; also available through the New York Public Library Yizkor Book online portal [accessed August 19, 2019]), col. 352, on the brief period in 1929 when the Jews of Grodno – then part of Poland but now in Belarus – considered appointing Walkin as the chief rabbi of their community (an episode that deserves fuller historiographic exploration); see also Anon., Kehile-rat“ geg[n] horav wolkin,” Unzer grodner ekspres 2,88 (April 12, 1929): 15. [37] For Epstein, see Tarshish, Rabbi, 70-80 (relationship with Netsiv), 84-89 (marriage at approx. 18), 120-126 (visit to America), 134-135, 148-149 (Zionist sympathies) (all based primarily on passages in Sefer mekor barukh); Shohet, The Jews of Pinsk, 1881 to 1941, 536 (Zionist sympathies); and Gershuni, “Rabbi barukh epstein,” 890-892 (visit to America). For Walkin, see his undated introduction to Sefer beit aharon al massekhet bava kamma (visit to America); the postscript to his undated introduction to the commentary Saviv li-yere’av, vol. 1 (Pinsk: Drukarnia Wolowełskiego, 1935), and the wishes of nehamah printed in Dos naye pinsker vort 7,51 (356) (December 3, 1937): 6 (personal misfortune); his son’s “Toledot maran ha-ga’on ha-mehabber” (relationship with Netsiv, marriage at approx. 18, visit to America); and Ben- Mem, “Ha-ga’on r. aharon walkin,” 500, and Rabin,Grodnah- Grodne, col. 352 (Zionist sympathies). Relatedly, Walkin’s son Hayyim married the daughter of Rabbi Abraham Isaac ha-Kohen Kook (1865–1935); see the mazl tov wishes on the occasion of their engagement printed in Do’ar ha-yom 8,182 (April 28, 1926): 1, and in Ha-arets 9,2041 (May 2, 1926): 4.

For a lecture delivered in Yiddish during Walkin’s visit to the United States, undertaken December 1913–February 1914 in order to help establish Agudath Israel in America, see Aaron Walkin, Di printsipen un tsveke fun agudes yisroel: fortrog gehalten fir amerikaner idn (New York: Office of Agudath Israel, n.d.). (During his trip, Walkin visited the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary at 156 Henry Street; for his comparison of the yeshivah with that of Volozhin [!], see Anon., “Agudes yisroel shlukhim in yeshives rabeynu yitskhok elkhonen,” Der morgen zhurnal [December 24, 1913]: 4. Cf. Anon., “Horav wolkin begaystert fun idishe anshtalten in amerika,” Der morgen zhurnal [January 13, 1914]: 4.)

Tragically, Epstein and Walkin shared another fate: each printed a sefer in 1939 in Pinsk, only one copy of which survived the war and was later used for photo-offset reprinting. On Epstein’s Barukh she-amar, see above, n. 17, and on Walkin’s Sefer beit aharon al massekhet gittin, see his son’s introduction to the 1955 edition. [38] See the address given for Epstein on the title page of his Sefer tosefet berakhah ha-kolel he‘arot ve-he’arot le- sefer “megillat sefer” al hamesh megillot ha-kodem (Krakow: [Michael Horowicz], 1930) (the same address appears on the title pages of the five parts of Sefer gishmei berakhah that appeared at the same press in the same year). It is unclear to me at what point he moved into the hotel referred to by Tarshish (see above, n. 34), though it seems, based on the aforementioned “List of Subscribers,” that as of 1939 a fellow named Dawid Giler was living at Epstein’s former address on Dominikańska Street. [39] For several biographical sketches of R. Samuel David, the only child of R. Aaron to survive the war, see Samuel David Walkin, Sefer ramat shemu’el al ha-torah: sefer be- reshit (Jerusalem: Walkin Family, 1982), 11-27; the unpaginated introductions to idem,Sefer shevivei or: likkutim, ed. Samuel David Walkin [the grandson], nd2 ed. (Jerusalem: n.p., 2011); and idem, Sparks of Light: Jewels of Wisdom from the Chofetz Chaim ZT”L (New York: Kol Publishers, 2012), 83-86. For descriptions of R. Samuel David’s efforts on behalf of his fellow Pinskers, see Rabinowitsch, Pinsk, 547, and Tamir, Pinsk, 598-599. Unsurprisingly, given the interconnectedness of Lithuanian rabbinic dynasties, R. Samuel David became close with both the Hafets Hayyim and R. Soloveitchik; for photographs of him with the former, see the plates at the end of Sparks of Light, and with the latter, see Marc B. Shapiro, “Assorted Matters,” Seforim Blog (February 17, 2016) (accessed August 19, 2019).

[40] See Samuel David Walkin, Sefer kitvei abba mari: hiddushim u-be’urim al tanakh u-midrashav, ed. Moishe Joel Walkin (Kew Gardens: Beth Aron, 1989), 345; see also pp. 73, 132, 160, 266, 497, 512. For other instances of R. Samuel David quoting Epstein, often preceded by honorifics, see idem, Sefer ramat shemu’el al ha-torah, 108-109, and idem, Sefer kitvei abba mari: hiddushim u-be’urim al massekhtot ha-shas, u- mo‘adei ha-shanah[,] ve-nosaf aleihem derashot ve-he‘arot be- inyanei de-yoma, ed. Moishe Joel Walkin (Kew Gardens: Yeshiva Beth Aron, 1982), 33, 176, 193, 277, 314. For a reproduction of a letter written by Epstein (on his own letterhead) to R. Samuel David on the occasion of the latter’s appointment to the rabbinate of Lukatsh (present-day Lokachi, Ukraine) in 1935, see Tamir, Pinsk, 490. On the relationship between Epstein and R. Aaron, see also Seidman, “Ha-rav r. barukh epstein,” 144, 149. (Seidman, “Ha-rav r. aharon walkin,” 69, notes that Walkin opened his home and heart “to anyone suffering or in pain.” See also Zaretsky, “Rabbah ha-aharon shel pinsk,” 36. For a similar description of R. Samuel David, see Aaron B. Shurin, “Horav hagoen r. shmul wolkin, vitse prezident fun agudes horabonim, iz nifter gevorn,” Forverts [August 29, 1979]: 1, 8, at p. 1.) Another home Epstein visited was that of Yankev Epstein in Minsk; see Devora Gliksman, A Tale of Two Worlds (Brooklyn: Mesorah Publications, ltd, 2009), 113-114. [41] Shohet, The Jews of Pinsk, 1881 to 1941, 642, 648; see also Tamir, Pinsk, 319-320. [42] Walkin himself refers to this, en passant, in the introduction to Sefer beit aharon al massekhet bava kamma, saying that he was jailed bi-shevil alilah, hattat ha-kahal hu (on account of libel; it is the sin of the community). R. Samuel David, in “Toledot maran ha-ga’on ha-mehabber,” explains that his father was one of those fighting to defend Jewish tradition against the edicts of the Bolsheviks and was therefore imprisoned for about half a year. Seidman, “Ha-rav r. aharon walkin,” 67, adds (perhaps by logical deduction) that the Yevsektsiya (Jewish section of the Communist Party) was responsible for informing on him to the authorities. [43] For examples of Walkin’s wartime rabbinic activities, see Shohet, The Jews of Pinsk, 1881 to 1941, 649; Tamir, Pinsk, 320; and Seidman, “Ha-rav r. aharon walkin,” 69, 71. For his commitment especially to Torah study and creativity in this period, see the excerpt from the last letter R. Samuel David received from him printed in “Toledot maran ha-ga’on ha- mehabber,” as well as the excerpt from a letter by Rabbi (1881–1966) reproduced in the introduction to Aaron Walkin, Sefer beit aharon al massekhet kiddushin, ed. Aaron ben Moishe Joel Walkin (Queens: Aaron Walkin, n.d.). [44] See Tarshish, Rabbi, 127; see also p. 128 on Epstein’s avoidance of the Soviet authorities, even when it meant skipping meals. Zvi Gitelman, “Afterword: Pinsk in Wartime and from 1945 to the Present,” in Shohet, The Jews of Pinsk, 1881 to 1941, 652-659, at p. 653, notes that local leaders organized a committee to aid impoverished clergy, including Epstein, during this period. [45] For harrowingly detailed accounts of the fate of Pinsk Jewry during the Nazi onslaught, see Nahum Boneh (Mular), “Ha- sho’ah ve-ha-meri,” in Tamir, Pinsk, 325-388 (a Yiddish translation by Leib Morgenthau appears on pp. 389-458 and an English translation by Ellen Stepak appears online here [accessed August 19, 2019]); Nadav, “Pinsk,” 294-298; Tikva Fatal-Knaani, “The Jews of Pinsk, 1939–1943, Through the Prism of New Documentation,” trans. Naftali Greenwood, Yad Vashem Studies 29 (2001): 149-182; Gitelman, “Afterword,” 652-654; and Katharina von Kellenbach, Nahum Boneh, and Ellen Stepak, “Pinsk,” in Martin Dean with Mel Hecker (eds.), The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933–1945, vol. II, pt. B (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2012), 1442-1444. For a map of the Pinsk ghetto, see Tamir, Pinsk, 334 (in Hebrew), and here (in English) (accessed August 19, 2019). For photographs of the memorials set up on the sites of mass murder, see here (accessed August 19, 2019). [46] See, e.g., R. Samuel David’s introductions toSefer she’elot u-teshuvot zekan aharon, vol. 2 (the one entitled “Hakdamat ben ha-mehabber maran ha-ga’on z[ekher] ts[addik] l[i-berakhah]”) and to Sefer beit aharon al massekhet gittin; see also the entries on R. Aaron maintained by Yad Vashem (1, 2, 3, 4) (accessed August 19, 2019). (I am aware that Hy”d is sometimes used even when a person was not literally killed by an enemy but rather died as a[n in]direct result of enemy persecution.) Strangely, Tamir, Pinsk, 636, does not list any members of the Walkin family among the martyrs of Pinsk. [47] See Tamir, Pinsk, 500, and Zaretsky, “Rabbah ha-aharon shel pinsk,” 33, 37. For a relatively recent study of rabbinic leadership during the Holocaust, see Havi Dreifuss (Ben- Sasson), “‘Ka-tson asher ein lo ro‘eh’? rabbanim u-ma‘amadam ba-sho’ah,” in Asaf Yedidya, Nathan Cohen, and Esther Farbstein (eds.), Zikkaron ba-sefer: korot ha-sho’ah ba- mevoʼot la-sifrut ha-rabbanit (Jerusalem: Rubin Mass, 2008), 143-167. [48] See Aaron B. Shurin, “Ha-rav aharon walkin: rabbah ha- aharon shel pinsk,” in Keshet gibborim: demuyyot ba-ofek ha- yehudi shel dor aharon, vol. 3 (Jerusalem: Mossad Harav Kook, 2004), 92-97, at p. 92 (ca. Passover 1941), and Seidman, “Ha- rav r. aharon walkin,” 71 (summer 1942). [49] See Gershuni, “Rabbi barukh epstein,” 887-890. It seems that Tarshish’s version of the events (Rabbi, 128), according to which Epstein died in a Jewish hospital shortly after the Germans’ invasion in July 1941, has gained some traction. See, e.g., N.T. Erline’s epilogue in Baruch ha-Levi Epstein,My Uncle The Netziv, trans. Moshe Dombey, ed. N.T. Erline (Brooklyn: Mesorah Publications, 1988), 223; Prof. Meir Bar- Ilan’s family tree (accessed August 19, 2019); and Pnina Meislish, “Epstein, barukh, ben yehi’el mikhl,” Rabbanim she- nispu ba-sho’ah (accessed August 19, 2019). By contrast, Gitelman, “Afterword,” 728 n. 7, claims that “Epstein died a natural death in Pinsk in 1940,” while Ber Schwartz, Sefer artsot ha-hayyim (Brooklyn: B. Schwartz, 1992), 23, writes that Epstein was killed by the Nazis in 1942. Here again, Samuel David Walkin, Sefer ramat shemu’el al ha-torah, 108, refers to Epstein with the acronym Hy”d, suggesting martyrdom; see also the entries on Epstein maintained by Yad Vashem (1, 2, 3) (accessed August 19, 2019). [50] Paktor could not have directly witnessed Epstein passing away in the ghetto, as by the time of its establishment he had long been exiled to Siberia by the Soviets. Interestingly, Aaron B. Shurin, in an article published about six years after Paktor sent this letter, also writes that Epstein died in the ghetto (“Ha-rav barukh epstein: mehabber ‘torah temimah’,” in Keshet gibborim, vol. 3, pp. 38-44, at p. 44). He adds (without citing a source) that Epstein was buried in the Karlin Jewish cemetery next to the grave of Rabbi David Friedman of Karlin (1828–1915). Unfortunately, the Karlin cemetery is no longer extant, making it difficult to verify this claim; see here (accessed November 24, 2019). [51] Ratnowska’s account (committed to writing twenty years after the Holocaust) is cited by Boneh, “Ha-sho’ah ve-ha- meri,” 333. (Pnina Meislish, it should be noted, accepts this timing with respect to Walkin’s passing only; see Walkin,“ aharon, ben yosef tsevi,” Rabbanim she-nispu ba- sho’ah [accessed August 19, 2019].) Cf. Rabinowitsch, Pinsk, 399 n. 3, where he quotes slightly conflicting testimony from Ratnowska, according to which Epstein passed away “suddenly” a few weeks before the establishment of the Pinsk ghetto (which sounds more like springtime than winter). In addition, according to her, Epstein was buried in the cemetery in Pinsk, not in the Karlin cemetery as posited by Shurin (see previous note). For Ratnowska’s description of life in hiding during the war, see Boneh, “Ha-sho’ah ve-ha-meri,” 357.

Interestingly, Irina Yelenskaya places both rabbis’ deaths more specifically in January 1942 in her article on Pinsk for the Shtetl Routes project (accessed November 4, 2019), though I do not know on which of her sources she bases this date. [52] See the description of the Pinsk Ghetto Database available here (accessed August 19, 2019). By contrast, Rachel Walkin (1876–1942?), R. Aaron’s wife, is listed in the Database as living at 35 Polnocna (in German: Nord) Street (the present-day approximate equivalent is Leningradskaya Street). Also listed are Mila Ratnowska and Eve Slutzky (who is presumably to be identified with the daughter of alderman Jacob-Alter bearing the same name). [53] See the May 2, 2011 funeral announcement published in the Chicago Tribune and currently available here (accessed August 19, 2019).

A nay bintl briv: Personal Reminiscences of Rabbi Israel Meir ha-Kohen from the Yiddish Republic of Letters

A nay bintl briv:

Personal Reminiscences of Rabbi Israel Meir ha-Kohen from the Yiddish Republic of Letters

Shaul Seidler-Feller

Editor’s note: The present post is part one of a two-part essay. Part two can be found here.

Introduction

Beginning on January 20, 1906, Abraham (Abe) Cahan (1860–1951), the legendary founder and longtime editor of the Yiddish-language Forverts newspaper in New York, published a regular agony uncle column famously entitled A bintl briv (A Bundle of Letters; often Romanized A Bintel Brief).[1] Herein he reproduced missives sent to the daily by its largely Eastern European immigrant readership seeking advice on a range of personal issues, followed by his wise, insightful counsel.[2] While today this once-immensely-popular feature may have quietly evanesced into the mists of Yiddish journalistic history,[3] it is my intention here to revive it, if only briefly and in altered form, via transcription, translation, and discussion of two letters penned to the distinguished Forverts columnist Rabbi Aaron B. Shurin.

Shurin, born in Riteve (present-day Rietavas, Lithuania) on the second day of Rosh Hashanah 5673 (September 13, 1912)[4] to his parents Rabbi Moses and Ruth, learned in his youth at the heder and yeshivah of Riteve (the latter founded by his father) and spent the years 1928–1936 at the yeshivot of Ponevezh (present-day Panevėžys, Lithuania) and Telz (present-day Telšiai, Lithuania).[5] In 1936, he joined the rest of his family in the Holy Land, to which it had immigrated the previous year, and soon thereafter he continued his studies at theyeshivot of Hebron (as transplanted to Jerusalem) and Petah Tikva, as well as at the 1938 Summer Seminar in Tel Aviv under Prof. Yehuda Even Shmuel (Kaufman; 1886–1976).[6] The following year (1939), he received yoreh yoreh and yadin yadin semikhot from Rabbis Meir Stolewitz (1870–1949), (1870–1953), Reuven Katz (1880–1963), and Isaac ha-Levi Herzog (1888–1959) and in 1940 moved again, this time to New York, to which his father had relocated circa 1937.[7] At that point, he began studying at Yeshiva College and Columbia University, and in 1941–1942 he simultaneously taught Bible and Hebrew language and literature in YC; he would later go on to occupy a position on the Judaic studies faculty at Stern College for Women for many years (1949–1956 and 1966–2001).[8]

In the years that followed, in addition to teaching at YU, Shurin served as cofounder and vice president of Poalei Agudath Israel (1941–1947), rabbi of two synagogues (Beth Hacknesseth Anshei Slutsk at 34 Pike Street in Manhattan [1941–1945] and Toras Moshe Jewish Center at 4314 Tenth Avenue in Brooklyn [1945–1947]), and principal of a day school ( Torah Hechodosh at 146 Stockton Street in Brooklyn [1949–1953]), among several other leadership positions.[9] However, it is his sixty-two-plus-year career at the Forverts on which I wish to focus here. Already in his youth, as a talmid in Telz and then in Israel, he began writing articles and studies for various Hebrew and Yiddish publications, and when he came to America (to quote him directly), “Anywhere I could write, I did […] I enjoyed it, and I compiled a portfolio of articles on a wide range of subjects. One day, a friend said to me, ‘You should write for the Forward.’ I laughed.”[10] At the time, the Forverts was by far the most widely read Jewish newspaper, with a daily circulation of over 100,000 copies, and was avowedly secular in orientation, even publishing on Shabbat andyom tov (although it was respectful of the religious).[11] Nevertheless, despite these challenges to a young, aspiring Orthodox journalist, Shurin took the idea of working at the Forverts to the famed historian and bibliophile Chaim Lieberman (1892–1991) who, after reading a sample of his work, recommended him to Harry Lang (1888–1970), a managing editor at the paper, and shortly thereafter editor Hillel (Harry) Rogoff (1882–1971) hired him.[12] From 1944 to 1983, Shurin wrote approximately two columns per week; when the Forverts became a weekly in the latter year, he, too, switched to one column per week until his retirement in 2007.[13]

For the most part, Shurin’s Forverts articles focused on religious topics, Jewish education, social-political issues in Israel (particularly those concerning the Orthodox parties), and the lives of great Jewish historical figures.[14] The aforementioned letters written to Shurin were sent in response to two of these columns, separated by eight years. His son David was kind enough to transfer them to Seforim Blog editor Eliezer Brodt (who then e-mailed scans to me) and to give full permission for their publication and translation below.[15]

First Letter In honor of the sesquicentennial of what some consider the birth year of Rabbi Israel Meir ha-Kohen, the world-renowned Hafets Hayyim,[16] Shurin published an article in the Forverts treating the most important aspects of this great leader’s biography, focusing on his legendarily superlative piety, as well as his literary, educational, and political activities on behalf of European Jewry.[17] Not long thereafter, he received the following letter:

שיקאַגאָ, 1/31/88

זייער געערטער הרב שורין! אייער אינטערעסאַנטער אַרטיקל וועגן חפץ חיים האָט מיר דערמאָנט אַ פּאַסירונג אין מיין היים-שטאָט ווילנע מיט זעכציק .יאָר צוריק, ווען איך בּין געווען אַ קינד פון קוים פינף יאָר מיין זיידע האָט געהאַט דעם גרויסן זכות צו זיין אַ פריינט פון חפץ חיים, ווי אויך זיין דאָקטאָר. ווען דער חפץ חיים .פלעגט קומען קיין ווילנע פלעגט ער אונדז שטענדיק בּאַזוכן אַ פּלימעניצע פון חפץ חיים האָט געוואוינט ״נעקסט דאָר״ פון .אונדז און ער פלעגט נאַטירלעך איר אויך בּאַזוכן

איינמאָל ווען דער חפץ חיים איז געקומען צו אונדז אין הויז אַריין איז מיין זיידע פּונקט ניט געווען אין דער היים, ער איז .געווען בּיי אַ קראַנקן. מיין פאָטער איז אויך געווען בּיי אַ פּאַציענט מיין זיידע און מיין פאָטער האָבּן געהאַט אַ געמיינזאַמע פּראַקטיק און מיר האָבּן אויך געוואוינט צוזאַמען. מיין מוטער האָט גלייך געוואָלט עמיצן שיקן רופן דעם זיידן, אָבער דער חפץ חיים האָט געזאָגט, אַז ער וועט בּעסער וואַרטן בּיז דער זיידע וועט צוריק קומען. ער האָט ווייזט אויס ניט געוואָלט דער זיידע זאָל זיך איילן בּיים בּאַהאַנדלען דעם קראַנקן. ער איז געזעסן אין אַ גרויסן לעדערנעם פאָטעל אין וואַרטע-צימער און ניט אין די אינעווייניקסטע צימערן, ווייל דאָס וואָלט געמיינט צו זיין אַליין מיט די פרויען, מיין בּאָבּע און מיין מוטער. דאָס איז געווען אין 1927 און ער איז שוין געווען א זקן. מיין מוטער

2

האָט מיר געהייסן אַריינגיין אין וואַרטע-זאַל און בּעטן דעם חפץ חיים ער זאָל מיר בּענטשן. איך בּין געווען אַ קליין מיידעלע פון פינף יאָר און איך האָבּ זיך געשעמט, האָבּ איך צוערשט זיך בּאַהאַלטן הינטער אַ דיקער סאַמעטענער פּאָרטיערע וואָס איז געהאַנגען איבּער דער טיר. איך האָבּ געקוקט אויף אים פון הינטערן פאָרהאַנג און געזען אַ פנים פון בּלויז גוטסקייט, האָבּ איך זיך אָנגענומען מיט מוט און בּין פּאמעלינקערהייט צוגעגאַנגען צו אים. איך האָבּ ניט געזאָגט קיין וואָרט נאָר בּלויז געקוקט אויף אים און געוואַרט. דער חפץ חיים האָט מיר דערזען און פאַרשטאַנען. מיט אַ לייכטן שמייכל האָט ער .אַרויפגעלייגט די האַנט אויף מיין קאָפּ און מיר געבּענטשט איך האָבּ געשפּירט ווי אַ גרויסע וואַרעמקייט און גוטסקייט שטראָמט פון אים און איך האָבּ געפילט אַ גרויסע ליבּשאַפט צו דעם צדיק, ווי נאָר אַ קינד קען פילן, ניט מיטן פאַרשטאַנד .נאָר מיטן האַרץ

בּיז היינטיקן טאָג גלויבּ איך אַז אין זכות פון זיין ברכה .בּין איך איבּערגעקומען היטלערס לאַגערן

איך דאַנק אייך געערטער הרב שורין פאַר דעם פאַרגעניגן וואָס איר פאַרשאַפט אייערע לייענער מיט אייערע אַרטיקלען און איך ווינטש אייך איר זאָלט זוכה זיין צו .דערפרייען אונדז מיט אייער שרייבּן נאָך פאַר לאנגע, לאַנגע יאָרן

מיט אכטונג, .בּעטי דיִקמאַן 1930 W LOYOLA 618

Chicago, 1/31/88

To the highly esteemed Rabbi Shurin!

Your interesting article about the Hafets Hayyim reminded me of a story that took place in my hometown of Vilna sixty years ago, when I was a child barely five years of age. My grandfather was very fortunate to be a friend of the Hafets Hayyim, as well as his physician. When the Hafets Hayyim would come to Vilna, he would always visit us. A niece of his lived next door, and he would also, naturally, go to see her.

One time when the Hafets Hayyim came to our house, my grandfather, as luck would have it, was not home; he was tending to someone ill. My father, too, was with a patient. My grandfather and father had a shared practice, and we also all lived together. My mother immediately suggested sending someone to call for my grandfather, but the Hafets Hayyim said that he preferred to wait until my grandfather returned. He evidently did not want my grandfather to rush his treatment of the sick person. He sat down in a large leather armchair in the foyer,[18] not in the innermost rooms, because that would have meant being secluded with the women – my grandmother and mother. This was in 1927, when he was already an elderly man. My mother

2 told me to go to the hallway[19] and ask the Hafets Hayyim to bless me. I was a small, shy girl of five years, so I initially hid behind a thick velvet portiere hanging over the door. But when I peered at him from behind the curtain and saw a face of pure goodness, I mustered up my courage and slowly approached him. I did not say a word; I just looked at him and waited. The Hafets Hayyim caught sight of me and understood. With an easy smile, he lay his hand on my head and blessed me. I sensed a great warmth and goodness streaming forth from him and felt much love for this righteous man, as only a child can – not with the mind but with the heart.

To this day, I believe that it is on account of his blessing that I survived Hitler’s camps.

I thank you, esteemed R. Shurin, for the joy that you bring to your readers with your columns and wish you the good fortune to continue delighting us with your writing for many, many years to come.

Respectfully, Betty Dickman 1930 W Loyola 618

On April 14, 1997, Donna Puccini interviewed Betty Dickman about her experiences during the Holocaust on behalf of what is today the USC Shoah Foundation’s Institute for Visual History and Education.[20] From that conversation we learn that Dickman was born Isabella Margolin on April 9, 1922 in Vilna – then part of Poland and called Wilno but today known as Vilnius, Lithuania – as the only child of her parents, Mones (1893–1941) and Henya (1894–1943) Margolin. As already noted in the letter, her maternal grandparents, Chaim and Rose Bruk, lived together with them, and both her grandfather and father were physicians, while her grandmother and mother stayed home with their Polish maid.[21] Chaim Bruk was a prominent member of the Vilna Jewish community who sat on the board of directors of the Tiferes Bachurim Society (at 6 Niemiecka [present-day Vokiečių] Street),[22] helped to found the city’s Miszmeres Chojlim charitable hospital (at 5 Kijowska [present-day Kauno] Street),[23] and served as gabbai of Zalkin’s (formerly Zemel’s) kloyz (at 2 Rudnicka [present-day Rūdninkų] Street),[24] which was located right next door to the family’s apartment building at 4 Rudnicka Street.[25] According to Dickman, when he passed away in 1936 at the age of 70, all the stores lining the streets through which the funeral procession passed were closed, and “there must have been about twenty-five thousand [!] people at that funeral.”

Aside from its value as a firsthand account of the profoundly human, down-to-earth, and kindhearted character of the Hafets Hayyim, this letter also touches on, and complicates our understanding of, at least three aspects of his biography and religious worldview.[26] First and foremost is his attitude toward medicine. The Hafets Hayyim was famous for his pure, unshakable faith in God,[27] relying on Him to heal the sick even when traditional medical interventions had not been attempted.[28] However, a number of incidents recorded by the Hafets Hayyim’s biographers point to a willingness to, and even insistence on the importance of, consult(ation) with physicians about health-related issues.[29] While I have so far not succeeded in corroborating the letter’s claim that Bruk served as the Hafets Hayyim’s personal doctor,[30] it is evident that both certain members of the Hafets Hayyim’s family and he himself had recourse to medical professionals at various stages of their lives[31] – a point that comes through clearly in Dickman’s writing.

Another interesting aspect of this story concerns the Hafets Hayyim’s willingness to bless the young girl. Though many petitioned him to pray on their behalf or offer them a blessing,[32] the Hafets Hayyim often refused on principle to do so, noting that God makes Himself equally available to every Jew, no matter his status in the community, and that He would actually prefer to hear directly from His children than from an intermediary.[33] The fact that he made an exception in this case, while certainly not unheard-of,[34] is nevertheless noteworthy, and it deepens our appreciation of his paternal conduct with this shy little girl.

Finally, attention should be directed toward the Hafets Hayyim’s halakhic stance on yihud. While most posekim assume that secluding oneself with a married woman whose husband is in town (ba‘alah ba-ir) is permissible even ab initio,[35] the letter reports that the Hafets Hayyim would not allow himself to sit together with Mrs. Bruk and Mrs. Margolin even though their husbands were not far away.[36] Interestingly, this humra, which is based on Rashi’s understanding of a passage in the Talmud,[37] seemingly contradicts the Hafets Hayyim’s own ruling on the matter in hisSefer nidhei yisra’el, intended for Jews who had immigrated to America.[38] It would thus appear that we have here an instance in which the Hafets Hayyim’s personal practice reflected a higher degree of stringency regarding halakhah than he required of others.[39]

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

* I wish at the outset to express my gratitude to Eliezer Brodt for furnishing me with the opportunity to compose this essay and for his patience during its long gestation. Additional thanks go to his fellow editors at the Seforim Blog, particularly the incomparable Menachem Butler, whose bibliographical reach seems unlimited. Finally, I am indebted to my friends Eliyahu Krakowski, Daniel Tabak, and Shlomo Zuckier for their corrections and comments to an earlier draft of this piece that, taken together, improved it considerably.

[1] On the inception ofA bintl briv, see Abraham Cahan, Bleter fun mayn leben, vol. 4 (New York: Forward Association, 1928), 471-478. See also Treasures“ From the Forverts’ Archive – Chapter #3. A Bintel Brief (1)” (watch at about 1:13) (accessed August 19, 2019). For the historical background behind, and contemporary influences upon, this feature, see Steven Cassedy, “A Bintel brief: The Russian Émigré Intellectual Meets the American Mass Media,”East European Jewish Affairs 34,1 (2004): 104-120. [2] After two to three years, Cahan tells us, his many other responsibilities at the paper did not allow him to continue answering the letters personally, so that he had to ask other members of his staff to compose the responses (Bleter, 483). [3] The most recent column, published in a dedicated corner of The Jewish Daily Forward website called The Bintel Brief, is dated May 24, 2010 (accessed August 19, 2019). Anthologies of selected letters in English translation have appeared as Isaac Metzker (ed.), A Bintel Brief: Sixty Years of Letters from the Lower East Side to the Jewish Daily Forward, trans. Diana Shalet Levy with Bella S. Metzker (New York: Ballantine Books, 1971), and Isaac Metzker (ed.), A Bintel Brief: Letters to the Jewish Daily Forward[,] 1950–1980, trans. Bella S. Metzker and Diana Shalet Levy (New York: The Viking Press, 1981). More recently, some of these missives have been adapted into graphic novel form by Liana Finck as A Bintel Brief: Love and Longing in Old New York (New York: Ecco, 2014). [4] Anon., “About the Author,” in Aaron B. Shurin,Moadim Lesimcha: Insights[,] Explanations and Stories on the Jewish Holidays (Brooklyn: Aaron B. Shurin, 2006), xi-xx, at p. xi. Some sources date his birth to 1913 or even 1914, but these are clearly mistaken given that when he died on 24 Sivan 5772 (June 14, 2012), he was just a few months shy of his one- hundredth birthday. See, e.g., David Tidhar, Entsiklopedyah la-halutsei ha-yishuv u-bonav: demuyyot u-temunot, vol. 10 (Tel Aviv: Sifriyyat Rishonim, 1959), 3474-3475, at p. 3474, translated/adapted somewhat inaccurately and laconically in Alter Levite, Dina Porat, and Roni Stauber (eds.), A Yizkor Book to Riteve: A Jewish Shtetl in Lithuania (Cape Town: The Kaplan-Kushlick Foundation, 2000), 105-106, at p. 105; Elias Schulman, Leksikon fun forverts shrayber zint 1897, ed. Simon Weber (New York: Forward Association, 1987), 90-91, at p. 90; Berl Kagan, Yidishe shtet, shtetlekh un dorfishe yishuvim in lite biz 1918: historish-biografishe skitses (New York: Berl Kagan, 1991), 556-557, at p. 556; and Alex Mindlin, A“ Religious Voice in a Secular Forest,” The New York Times (November 28, 2004). I thank Chana Pollack, Archivist at The Jewish Daily Forward, for sending me a copy of the Leksikon for my personal use.

As an aside, and since I know that the Seforim Blog has a special interest in issues surrounding plagiarism, one can find (mild) examples of this phenomenon in the announcement of Shurin’s passing published by Casriel Bauman, “A Legend in His Time: Rabbi Aharon Ben Zion Shurin z”l,” Matzav.com (June 14, 2012) (accessed August 19, 2019) – subsequently reprinted with minor modifications in the Queens Jewish Link 1,12 (June 28, 2012): 89 – which fails to cite both Tidhar’s encyclopedia entry and the New York Times interview as its sources. [5] Anon., “About the Author,” xi; see also Tidhar, Entsiklopedyah, 3474. For photographs of Shurin (at that point still going by the original family name, Mishuris) and his friends taken in Telz on 3 Adar II 5695 (March 8, 1935), see the following Ebay listings: 1, 2 (accessed August 19, 2019). For a recent photograph of the dilapidated yeshivah building in Telz, taken by Richard Schofield as part of his photo essay Back to Shul (Vilnius: International Centre for Litvak Photography, 2018), see here (accessed August 19, 2019). [6] Anon., “About the Author,” xi-xii; see also Anon., “Totse’ot ha-behinot be-seminar ha-kayits mi-ta‘am ha-v[a‘ad] ha-l[e’ummi],” Ha-tsofeh 3,318 (January 13, 1939): 1. (Cf. the 1940 United States Census record for Manhattan [accessed June 21, 2019], according to which Aaron, like the rest of his family, was living in “Tel-a-Viv” as of April 1, 1935. This seems unlikely given the date inscribed on the photographs mentioned in the previous note.) According to Tidhar, Entsiklopedyah, 3474, Shurin also attended a gymnasium at night while learning at the Lomzheryeshivah in Petah Tikva. [7] Anon., “About the Author,” xii; see also Tidhar, Entsiklopedyah, 3474-3475, and the announcement of his move to America in Ha-mashkif 2,244 (January 25, 1940): 4. His younger brother, Rabbi Israel Shurin (1918–2007), followed a very similar educational path. See the biographical sketch published originally in Yated Neeman with contributions from Rabbi Mordechai Kamenetzky and Sharon Katz, entitled Rav“ Yisroel Shurin, z”l: A Revered Rav and a Link to a Lithuanian Past” (accessed August 19, 2019). [8] Anon., “About the Author,” xii. See also Anon., Columbia University in the City of New York: Supplement to the Directory Number, 1945 (New York: New York, 1945), 45; Tidhar, Entsiklopedyah, 3474; the 1967 volume of Stern’s yearbook, Kochaviah, 35 (where he is referred to as “Arthur,” rather than “Aaron,” Shurin); and YU Review: The Magazine of (Fall 2005): 30. (For the record, the latest Kochaviah yearbook in which I was able to locate Shurin on the faculty pages was the 1997 volume [p. 21]; he did not appear there in the 1998 and 2000 editions, and neither the YU Archives nor Stern’s Hedi Steinberg Library held copies of the 1999 and 2001 volumes at the time I visited them [if indeed those editions were ever actually published]. I thank Shulamith Z. Berger, Curator of Special Collections and Hebraica-Judaica, for allowing me to examine the Archives’ holdings.) As noted by Tidhar and others, Shurin edited the Hebrew section of Eidenu (New York: Students of the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary, 1942), a volume dedicated to the memory of YU President Rabbi Dr. Bernard Revel (1885–1940). [9] Anon., “About the Author,” xii; see also Tidhar, Entsiklopedyah, 3474. For some of his other organizational affiliations, see Anon., “About the Author,” xviii. See also lots 169, 170, 191, 198, 200, 205, 210, and 211 from a Kestenbaum & Company auction held on April 7, 2016, which included letters written to Shurin and his father- in-law, Rabbi Moshe Dov-Ber Rivkin (1892–1976), by some of the leading lights of the Jewish world at the time (accessed August 19, 2019). It is interesting to note that Rabbis Eliezer Silver (1882–1968) and Joseph B. Soloveitchik (1903–1993) both apparently read Shurin’s columns in the Forverts. [10] Quoted in Yisroel Besser, “Defending the Past in the Pages of the Forward: Rabbi Aaron Benzion Shurin’s Six Decades of Journalism,” Mishpacha (May 26, 2010): 26-33, at p. 29. For more on Shurin’s writing outside of the context of his work for the Forverts, including his many rabbinic publications, see Anon., “About the Author,” xiv-xvii, and Tidhar, Entsiklopedyah, 3474-3475.

Relatedly, Israel Mizrahi notes that Shurin’s personal library of approximately two thousand volumes “included many classics as well as obscure works from the last century as well as a very strong showing of newspapers, from the 19th century through the WWII period, with many bound volumes of rare newspapers present.” See Recent“ Acquisitions at Mizrahi Bookstore, the libraries of Aaron Ben-Zion Shurin […],” Musings of a Jewish Bookseller (March 29, 2016) (accessed August 19, 2019). One of his books, Eliezer Ben- Yehuda’s Ad eimatai dibberu ivrit? (New York: Kadimah, 1919), comprised lot 3 of Winner’s Auctions’ July 19, 2016 sale (accessed August 19, 2019). [11] Gennady Estraikh and Zalman Newfield, Grandfathers“ against Bar Mitzvahs: Secular Immigrant Jews Confront Religion in 1940s America,” Zutot 9 (2012): 73-84, at p. 74; see also Gennady Estraikh, “A Mid-Twentieth-Century Quest for Jewish Authenticity: The Yiddish DailyForverts’ Warming to Religion,” in Eliyana R. Adler and Sheila E. Jelen (eds.), Reconstructing the Old Country: American Jewry in the Post-Holocaust Decades (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2017), 111-134, at pp. 111-112. On the occasion of the Forverts’ eightieth anniversary, Shurin himself would reflect that “the Forverts has […] been very friendly to the yeshivah world throughout the years that I have been a collaborator on the Forverts editorial staff.” See Aaron B. Shurin, “Idish lebn in amerike,” Forverts (April 24, 1977): B8, B24, at p. B24.

In his interview with The New York Times, Shurin asserts that the Forverts had a quarter million readers at the time he was hired, but Estraikh and Newfield write that that number was accurate for the 1920s, not the 1940s. [12] Besser, “Defending,” 30, explains the decision to bring an Orthodox rabbi onboard by noting that “times were changing and the Forward management perceived that they had to provide their Orthodox readership – which was immense – with a column geared to their needs, coverage and perspective of the issues that concerned them.” Similarly, Mindlin of the Times writes that “[Shurin’s] hiring reflected the feeling of the founding editor, Abraham Cahan, that the newspaper needed to speak to the religious Jews who flooded the United States in the 30’s and 40’s.” Indeed, according to Estraikh and Newfield, “Grandfathers,” 75 n. 8, based on an article published in the Forverts in February 1956, “[b]y the mid-1950s, secular readers already belonged to the minority of the Forverts audience.” See also Estraikh, “A Mid-Twentieth- Century Quest,” passim, but esp. pp. 121-122, as well as the comments cited by S. Daniel, editor ofHa-tsofeh , in an article translated as “Faithful Servant” in Shurin,Moadim Lesimcha, xxi-xxiv. [13] Shurin’s first column appeared as A.B. Rutzon, “‘Mizrakhi’ un ‘agudes yisroel’ – vegn vos zey krigen zikh,” Forverts (November 5, 1944): B3 (Tidhar, Entsiklopedyah, 3475, notes that A.B. Rutzon was one of Shurin’s pseudonyms, a reference to his mother’s name, Ruth). The last article of his that I was able to identify was published April 20, 2007; see the table of contents of that issue here (accessed August 19, 2019). See also Anon., “About the Author,” xv.

Interestingly, Schulman, Leksikon, 90-91, writes that Shurin also managed the Fun folk tsu(m) folk (From People to People) readers’ correspondence section of the paper, although I did not find other references to this point. Also interesting, and curious, is the fact that although Shurin’s passing was mourned at the Kave shtibl and in Der moment (accessed August 19, 2019), I could find no article online in either the Forverts or the Forward reporting his death. [14] See Anon., “About the Author,” xv; Tidhar, Entsiklopedyah, 3475; and Schulman, Leksikon, 90. [15] I attempted to be faithful to the originals in transcribing these letters, without adjusting or correcting such features as orthography, vocalization, or punctuation. [16] We know that he was born 11 Shevat, but the exact year is disputed, with varying accounts claiming it was either 5588 (1828), 5589 (1829), 5593 (1833), 5595 (1835), 5598 (1838), or 5599 (1839). For some of the literature on this issue, see Moses M. Yoshor, He-hafets hayyim: hayyav u-po‘olo, vol. 1 (Tel Aviv: Netsah, 1958), 25 with n. 1; Nathan Kamenetsky, Making of a Godol: A Study of Episodes in the Lives of Great Torah Personalities: Improved Edition, vol. 1, pt. 2 (Jerusalem: P.P. Publishers, 2004), 1106-1108 (Notes and Excursuses 5.1 (2) / Excursus B); and [Dan Rabinowitz], “Chofetz Hayyim[:] His Death, the New York Times and Research Tools,” Seforim Blog (October 31, 2006) (accessed August 19, 2019). [17] Aaron B. Shurin, “Der ‘khofets khayim’, tsu zayn 150 yorikn geboyrn-yor,” Forverts (January 29, 1988): 13, 27. See also Shurin’s earlier, Hebrew-language reflection on the Hafets Hayyim’s life and works: “He-‘hafets hayyim’ – rabban shel yisra’el,” in Keshet gibborim: demuyyot ba-ofek ha-yehudi shel dor aharon, vol. 1 (Jerusalem: Mossad Harav Kook, 1964), 115-121. [18] The original Yiddish here readsvarte-tsimer , lit., “waiting room”; I take this to refer to the foyer of the home. [19] The original Yiddish here reads varte-zal, lit., “waiting hall”; I take this to refer to the hallway off the foyer. [20] The Institute website can be found here, and Dickman’s interview can be found either on the Visual History Archive Online site here or on YouTube here (accessed August 19, 2019). [21] For three slightly differentdappei-ed (pages of testimony) filed by Dickman with Yad Vashem about her father, see 1, 2, and 3; for two she filed about her mother, see 1 and 2; and for two she filed about her grandmother Rose, see 1 and 2 (accessed August 19, 2019). [22] According to Shemaryahu (Shmerele) Szarafan, “Di religyeze vilne,” in Aaron Isaac Grodzenski (ed.),Vilner almanakh (Vilna: Ovnt Kuryer, 1939; repr. Brooklyn: Moriah Offset Co., 1992), cols. 321-332, at col. 324, the Tiferes Bachurim Society was founded in 1902 by the young Rabbi Jechiel ha-Levi Sruelow (1879–1946) to combat the radical, anti-religious forces on the Jewish street by teaching young workers and craftsmen Torah and Talmud at night and on Shabbat and yom tov, when they had free time. Chaim Bruk was one of the people who did much to ensure the society’s financial security; he is pictured, together with Szarafan, Sruelow, and other members of the board of directors, in Leyzer Ran (ed.), Jerusalem of Lithuania: Illustrated and Documented, vol. 1 (New York: Vilno Album Committee, 1974), 261, and here (accessed August 19, 2019). See also Aliza Cohen- Mushlin, Sergey Kravtsov, Vladimir Levin et al. (eds.), “Appendix: Synagogues, Batei Midrash and Kloyzn in Vilnius,” in Synagogues in Lithuania: A Catalogue, vol. 2 (Vilnius: Vilnius Academy of Arts Press, 2012), 281-353, at pp. 303-304 (no. 12), and Yisrael Rozenson, “‘Ba‘avur tse‘irim kemo gam le-ovedim u-le-ozerim ba-hanuyyot’: al ha-mif‘al ha-hinnukhi ‘tif’eret bahurim’ be-vilnah,” Hagut: mehkarim ba-hagut ha- hinnukh ha-yehudi 10 (2014): 15-72, esp. p. 44. The society eventually moved into the former kloyz of the Lubavitcher Hasidim located in the Vilna shulhoyf (synagogue courtyard); see no. 12 in the diagram of the shulhoyf available here (accessed August 19, 2019). [23] A. Karabtshinski, “Mishmeres-khoylim,” in Grodzenski, Vilner almanakh, cols. 319-320, reports that the society after which the hospital was named was founded by Rabbi Bezalel Altshuler in 1890 as a branch of Vilna’s general charity fund and that the hospital itself was built in 1913. Ran, Jerusalem of Lithuania, 161, by contrast, writes that the hospital building dedication took place in 1912. See also the photograph of the 1910 cornerstone-laying ceremony on that same page (161) in which, according to Dickman’s interview (watch at approx. 2:49:15), Bruk is pictured on the far right wearing a straw hat and holding a cane. For a photograph of the hospital building before the outbreak of World War II, see here (accessed August 19, 2019). [24] See Cohen-Mushlin et al., “Appendix,” 317-318 (no. 60). For a photograph of Chaim Bruk praying in thekloyz circa 1935, see Dickman’s interview (watch at approx. 2:50:11); he is pictured on the far right in the first row. [25] For maps of prewar/wartime Jewish Vilna, see Ran, Jerusalem of Lithuania, insert (in Yiddish), and here (in Polish) (accessed August 19, 2019). For a modern map of Vilna with Jewish sites (including ghetto borders) overlaid, see here (make sure to click “Explore on your own”) (accessed August 19, 2019). Most of the addresses mentioned above can be found in the vicinity of the two Vilna ghetto locations. For a photograph of a 3-D model of the Vilna ghettos created illegally by Jewish artists in 1943, see Leyzer Ran and Leybl Koriski (eds.), Bleter vegn vilne: zamlbukh (Łódź: Farband fun Vilner Yidn in Poyln, 1947; also available through theNew York Public Library Yizkor Book online portal [accessed August 19, 2019]), after p. 52. Finally, for photographs of wartime and present-day Rudnicka/Rūdninkų Street, see here (accessed August 19, 2019). [26] A definitive academic study of R. Israel Meir ha-Kohen’s life and legacy remains a scholarly desideratum. Rabbi Eitam Henkin, who, together with his wife Naama, was cruelly murdered in October 2015 by Palestinian terrorists, had made a major bid to fill the void by submitting a doctoral proposal on the topic to Tel Aviv University. Henkin’s mentor, Prof. David Assaf, posted the proposal online shortly after his death, both as a memorial for this up-and-coming scholar, whose life and brilliant career were cut all too short, and for the benefit of future researchers: “Sheloshim le-retsah eitam henkin: tokhnit ha-mehkar al ‘he-hafets hayyim’,” Oneg shabbat (October 30, 2015) (accessed August 19, 2019). The most recent attempt of which I am aware to critically assess, albeit partially, the work of the Hafets Hayyim was penned by Benjamin Brown, “Ha-‘ba‘al bayit’: r. yisra’el me’ir ha-kohen, he-‘hafets hayyim’,” in Benjamin Brown and Nissim Leon (eds.), Ha-‘gdoylim’: ishim she-itsevu et penei ha-yahadut ha- haredit be-yisra’el (Jerusalem: Van Leer Institute; Magnes Press, 2017), 105-151.

The most extensive research on the Hafets Hayyim’s life conducted outside the academic sphere is that by Rabbi Moses M. Yoshor (1896–1978), a student and eventual personal secretary of this great Torah sage. For the history of Yoshor’s various biographical studies of his revered teacher, see his The Chafetz Chaim: The Life and Works of Rabbi Yisrael Meir Kagan of Radin, trans. Charles Wengrov (Brooklyn: Mesorah Publications, 1984), xv-xviii, xxvii-xxviii, as well as the unpaginated translator’s note and note on the author in the frontmatter. [27] On the Hafets Hayyim as one of the main Lithuanian representatives of a phenomenon Benjamin Brown has termed “the return of ‘pure faith’” within the Jewish tradition, see his “Shuvah shel ‘ha-emunah ha-temimah’: tefisat ha-emunah ha- haredit u-tsemihatah ba-me’ah ha-19,” in Moshe Halbertal, David Kurzweil, and Avi Sagi (eds.), Al ha-emunah: iyyunim be- mussag ha-emunah u-be-toledotav ba-massoret ha- yehudit (Jerusalem: Keter, 2005), 403-443, 669-683, at pp. 433-436, as well as idem, “Ha-‘ba‘al bayit’,” 143-146. [28] See the account of his son, Rabbi Aryeh Leib Poupko (ca. 1860–1938), in Mikhtevei ha-rav hafets hayyim z[ekher] ts[addik] l[i-berakhah]: korot hayyav, derakhav, nimmukav ve- sihotav, 1st ed. (Warsaw: B. Liebeskind, 1937), 12 (third pagination): “My mother, of blessed memory, told me in my youth that during my upbringing they almost never consulted with doctors. If one of us fell ill, my father advised [my mother] to distribute a pood of bread to the poor, while he ascended to the attic and prayed, and the sickness departed” (par. 26; subsequently quoted in David Falk, Sefer ha-boteah ba-H[ashem] hesed yesovevennu [Jerusalem: n.p., 2010], 92, 250-251). In two other places, Poupko quotes his father as extolling the value of physical suffering in this world as a means of reaching the next world (ibid., 13 [third pagination; pars. 28-29]); see also ibid., 22 (first pagination). Moses M. Yoshor, Saint and Sage (Hafetz Hayim) (New York: Hafetz Hayim Yeshivah Society, 1937), 135, writes that the Hafets Hayyim refused to heed the advice of his physicians when he trekked approximately eighty kilometers from Radin (present-day Radun’, Belarus) to Vilna in early 1932, toward the end of his life, in order to attend a rabbinical conference. [29] Several sources treat the Hafets Hayyim’s concern for others’ (particularly his students’) physical well- being: Moses M. Yoshor, He-hafets hayyim: hayyav u-po‘olo, vol. 2 (Tel Aviv: Netsah, 1959), 717; ibid., vol. 3 (Tel Aviv: Netsah, 1961), 846-847, 918; and Aryeh Leib Poupko, Mikhtevei ha-rav hafets hayyim z[ekher] ts[addik] l[i-berakhah], ed. S. Artsi, 2 vols. (Bnei Brak: n.p., 1986), 2:107. In addition, in his magnum opus, Mishnah berurah, the Hafets Hayyim discusses situations in which a doctor’s opinion is accorded halakhic significance, e.g., in the determination of whether someone should fast on Yom Kippur (see his comments to Joseph Caro, Shulhan arukh, Orah hayyim 618). [30] Strangely, I could not find mention of either Bruk or his son-in-law Mones Margolin in the essays about Vilna doctors by A.J. Goldschmidt and Zemach Shabad in Ephim H. Jeshurin (ed.), Vilne: a zamelbukh gevidmet der shtot vilne (New York: Wilner Branch 367, Workmen’s Circle, 1935), 377-437, 725-736. [31] In his youth, while inyeshivah , the Hafets Hayyim suffered from a condition that interfered with his learning and was instructed by his doctors to take a break from his studies for a year, which he did (Poupko, Mikhtevei, 1st ed., 5 [first pagination]). On his consultation with physicians to heal his son Abraham (1869–1891), see ibid., 39 (first pagination); to heal his first wife Frieda (née Epstein), see ibid., 91 (first pagination); and to heal himself, see ibid., 19 (third pagination; par. 46). In the latter connection, see also Yoshor, He-hafets hayyim, 1:66, 3:1058, as well as Dov Katz, Rabbi yisra’el me’ir ha-kohen[,] ba‘al “hafets hayyim”: toledotav, ishiyyuto ve-shittato (Tel Aviv: Avraham Zioni, 1961), 24, 97-98.

Interestingly, Yoshor, He-hafets hayyim, 1:35-36 n. 4, also reports the following ma‘aseh li-setor: Solomon ha-Kohen (1830–1905), a friend of the Hafets Hayyim who grew up in Vilna, became sick between the ages of 13 and 17, and so the doctors instructed him to take a break from learning. He apparently replied that it would be better for him to die from limmud torah than from bittul torah, continued his studies unabated, and was healed. When the Hafets Hayyim would tell this story, he would grow very emotional and repeat his friend’s words several times. Then again, see ibid., 1:343.

As regards Chaim Bruk, a number of sources mention visits by a physician brought in specially from Vilna to treat the Hafets Hayyim, but none of them names him, and it could very well be that different doctors were called upon on different occasions; for instance, we know from Yoshor,He-hafets hayyim, 3:1058, that the Hafets Hayyim would sometimes be treated by Dr. Zemach Shabad (1864–1935). See Poupko, Mikhtevei, 1st ed., 19 (third pagination); Moses M. Yoshor, Dos lebn un shafen fun khofets khayim, 1st ed., vol. 2 (New York: Moses M. Yoshor, 1937), 481; idem,Saint and Sage, 97; and idem, He-hafets hayyim, 2:614, 624. [32] See Anon., “Saintly ‘Chofetz Chaim’ Dead; Spiritual Head of World Jewry a Legend in Lifetime; over 100,” Jewish Telegraphic Agency (September 15, 1933); (with slight differences:) Anon., “Chofetz Chaim, 105, Is Dead in Poland,” The New York Times (September 16, 1933): 13; and Yoshor, Saint and Sage, 65. [33] See Poupko, Mikhtevei, 1st ed., 120 (third pagination; par. 34), 75-76 (fourth pagination; par. 4); Yoshor, Saint and Sage, 131, 175; idem, Dos lebn, 403, 525; and Dov Katz, Tenu‘at ha-musar: toledoteha[,] isheha ve-shittoteha, vol. 4 (Tel Aviv: Avraham Zioni, 1967), 88-89.

Given all of this, it is most surprising, in my opinion, to find the following recorded by the Hafets Hayyim’s son: “Once, when he took ill, he sought to walk to the grave of the ga’on Rabbi Elijah in Vilna and to ask him to arouse heavenly mercy on his behalf, in the merit” of the Haggahot ha-gera that he had printed on Torat kohanim, together with his explanations (vols. 1–2; Piotrków: Mordechai Zederbaum, 1911). See Poupko, Mikhtevei, 1st ed., 43 (third pagination; par. 83). [34] In fact, numerous sources testify to the Hafets Hayyim deviating at times from this policy. See Yoshor, Saint and Sage, 97, 108, 256; idem,Dos lebn, 363, 574, 610; Poupko, Mikhtevei, ed. S. Artsi, 2:100-101; and especially Anon., Sefer me’ir einei yisra’el, pt. 2, vol. 2 (Bnei Brak: Ma‘arekhet “Me’ir Einei Yisra’el,” 1999), ch. 28 (pp. 815-868), entitled “The Righteous Man Decrees – The Power of the Hafets Hayyim’s Blessings.” Indeed, even after he published a notice in the Vilna-based Dos vort newspaper in 1925 (not 1927, as some have claimed) requesting that people no longer come to him for blessings due to his weakened state, he would nevertheless warmly greet those who disregarded this plea and grant them their wish. For the text of the announcement, see Poupko, Mikhtevei, 1st ed., 77 (second pagination; no. 32). See also Yoshor, Dos lebn, 464-465, and Katz, Rabbi, 107-108. [35] See, e.g., the comments of Tosafot to Kiddushinb 81a, s.v. ba‘alah ba-ir ein hosheshin lah mi-shum yihud; David Ibn Zimra, Sh[e’elot] u-t[eshuvot] ha-radbaz, vol. 3 (Warsaw: Mordechai Kalinberg; Josefov: Solomon Zetser, 1882), 18a-b (no. 919 [no. 481]); and Solomon Luria, Yam shel shelomoh mi- massekhet kiddushin (Szczecin: n.p., 1861), 44a (ch. 4, par. 22). This would seem to be the simple read of Moses Maimonides, Mishneh torah, Hilkhot issurei bi’ah 22:1, and of Joseph Caro, Shulhan arukh, Even ha-ezer 22:8, as well. [36] Of course, the issue of the husbands’ proximity was not the only halakhically relevant factor in this case. For instance, the Hafets Hayyim’s standing in the Jewish world, his location in the apartment relative to where the women were, his elderliness, and the presence of the young Isabella could all have been brought to bear on the question of the permissibility of yihud in this situation. For a summary of some of the discussion, see Eliezer Judah Waldenberg, Sefer she’elot u-teshuvot tsits eli‘ezer, vol. 6 (Jerusalem: Mossad Harav Kook, 1961), 183-190, 228-231 (no. 40, chs. 7-8, 22). [37] See Rashi to bKiddushin 81a, s.v. ba‘alah ba-ir ein hosheshin lah mi-shum. Severalyihud prominent aharonim (following the aforementioned comments of Tosafot ad loc.) interpreted Rashi’s words as prohibiting yihud even when a woman’s husband is in the area. Probably most famously, Rabbi Joel Sirkes (1561–1640) ruled in accordance with this stringent interpretation of Rashi in his Bayit hadash commentary on Jacob ben Asher,Arba‘ah turim, Even ha-ezer 22, s.v. ishah she-ba‘alah ba-ir. Interestingly, Waldenberg, by contrast, read Rashi in a lenient light (and cited others who did so as well); see Sefer she’elot u-teshuvot tsits eli‘ezer, 6:176-177 (no. 40, ch. 4). [38] See Israel Meir ha-Kohen, Sefer nidhei yisra’el (Warsaw: Meir Jehiel Halter and Meir Eisenstadt, 1893), 62 (ch. 24, par. 6), quoting the Shulhan arukh essentially verbatim. I thank my friend, Jonathan Ziring, for this and a number of the above yihud-related references. If I have missed a relevant citation of the Hafets Hayyim’s own work, I would love to know about it; please message me about this or any other issue with this blogpost here. [39] As a couple of friends rightly pointed out to me, what impelled the Hafets Hayyim to avoid joining the women in “the innermost rooms” of the apartment may not have been specific halakhic considerations but rather a more general sense of propriety. The interpretation of his behavior as reflecting a reluctance to be “secluded” aleyn( in the original) with the women despite his advanced age relies on the perceptions of someone who was five years old at the time and who may not have appreciated the complexity of the Hafets Hayyim’s thought process.

One historical question raised by the letter for which I have not yet found a satisfying answer concerns the identity of the niece who lived next door to the Bruks and Margolins in Vilna and whom the Hafets Hayyim would regularly visit when he came to town. Some of the basic information on his family tree can be gleaned from Poupko, Mikhtevei, 1st ed., 2-3 (first pagination), who informs us that the Hafets Hayyim had a number of half-siblings. See also Binyamin of Petah Tikva, “He-hafets hayyim u-mishpahto,” Toladot ve-shorashim – atsei mishpahah (January 14, 2011) (accessed August 19, 2019) for a more extensive discussion of the Hafets Hayyim’s relations. More research into the various branches of his family is required. Passover with Apostates: A Concert in Spain and a Seder in the Middle of the Ocean by Elie Wiesel (1957)

Passover with Apostates: A Concert in Spain and a Seder in the Middle of the Ocean By Eliezer Wiesel Forverts (22 April 1957) [Yiddish] [Translated into English by Shaul Seidler-Feller (2018)] If someone says to you that Passover is the festival of redemption not only of a nation but of each individual, believe him; If someone explains to you that a Jew remains a Jew deep at heart, despite the masks he is often forced to wear, do not doubt him; If someone tells you that, no matter what a Jew does, he will remain a living legacy of his people and his past, nod your head and say: True! I ask that the skeptics among you listen to a story that happened to me a few years ago. However, I must warn you: I know the beginning and middle of the story; the end, I do not know to this day. I believe that, in this case at least, the end is not important. In any event, read on: The Drunkard In 1949, I traveled to Spain on assignment, spending several weeks crisscrossing the country, chatting with ordinary citizens as well as circumspect politicians, and seeking out here and there Jews and vestiges of Jewish life from the time of the Inquisition. I found both Jews and tragic remnants of the Jewish past in that country of Judah Halevi and Samuel ha-Naggid. However, the most interesting among them I encountered by chance, not in a museum or in Jewish company but in a cabaret. Spanish colleagues, who brought me to Madrid and wished to show me the nightlife of the capital, led me to a cabaret, where overstuffed rich people came to admire flamenco performers who, in dancing and gyrating their bodies to some crazy rhythm, seemed as though they had been possessed by a dybbuk. I do not know why my gaze, which wandered not only to the stage but also throughout the hall, suddenly fixed on a man in his 40s, who was sitting alone not far from us and did not stop drinking whiskey. Perhaps the drunkard drew my interest and curiosity because I have met many drunkards in my life, but this one was different. Most drunkards drink to forget; he drank to remember. So it seemed to me, based on the way in which he held the glass in his hand, brought it to his lips, and placed it back on the table. He had a gentle face with a high, wrinkled forehead; thick eyebrows hanging over dark, mournful eyes; and delicate hands with fingers ranging from long to extremely long. We sat in the cabaret for three hours, but, for all his drinking, the drunkard did not sleepy. My curiosity grew by the minute until I could no longer contain it. I called over the waiter and asked him who our bizarre neighbor was. “Oh, you must mean Paul,” the waiter replied. “Good, now I know his name,” I answered, “but who is he?” The waiter smiled: “Wait a bit, be patient for a couple hours. Then you will see something you will not forget for the rest of your life. Wait, señor, it’s worth it…” I wanted to question him further, but other guests summoned him. We had no choice but to wait. The Divine Violin In the meanwhile, the dancers grew tired from their dancing and the music itself began to die down. The cabaret slowly started to empty out and a sudden gloom overtook this hall, to which people would come seeking false happiness and hollow illusions. Our drunkard continued to knock back one glass after another, as if he had decided to drown himself, his life and his sadness, in the ever-full, ever-empty glass he held in his hand. Suddenly, he gave the waiter a wink, and the latter understood what the guest wanted from him. The waiter approached the stage, where the orchestra was playing sentimental melodies, and returned to the drunkard’s table with a violin in hand. The drunkard took the violin, and a deathly silence descended upon the hall. All eyes were trained on him, on this elegant drunkard, who, eyes closed, stroked the bow for a long while, his face glowing as though flames were about to burst out of his head into the night. Then he began to play. And I shuddered. I have heard many virtuosos in my lifetime, among them some of the most famous and talented. But I had never heard anything like this. Suddenly, it seemed to me that the cabaret had been transformed into a temple where he, the cantor, sought to purify his soul and ours in the blue sea of musical notes, of divine songs and harmonies. I do not recall how long he played. I only remember that the impromptu concert was suddenly cut short and I was unable to catch a glimpse of the violinist, since he had already left the cabaret. The magic came to an end, disappeared, and everything happened so quickly that I could barely believe it had been anything more than a dream. The waiter then approached and told us that the drunkard comes every evening to the same cabaret, drinks his fill, and once he is good and plastered, he takes the violin and gives a free concert – for himself. Who was he, this Paul? A German Jew, before the war he was a violinist who gave concerts. Hitler deported him to a concentration camp where he played in the camp orchestra. After the war, he was no longer up to performing in public. He came to Madrid in 1945-46. He had enough money – presumably from wealthy relatives. Many people suggested that he again give concerts, but he can only play when he is drunk. That story left me then with a terrible impression. I decided to return to the cabaret the next day. But at the hotel a cable was waiting for me directing me to make a short trip to Tangier. Two years later, I again visited Madrid and went to the same cabaret, but Paul was no longer there. They informed me that he had traveled to settle in Israel. Apostates at the Seder Three years ago, I celebrated Passover on a French ship, somewhere in the middle of the ocean between Brazil and Argentina. We observed the Seder as it should be done. More than fifty people were seated at the table. But not all of them were Jews: thirty of them were… apostates. The State of Israel was then going through difficult times, and Christian missionaries had arrived to buy up Jewish souls. Anyone who agreed to apostatize received a visa to Brazil and food for the journey. Several hundred Jews left Israel then, having allowed themselves to be persuaded by the missionaries. On a beautiful day, I took the French ship Provence and sailed to Brazil to see how the apostates were living there. I knew that a couple dozen apostate Jews were traveling on that same ship, but I did not have access to them. First of all, the ship was large (with more than a thousand passengers), and go ask someone if he was not only not a Jew but an apostate! Second of all, the officers told me that many passengers almost never leave their cabin, so how is one supposed to go in to see them and ask indiscreet questions? To my “luck,” a dramatic incident took place in Brazil: in Rio de Janeiro, the Immigration Authority refused to recognize the apostates’ entrance visas (to this day, no one knows why), and they were not allowed off the ship. According to international maritime law, the Provence had to bring them back to Marseilles, France. But because the ship was first traveling to Buenos Aires, they locked the apostates in the ship’s cellar and held them there under arrest. I myself was supposed to disembark in Brazil, but immediately upon hearing about the incident, the journalist in me decided to travel on with these unhappy Jews to chronicle their suffering. In the meanwhile, Passover sneaked up on us and I received permission from the ship’s captain to lead a Seder. The announcement came over the megaphone that those Jews who so wished could have a special “service” after dinner, as required by Jewish law. I did not expect the apostates to come. But come they did. They numbered thirty-something: men, women, children. They sheepishly entered the coach dining hall and silently sat down at the table, where matzos and kosher wine symbolized their connection to the old traditions of the Jewish people. At that moment, I remembered our Sages. Even at the gates of Hell, they said, a wicked person can repent. And they were correct, our Sages. It is enough that he witness an old-time Passover Seder for even the worst apostate to free himself of his shackles. It goes without saying that I was in seventh heaven, sitting together at the table with Jews who had returned, reading the Haggadah. But the greatest shock came a few minutes later. The door opened and there stood… Paul. He did not appear drunk. But his eyes were cloudy. He came to the table, sat down, and… was silent. After the Seder, I tried to have a conversation with him, but I could not extract anything from him. One thing I understood more from his silence than from the few words he uttered: the Jew in him had remained. …On the return from Argentina, thanks to the intervention of Jewish organizations in Brazil, they allowed the apostates off the ship. Paul also left the ship, and in Brazil he escaped my eye. I warned you: I do not know the end of this story. I have no idea what happened to Paul and the other apostates. I know only this: if someone tells you that Passover is the festival of redemption not only of a nation but of each individual, believe him. כעומד לפני השכינה בשעת ער Rabbi Aharon :לערנט Lichtenstein on the Divide Between Traditional and Academic Jewish Studies

כּעומד לפֿני השכינה בשעת ער לערנט: Rabbi on the Divide Between Traditional and Academic Jewish Studies By Shaul Seidler-Feller Shaul Seidler-Feller strives to be a posheter yid and an oved Hashem; the rest is commentary. This is his third contribution to the Seforim blog; for his previous articles, see here and here. This post has been generously sponsored le-illui nishmat Sima Belah bat Aryeh Leib, z”l. Rabbi Aharon Lichtenstein enthusiasts might be surprised to learn that there was a time when the rosh yeshivah, zts”l, lectured publicly in Yiddish. I myself had no idea that this was the case until my dear friend, Reb Menachem Butler, who fulfills be-hiddur the prophetic pronouncement asof asifem (Jer. 8:13) in its most positive sense, forwarded me a link containing a snippet from a talk Rav Lichtenstein had given at the Yidisher visnshaftlekher institut-YIVO on May 12, 1968, as part of the Institute’s forty-second annual conference. Feeling a sense of responsibility to help bring Rav Lichtenstein’s insights to a broader audience, I quickly translated that brief excerpt into English, and, with the assistance of YIVO’s Senior Researcher and Director of Exhibitions Dr. Eddy Portnoy, my translation was posted on the YIVO website in early December 2017. Realizing, however, that the original lecture had been much longer, Menachem and I made some inquiries to see if we could locate the rest of the recording, only to come up empty-handed. As hashgahah would have it, on the Friday night following the publication of the translation, I was privileged to share a meal with another dear friend, Rabbi Noach Goldstein, whose great beki’ut in Rav Lichtenstein’s (written and oral) oeuvre was already well-known to me. In the course of our conversation, Noach mentioned that there was another Yiddish-language shi‘ur by Rav Lichtenstein available on the YUTorah website. I was stunned: could this be the missing part of the YIVO lecture? After Shabbat, I followed up with Noach, who duly sent me the relevant link – and lo and behold, here was the (incomplete) first part of the speech Rav Lichtenstein had given at YIVO![1] I told myself at the time that I would translate this as well; unfortunately, though, work and other obligations prevented me from doing so… But then, in another twist of fate, one of the orekhei/arkhei dayyanim at The Lehrhaus, Rabbi (soon-to-be Dayyan Dr.) Shlomo Zuckier, reached out to me at the end of December in connection with a syllabus he was compiling for a class he is teaching this semester at the Isaac Breuer College of Yeshiva University on “The Thought of Rabbi Aharon Lichtenstein.” I mentioned to him at the time that Noach had recently referred me to the YUTorah recording and that I had hoped to translate it. With his encouragement, the permission of YUTorah (thank you, Rabbi Robert Shur!), and the magnanimous support of an anonymous sponsor (Menachem Butler functioning as shaddekhan), I present below a preliminary annotated English version of the lecture, whose relevance to the current debate about Rav Lichtenstein’s attitude toward academic Jewish studies should be clear. It is my hope to post my original Yiddish transcription (which awaits proper vocalization), as well as any refinements to the English, shortly after Pesah; please check back then for an update. [UPDATE (June 15, 2018): My vocalized Yiddish transcription of both recordings is now available as a PDF here. The text of the translation below has also been improved accordingly.] Note: As was the case with my translation of the shorter recording published previously, Romanization of Yiddish andloshn- koydesh (Hebrew/Aramaic) terms attempts to follow the standards adopted by YIVO,[2] and all bracketed (and footnoted) references were added by me. It should also be borne in mind that the material that follows was originally delivered as a lecture, and while the translation tries to preserve the oral flavor of the presentation, certain liberties have been taken with the elision of repetitions in order to allow the text to flow more smoothly. [A Century of Traditional Jewish Higher Learning in America] [Introduction] I beg your pardon for the slight delay. It was not on my own account; rather, my wife is not able to attend, and I promised I would see to it to set up a recording for her. In truth, I must not only ask your indulgence; it may be that this behavior touches upon a halakhic matter as well. After all, the gemore says that “we do not roll Torah scrolls in public in order not to burden the community” [see Yume 70a with Rambam, Hilkhes tfile 12:23]. It is for that reason that we sometimes take out two or three Torah scrolls: so that those assembled need not wait as we roll from one section to another. The gemore did not speak of tape recorders, but presumably the same principle obtains, and so I beg your pardon especially. When they originally asked me to speak on the topic of “A Century of Traditional Higher Jewish Learning in America,” they presented it to me as a counterbalance, so to speak, to a second talk, which, as I understand it, had been assigned to Professor Rudavsky.[3] They told me that since we are now marking the centennial of the founding of Maimonides College, which, as Professor Rudavsky capably informed us, was the first institution of higher Jewish scholarship in America, perhaps it would be worthwhile to hear from an opposing view, so to speak, from the yeshive world, regarding another type, another model, of Jewish scholarship. This was certainly entirely appropriate on their part – and perhaps it was not only appropriate, but, in a certain sense, there was an element of khesed in their invitation to me to serve as such a counterbalance. I wish to say at the outset that what I plan to present here is not meant to play devil’s advocate, contradicting what we heard earlier; rather, just the opposite, I hope, in a certain sense, to fill out the picture. However, as proper as the intention was, my assignment has presented me with something of a problem. Plainly put: my subject, as I understand it, does not exist. We simply do not have a hundred years of so-called “traditional higher Jewish learning in America” – at least, not in public. Privately, presumably there were “one from a town and two from a clan” [Jer. 3:14], a Torah scholar who sat and clenched the bench[4] here and there. But in public, in the form of institutions, yeshives, a hundred years have not yet passed, and for that centennial, I am afraid, we must wait perhaps another ten to twenty years. At that point – may we all, with God’s help, be strong and healthy – they will have to invite a professor as a counterbalance to the yeshive world. The first yeshive, which was a predecessor, in a certain sense, to our yeshive, the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary, a yeshive known as Yeshiva University, was the Etz Chaim Yeshiva, founded in 1886. As a result, I find myself facing something of a dilemma here, bound in – as it is known in the non-Jewish world – a Procrustean bed, that same bed familiar to everyone from the gemore in Sanhedrin. The gemore describes that when a guest arrived in Sodom, they had a one-size-fits-all bed, and it seems that in Sodom they were not particularly attentive to individual preferences. So they took each guest and measured him against the bed: if he turned out too short, they stationed one fellow at his head, another at his feet, and they stretched him in both directions until he covered the bed; if he turned out too tall, they would cut him down to size, sometimes at his feet, sometimes at his head, so that, in any event, he would fit [Sanhedrin 109b]. Here I face the same problem, and I have one of two ways to extricate myself from my present impasse. On the one hand, I could, perhaps, make a bit of a stretch and broaden the definition of “traditional higher Jewish scholarship and learning,” so that my title, my subject, would be accurate and so that I might, after all, be able to identify a hundred years during which people sat and learned. But, on the other hand, perhaps I should rather stay firm and close to the title, maintaining the pure, unadulterated conception of what constitutes “learning,” “Jewish learning,” “traditional learning,” even if doing so would come at the expense of completely fulfilling the task assigned to me: to speak not about a brief span of years, but a full hundred. You yourselves understand very well that, given these two options, it is certainly better to choose the latter – perhaps abbreviating a bit chronologically – in order to grasp, at least partially, the inner essence of traditional learning as I understand it. In taking up the work of presenting an approach to traditional Jewish learning here in America, I believe that, in truth, I have two tasks. The first is to define, to a certain degree, how I conceive of “traditional Jewish learning,” or, let us say, more or less, yeshive learning – what constitutes the idea in its purest manifestation? – though I fear this might take us to an epoch, a period, that does not fit the title as it stands, in its literal form. Second, having somewhat limited the definition, I wish to briefly introduce the principal players and give a short report simply on the historical development of this form of study in the course of the last hundred, or, let us say, a bit less than a hundred, years.[5] When we speak of “traditional higher Jewish learning,” we must analyze four different terms. And, in truth, one could – and perhaps should – give a lengthy accounting of each of the four. However, I mentioned earlier the concept of not burdening the community, so I will not dwell at all on the latter two. Rather, I will speak about the first two, “traditional” and “higher,”[6] and it will be self-understood that my words relate to “Jewish learning.” I especially wish to focus on the first term, “traditional.” [Three Definitions of “Traditional”] What does it mean? When we speak here of “traditional” learning – or when we speak in general about some occurrence or phenomenon and wish to describe it as “traditional” – I believe we could be referring to three different definitions: First, learning can be “traditional” in the sense that it involves the study of traditional texts – khumesh or gemore – in the same way that one could say about a given prayer, ballad, or poem that it is “traditional,” and sometimes we speak of a custom or even of a food as “traditional.” Here, the adjective refers, simply, to a text that goes back hundreds or thousands of years, that is rooted in the life of the nation, and that takes up residence there – at least, so to speak, in a word. Second, we can speak of “traditional” learning and refer thereby to learning that operates, methodologically, using concepts, tools, and methods that are old. There were once yeshives… – but this issue does not concern yeshives only: whatever the discipline, the learning is “traditional” if one is using methods that are not new, that do not seek to shake up or revolutionize the field, that have already been trod by many in the past, with which all are familiar, and that have been employed for study by a long “golden chain of generations.” Third, though, and perhaps especially, when we describe learning as “traditional,” we refer to a methodology that is not only old, but that is rooted in – and, to a certain extent, implants within the student – a particular relationship to the past, or to certain facets thereof; in other words, an approach to learning through which the student absorbs a certain attitude to the Jewish past. Among these three points, the first – studying traditional texts – is the least important in establishing and defining what I mean, at least, when I say that I will speak about “traditional” Jewish learning. At the end of the day, one can take a gemore or a khumesh, study it in a way that is consistent with the spirit of the Jewish past, and thereby strengthen one’s commitment to ; or, Heaven forbid, one can do the opposite, studying the same text in such a way that it undermines that commitment. Khazal say of Torah learning itself that it can sometimes be a medicine and at other times, Heaven forbid, a poison [Shabes 88b]. Of course, if one is not dealing with “traditional” texts, one cannot be engaged in “traditional Jewish learning;” but this is nothing more than a prerequisite, so to speak, not a determining factor in establishing what constitutes “traditional Jewish learning.” The second sense – in which one follows a path one knows others have trod in the past – is much more directly relevant. First of all, it gives a person a sense of continuity: that he is not the first, that he is not blazing a trail, that he is not entirely alone, and that before him came a long chain, generation after generation of Torah giants, or – excuse the comparison – in the case of another discipline, of professors, thinkers, or philosophers, who established a certain intellectual tradition to which he can feel a kind of connection. This feeling is obviously important not only in relation to an intellectual tradition; it is significant in general and is relevant to a person’s approach to social questions writ large – but perhaps especially to intellectual questions. Second, aside from not feeling isolated and alone, the benefit is straightforwardly intellectual: when working in a traditional manner, a person has at his disposal certain tools that other specialists developed before him. He also has a common language with others who are engaged in study, so that it is simply easier for him to express himself, understand what his fellow says, and communicate with others. For in the ability to communicate, of course, lies much strength. However, I am especially interested in discussing and defining the third sense: a “traditional” methodology which is not only inherited from our ancestors, a kind of memento from the house of our grandfathers and great-grandfathers, but which seeks to implant within us, on the one hand, and is rooted in, on the other, a particular relationship to those great-grandfathers. And here I wish – and I hope you do not misunderstand me – especially to distinguish and define the wall – and it is a wall – separating what we conceive of as a yeshive style of learning from what is considered a more or less academic approach: that same Wissenschaft des Judentums which Professor Rudavsky mentioned earlier, which was identified with those pioneers of the previous century – [Leopold] Zunz, [Abraham] Geiger, and their associates – and which, of course, has many exponents to this very day. [Two Differences Between Traditional and Academic Learning] Where, then, is the point of distinction dividing a yeshive approach from a more academic one? I believe that there are two points in particular upon which it would be worthwhile to focus briefly. [Historical vs. Analytical Orientations in Studying the Text] First, the academic approach is more historically oriented. It is more interested in collecting facts from the past; taking a particular author or text – it makes no difference: it could be a popular painter or poet, rishoynim, Khazal, even the Bible itself – placing it within the context of a particular epoch; seeing to it to study, as much as possible, all the minutiae of that period; and thereby attaining a clear understanding of the nature, the essence, of the text, work, artist, or author. On the other hand, the yeshive or “traditional” approach – “traditional” at least in yeshives, and not only in yeshives but in the study of halokhe in general – is more analytical in its character. It does not seek to expand upon a particular work in order to construct an entire edifice, a whole framework of facts, that would help us understand the circumstances under which it was written, or what sort of intellectual or social currents acted upon a person, driving him to work, paint, or portray one way and not the other. Rather, it is more interested in exploring and delving deeply into the work itself. Whatever was happening in the world outside the gemore has a certain significance, but the main emphasis is not there. The main emphasis is instead on understanding what the gemore itself says, what kind of ideas are expressed therein, what sort of concepts are defined therein, and what type of notions can be extracted therefrom. In other words, the focus is not so much on facts as it is on ideas; the approach is more philosophical than historical; one is concerned more with the text than with the context. And this point – the difference between a yeshive or traditional approach, on the one hand, and a more academically oriented one, on the other – is not limited to the walls of the besmedresh; it is not our concern alone. Those familiar with the various approaches to and methods of treating and critiquing literature in general know that the same argument rages in that field as well – though perhaps not as sharply. For example, in 1950, during a session of the Modern Language Association conference, two of the most esteemed critics in the world of English literature spoke for a group dealing specifically with [John] Milton. One of them, A.S.P. [Arthur Sutherland Pigott] Woodhouse, then a professor at the University of Toronto and a man with a truly incisive approach to literature, gave a paper whose title – it was given in English – was “The Historical Criticism of Milton.”[7] From the other side, Cleanth Brooks, a professor at Yale and one of the “renewers,” so to speak – or perhaps not a “renewer” but, at the very least, one of the propagandists arguing on behalf of the so-called “New Criticism” – gave a different paper entitled “Milton and Critical Re-Estimates.”[8] This is nothing more than a single example – they were specifically treating Milton in that case – of the aforementioned difference in approach. On the one hand, Woodhouse argued consistently that in order to understand Milton, one must delve deeply into the history of the seventeenth century and of its various intellectual currents – one of them was mentioned earlier by Professor Rudavsky: the great interest in Hebrew studies that exerted its influence upon him – and only once one has gathered together such information and is able, as much as possible, to reconstitute the seventeenth century as it was, can one properly understand Paradise Lost or Samson Agonistes. And Brooks, who came from an entirely different school of thought – from I.A. [Ivor Armstrong] Richards’ school and others’ – claimed that certainly there is some value to that as well, but the main thing, at the end of the day, is to understand the poem itself. To do so, one needs to focus on addressing a different set of problems, problems of form, and to grasp not so much the relationship of Milton to, let us say, [Oliver] Cromwell, [Edmund] Spenser, or [John] Donne, but rather the relationship of the first book of Paradise Lost – or of Paradise Regained – to the second, and so on. And, of course, this difference in approach, in the goal one wishes to accomplish, manifests as well at the basic level of one’s work. According to one line of thinking, one must busy oneself with many small minutiae; according to the other, one can limit oneself and concentrate on the poem itself. The same question can be asked in regard to learning and understanding Torah. And it is possible that this question presents itself more sharply with respect to Torah learning than with respect to other fields of study. In the editor’s introduction to Chaucer’s poetry, F.N. [Fred Norris] Robinson, one of the most prominent Chaucer scholars – forgive me, before I became a rosheshive I studied English literature – mentions that a French professor had once bemoaned the fact that we find ourselves now in, as he termed it, l’âge des petits papiers,[9] in a period that busies itself with small scraps of paper. What he in fact meant was that the aforementioned broadening required by the historical approach – which was, of course, influenced by German Wissenschaft, especially in the last century – can at times simply overwhelm. Rabbi Zevi Hirsch Berliner put it differently. Someone was once speaking with him about Jewish Wissenschaft and the like, so he said to him, “If you want to know what Rashi looked like, what type of clothing he wore, and so on, go consult Zunz.[10] But if you want to know who Rashi was, what he said, better to study with me.”[11] And I wish to emphasize: when we speak here of a historical, academic methodology, we refer not only to research. Those who adopt such an approach certainly go much further, undertaking not only historical research but also historical criticism. In other words, after having studied all the minutiae through various investigations, one assesses to what use they can be put and what light they can shine on some dark corner of Jewish history. However, this form of criticism, which is mainly rooted in a more historical approach, is different from the yeshive approach. The question turns mainly on what direction one is looking in: from outside in, so to speak, or vice versa. Does one stand with both feet in the gemore, or does one stand outside and look in? This question is particularly important in regard to learning Torah. For, at the end of the day, when we speak of “traditional learning,” “yeshive learning,” we are dealing not only with an intellectual activity but a religious one as well. This means that learning is not only a scholarly endeavor meant to inform a person of what once existed, what Khazal thought, what they transmitted to us, what the rishoynim held, but is bound up in a personal encounter wherein the individual, the student, is wholly attached and connected to what he learns and feels that he is standing before the Divine Presence while he learns. If one takes to learning in this way, one’s entire approach of emphasizing the need to keep one’s head in the gemore attains a special significance unto itself. Lionel Trilling once wrote about [William] Wordsworth and Khazal.[12] There he tells us a bit about his youth – Trilling is, of course, a Jew – going to synagogue with his father, perusing an English translation of Pirkey oves since he did not know Hebrew, and years later realizing that the relationship of Wordsworth to nature is the same as that of Khazal to the Holy Scriptures and that of the rishoynim to Khazal. What they found therein he expresses by quoting the last line of Wordsworth’s “Immortality Ode”: “Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.”[13] Trilling recognized that for Khazal or the rishoynim, the Torah was not simply some sort of intellectual exercise. Rather, it was something that penetrated into the depths of their souls. It is to attain that feeling that every yeshive student strives. Not all achieve it, but everyone does, and must, aspire to it. This is one point distinguishing the method which emphasizes the text from that which focuses on what surrounds it. [Respect vs. Reverence for the Text and the Jewish Past] A second difference between the yeshive and academic approaches is their respective attitudes to the text. I just mentioned this a moment ago: a benyeshive approaches a gemore and other traditional works with a certain reverence, each time with a greater sense of “Remove your sandals from your feet” [Ex. 3:5], feeling that he is handling something holy, that he is standing before a great, profound, and sacred text. And this goes hand- in-hand with an approach not only to a specific text, but to the entire Jewish past, a past which a benyeshive not only respects – after all, academics respect it as well – but toward which he displays a certain measure of submissiveness and deference. He stands before it like a servant before his master [Shabes 10a], like a student before his teacher. If we seek a parallel to this point in the world at large, we should not look to modern literary criticism; I do not know whether such an approach exists among today’s literary disciplines. Rather, we should go back, perhaps, to the seventeenth century – Professor Rudavsky mentioned this as well – and the whole question, the great debate that raged within various circles in Europe, regarding what sort of approach one should take to the classical world: the so-called “battle of the books.” You know well that [Jonathan] Swift, the English author, once wrote a small work – more his best-known than his best – about a library whose various volumes suddenly began fighting with one another, this one saying, “I am better,” and the other saying, “I am better.” What was the whole argument about? The debate turned on the issue of which literature should be more highly esteemed: the ancient, classical literature, or the new, modern literature?[14] Once upon a time, people assumed this was just a parody, a type of jeu d’esprit; Swift was, after all, a satirical writer, so he wrote it as a joke. However, almost fifty years ago, an American scholar, R.F. [Richard Foster] Jones, wrote a whole book about it, The [Background of the] Battle of the Books,[15] in which he demonstrated that this was not merely a parody in Swift’s time. Rather, he was treating an issue that, for some, actually occupied the height of importance: the so-called querelle des Anciens et des Modernes, “the battle of the Ancients and the Moderns,” which manifests itself in many, many literary works, especially in critical works of the seventeenth century. For example, in [John] Dryden’s essay Of Dramatick Poesie,[16] there is an entire dialogue between four different speakers, each of whom deals with the question: how should one relate to the classical world? And let us recall that during the Renaissance and Reformation, people related to the classical world differently than even a professor of classical literature does nowadays. For example, [Desiderius] Erasmus, one of the greatest figures of the European Renaissance, made it a practice to pray, Sancte Socrates, ora pro nobis, “Holy Socrates, pray for us.”[17] By contrast, today, even in the classical universities, I do not believe that they pray to Socrates for help. By the seventeenth century, the feeling that was, for Erasmus, so intense had somewhat weakened, but, nevertheless, the question was still looming. For an academic today, in his approach to traditional Jewish texts, “the Ancients” – the classics, Khazal, rishoynim – are, in the words of the English poet Ben Johnson, “Guides, not Commanders.”[18] A bentoyre, by contrast, recognizes to a much sharper and greater degree the authority of Khazal, rishoynim, Torah, and halokhe. For him, texts are not only eminent or valuable, but holy. And this is a basic difference in attitude which, perhaps, distinguishes the two approaches and leaves a chasm between them. Edmund Wilson, writing one time in The New Yorker magazine – he is, of course, a non-Jew, but one who is greatly interested in the Land of Israel and Jewish matters – mentioned that he believes that a non-Jew cannot possibly grasp what an observant Jew feels when he holds a Torah scroll, and not only when he is holding one; how he thinks about khumesh, about Torah. To a certain extent, it is difficult to convey to a modern man who has no parallel in his own experience; perhaps it is complicated to describe how a bentoyre or benyeshive approaches a gemore. Of course, it is not the same way one approaches khumesh, for khumesh is, from a halakhic perspective, a kheftse of Torah. Of what does Torah consist? Text. However, the kheftse, the object, of the is not the text alone – which was itself, after all, originally transmitted orally – but the ideas contained therein and, in a certain sense, the human being, the mind, the soul that is suffused with those ideas by a great mentor. Still, while it may be that the relationship of a benyeshive to a gemore is difficult to convey, it is certainly, at the very least, sharply divergent from the approach of an academic. And so, we have, for the time being, two points that distinguish the traditional form of learning, yeshive learning, from a more academic approach. But these two points, it seems to me, are not entirely separate from one another; rather, just the opposite, one is bound up in the other. At the end of the day, why does a benyeshive devote himself so fully specifically to text alone, to the arguments of Abaye and Rove, and why is he not terribly interested in knowing Jewish history and the like? Firstly, because he considers the text so important; if one holds that a text is holy, one wishes to study it. Secondly, because he believes that the text is not only holy, but deep – there is what to study there! It contains one level on top of a second level on top of a third. The more one delves into Torah, the more one bores into its inner essence, the more distinctly one senses the radiance and illumination that Khazal tell us inhere within the Torah [Eykhe rabe, psikhte 2]. In order to establish the various levels of interpretation and maintain that one can examine a particular nuance with great precision, one must actually believe that a text is both holy and important and that it stems from an awe-inspiring source. For example, in the Middle Ages, in – excuse the comparison – the Christian world, people were involved in all sorts of analysis, each person seeing from his own perspective… Notes: * I wish at the outset to express my appreciation to my dear friends, Rabbis Daniel Tabak and Shlomo Zuckier, for their editorial corrections and comments to earlier drafts of this piece which, taken together, improved it considerably. [1] The date assigned to the shi‘ur on the YUTorah website is erroneous; it should read: “May 12, 1968.” Those who listen to the original audio will note that it begins to cut in and out at about 42:40, thus effectively eliminating the direct connection between the present recording and the one posted on YIVO’s website. However, it is clear from the short snatches of Rav Lichtenstein’s voice that have been preserved after 42:40 that the recordings do in fact belong to one and the same talk (and not two separate Yiddish lectures on the same topic). Incidentally, if any of the Seforim blog’s readers knows where the intervening audio can be found, please contact the editors so that it, too, can be translated for the benefit of the public. For other Seforim blog studies related to Rav Lichtenstein, see Aviad Hacohen, “Rav Aharon Lichtenstein’s Minchat Aviv: A Review,” the Seforim blog (September 8, 2014), and Elyakim Krumbein, “Kedushat Aviv: Rav Aharon Lichtenstein zt”l on the Sanctity of Time and Place,” trans. David Strauss, the Seforim blog (December 5, 2017) (both accessed March 25, 2018). [2] See the YIVO website (accessed March 25, 2018) for a guide to Yiddish Romanization, as well as Uriel Weinreich,ModernEnglish-Yiddish, Yiddish- English Dictionary (New York: Schocken Books, 1977) for his transcriptions of terms deriving from the loshn-koydesh component of Yiddish. [3] David Rudavsky, research associate professor of education in New York University’s Department of Hebrew Culture and Education, presented before Rav Lichtenstein on “A Century of Jewish Higher Learning in America – on the Centenary of Maimonides College.” See the conference program in Yedies: News of the Yivo. See also David Rudavsky, Emancipation and Adjustment: Contemporary Jewish Religious Movements and Their History and Thought (New York: Diplomatic Press, 1967), 318-320, for a brief discussion of Maimonides College. For a history of Maimonides College, founded in Philadelphia in 1867 by Isaac Leeser – not to be confused with the post-secondary school of the same name located today in Hamilton, Ontario – see Bertram Wallace Korn, “The First American Jewish Theological Seminary: Maimonides College, 1867–1873,” in Eventful Years and Experiences: Studies in Nineteenth Century American Jewish History (Cincinnati: The American Jewish Archives, 1954), 151-213. The charter of Maimonides College was published in “A Hebrew College in the United States,” The Jewish Chronicle (August 9, 1867): 7 (I thank Menachem Butler for this latter source). See also Jonathan D. Sarna, American Judaism: A History (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2004), 80, 431. [4] Yiddish kvetshn di bank/dos benkl is a particularly evocative way of referring to someone putting in long hours learning while sitting on a bench or chair in a besmedresh. [5] For this part of the lecture, see my aforementioned, previous translation published on the YIVO website. [6] It appears that the section of the lecture relating to Rav Lichtenstein’s understanding of “higher” learning has not been preserved in either of the two parts of the recording available at present. [7] See A.S.P. Woodhouse, “The HistoricalCriticism of Milton,” PMLA 66:6 (December 1951): 1033-1044. [8] See Cleanth Brooks, “Milton and Critical Re-Estimates,” PMLA 66:6 (December 1951): 1045-1054. [9] F.N. Robinson, ed., The Complete Works of Geoffrey Chaucer (Boston; New York; Chicago: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1933), xv. [10] Leopold Zunz, Toledot morenu ge’on uzzenu rabbenu shelomoh yitshaki zts”l ha- mekhunneh be-shem rashi, trans. Samson Bloch ha-Levi (Lemberg: Löbl Balaban, 1840). [11] For a survey and discussion of the various people to whom this critique of Wissenschaft has been attributed, see Shimon Steinmetz, “What color was Rashi’s shirt? Who said it and why?” the On the Main Line blog (June 10, 2010) (accessed March 25, 2018). For a recent biography of Zunz, see Ismar Schorsch, LeopoldZunz: Creativity in Adversity (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016). It should be noted that Zunz (1794–1886) had just turned six when Rabbi Berliner (also known as Hirschel Levin or Hart Lyon; 1721–1800) passed away. [12] Lionel Trilling, “Wordsworth and the Rabbis: The Affinity Between His ‘Nature’ and Their ‘Law,’” Commentary Magazine 20 (January 1955): 108-119, a revised version of his earlier “Wordsworth and the Iron Time,” The Kenyon Review 12:3 (Summer 1950): 477-497. The essay, or a version thereof, also appeared in a number of other forums. [13] William Wordsworth, “Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood,” Wikisource, l. 206 (accessed March 25, 2018). (The poem was first published under the title “Ode” in Wordsworth’s Poems, in Two Volumes, vol. 2 [London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, 1807], 147-158.) This line does not actually appear in the aforementioned Trilling article. The Ode itself was the subject of a different essay by Trilling published under the title “The Immortality Ode” in Trilling’s The Liberal Imagination: Essays on Literature and Society (New York: The Viking Press, 1950), 129-159. [14] See Jonathan Swift, An Account of a Battel between the Antient and Modern Books in St. James’s Library (London: John Nutt, 1704). [15] Jones’ monograph, The Background of the Battle of the Books (St. Louis: Washington University Press, 1920), was actually an offprint of an article by the same name that appeared in Washington University Studies: Humanistic Series7:2 (April 1920): 99-162. [16] John Dryden, Of Dramatick Poeſie, an Essay (London: Henry Herringman, 1668). See also the version reproduced here (accessed March 25, 2018). [17] Desiderius Erasmus, The Colloquies of Erasmus, trans. N. Bailey, ed. E. Johnson, vol. 1 (London: Reeves & Turner, 1878), 186. [18] Ben Iohnson, Timber: or, Discoveries… (London, 1641), 89.

At a Holiday Celebration with the Lubavitchers by Elie Wiesel (1963)

At a Holiday Celebration with the Lubavitchers By Eliezer Wiesel Forverts (13 December 1963) [Yiddish] [Translated into English by Shaul Seidler-Feller (2017)] The “Holiday of Salvation” among the Lubavitchers. – We travel to Brooklyn the way they used to travel to see the rebbe. – The holiday of Yud Tes Kislev. – Why I like to attend when the Lubavitchers host a farbrengen. – Guests from Israel. – The miracle of joy. By Eliezer Wiesel Someone remembered: it is Yud Tes Kislev. So, who wants to visit the Lubavitchers? Everyone. Everyone wants to go. Just because? [No,] it is the Holiday of Salvation. The first rebbe, Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Lyady, the Ba‘al ha-Tanya, was released from a tsarist prison on the nineteenth day of Kislev. The joy [of that moment] has come down to us in its entirety, being passed on from generation to generation, from heart to heart, from word to word. Who says that only sorrow must be bequeathed as an inheritance? Hasidim do not believe in such an inheritance. Hasidim move heaven and earth to remain happy. Sadness drives away the Immanent Presence of God. Ten people were gathered in the room, both locals and visitors from the State of Israel: Aryeh Disenchik, editor-in-chief of the Tel Aviv-based evening paper Maariv; Aharon Kidan, one of Prime Minister Levi Eshkol’s closest assistants; Yehuda Hellman, secretary of the Conference of Presidents; the Israeli author Zvi Kolitz (one of the producers of the anti-Pius play The Deputy); and Isaac Moyal, representative of Keren Hayesod. We were speaking, as usual, about politics and acquaintances: where so-and-so is and what became of so-and-so. Also: what will be the nature of the relationship between the Johnson Administration and Israel? Or: has Levi Eshkol yet freed himself entirely from the famous shepherd in Sde Boker? Close to midnight, someone remarked: “It is Yud Tes Kislev.” The effect was instantaneous. Heated discussions were cut short. No one spoke for a full minute. Presumably everyone was remembering his own Holiday of Salvation, his own personal thirst for redemption. Who wants to visit the Lubavitchers? Everyone. Almost without exception. Just like once upon a time in Hungary or Poland: they would travel to the rebbe to liberate themselves from the mundane; to forget their gray, daily concerns; to immerse themselves in Hasidic ecstasy and Hasidic song, if not in Hasidic faith. I enjoy Lubavitcher celebrations. I enjoy watching Jews rejoicing and tearing themselves away from the earth, as if it had no control over them, as if their enemies had lost their power – if not forever, then at least for now, on this night of remembrance and thanksgiving. The rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, sits up front and toasts “l’chaim!” before the hundreds of assembled Hasidim and yeshivah students, who sway in song and close their eyes while listening to his homily. I first attended such a farbrengen four years ago – and whoever comes once must return. Jews have so many reasons to mourn and to allow themselves to sink into melancholy, so when I see a congregation building the palace of song, I feel like reciting a blessing: she-heheyanu. Since the War, I have felt that we will never again be able to sing and forget. The Holy Temple was destroyed more than once in wicked Europe, and Tish‘ah be-Av, I thought, will fall more than once a year. Never again will yeshivah students clap their hands to the rhythm of a melody; never again will their faces flare up under the radiant, calm gaze of their rebbe – so I thought both during and after the War. The world will remain a cemetery, without Kohanim and without Levites. That is why I come to the Lubavitchers. Their jubilation draws me in. Since the Holocaust, every bit of joy is a miracle, even greater than the release of the rabbi from Lyady. Isaac Babel writes in one of his novels that he once had the opportunity to meet the Chernobyler Rebbe of his day. Involuntarily, a pained cry escaped the Soviet Jewish writer’s heart: “Rebbe! Bless me! Give me enthusiasm!” That same pained cry, or pained prayer, rages within all of us. Most of us, unfortunately, have no one to whom to cry, to pray; we live in a desolate world. Our life force thirsts for a sip of water – but everything around us is dry, silent. There is no strength to sing, no reason to sing. The past went up in flames, the future is shrouded in thick clouds. Not long ago, a friend of mine confided in me that he had just gotten married, but he had not yet decided if he could bring children into the world, whether he had the right to do so. Because, what could he offer his children? Only fears and memories, both of them exceedingly dreadful. That is why I enjoy going to the Lubavitchers, even though I am a Vizhnitser, not a Lubavitcher, Hasid. Among them – I feel like saying: among us – they know how to banish doubt and melancholy. They know the secret of joy and ecstasy. The world will always remain the world, man will always remain man: if you have a difficult question, open theTanya and learn a chapter; or: raise your cup and have therebbe toast you “l’chaim!” – and your soul will feel relieved. The rebbe says his Torah, the crowd sings. A bridge connects Torah and song, and on it Hasid and rebbe meet, one drawing his strength from the other. Dozens of paper cups are raised into the air, all of them directed toward the rebbe; no one will drink without his “l’chaim!” gesture. Here, inside, everything is clear. Without confusion. There is a path, and the rebbe knows where it leads. Liberation is a miracle that is renewed every day. Every one of us has something from which to free himself and a personal demon to overcome. Outside, that path becomes a forest where shadows stray, searching for light in others’ windows. I cast a glance at my friends who have come from both near and far to this holiday celebration. The scene before their eyes has captivated and enchanted them. When someone leads them up to the rebbe, they are the happiest people in the world. One after another, they shake his hand and ask for his blessing. They, too, will mark Yud Tes Kislev on their calendars. On our way out, someone remarked: “I had no idea that even though I am not a Hasid, I would not feel like a stranger among them.” That is the miracle. Somewhere in the east, on the edge of the horizon, a ray of light has brought the promise of a new beginning.

א״ל הקב״ה … יודע אני :[1] כוונתו של אהרן היאך היתה On a Short Wedding Wish לטובה to the Lichtensteins from the Pen of Rabbi Jehiel Jacob Weinberg

א״ל הקב״ה … יודע אני כוונתו של אהרן היאך היתה לטובה :[1] On a Short Wedding Wish to the Lichtensteins from the Pen of Rabbi Jehiel Jacob Weinberg By Shaul Seidler-Feller I Rabbi Aharon Lichtenstein, zts”l, the late, lamented, “irreplaceable”[2] gedol ha-dor of the Modern Orthodox and Religious Zionist communities,[3] has been characterized by those who knew him as a larger-than- life – indeed, angelic[4] – leader whose complete command of every facet of Torah learning was matched only by his sterling character and superlative (almost Hafets Hayyim-like) piety.[5] One of the things that struck me most, however, in listening to and reading several of the eulogies delivered or published after his passing was precisely how genuinely human this prince among men was in his personal and family life. Mrs. Esti Rosenberg, one of Rav Lichtenstein’s daughters and the head of the Stella K. Abraham Beit Midrash for Women – Migdal Oz, used the biblical metaphor of “a ladder set up on the earth, whose head reached unto heaven” (Gen. 28:12)[6] to capture how her father managed to radiate both a rarefied aura of sanctity and, crucially, a true humanity that extended to such mundane matters as doing most of the laundry in the house,[7] getting the kids ready in the mornings,[8] helping them with their homework in the evenings,[9] coming to learn with them after seder twice a week,[10] making sure to eat dinner with them almost every night,[11] washing the dishes after Shabbat had ended so that his kids would not fight over whose responsibility it was,[12] attending their performances in the Ezra youth group or at school,[13] teaching them how to ride a bike,[14] playing Scrabble and chess with them,[15] taking an interest in their friends,[16] buying them gifts and clothing during his visits to the States,[17] etc. – all of them activities that might be undertaken by normal devoted fathers but that I think we usually, rightly or wrongly, do not associate with people of Rav Lichtenstein’s intellectual caliber and spiritual stature. Indeed, in the words of Rabbi Avishai David, a student of Rav Aharon’s, “Rav Lichtenstein was a normal gadol ba-Torah, a very normal gadol ba-Torah.”[18] And, of course, the same level of devotion was manifest in his relationship with his wife, Dr. Tovah Lichtenstein (nee Soloveitchik). Rav Aharon’s children reflected at the levayah on the mutual respect and unwavering support each partner showed the other,[19] while his students described some of the (ever-modest) manifestations of their affection for one another.[20] Dr. Lichtenstein herself summed it up best in a video produced in honor of her husband’s eightieth birthday when she said, “He invested both intellectually and emotionally in our children.[21] And he invested in our marriage as well – he was not only a family man but also a husband.”[22] II It is in this context, then, that I wish to digress for a moment and travel back in time to the Lichtensteins’ wedding, the point at which this whole story started, by way of a unique text discovered by Menachem Butler in a volume on the shelves of Yeshiva University’s Mendel Gottesman Library of Hebraica/Judaica. The year is 1959, and Rabbi Jehiel Jacob Weinberg (1884–1966), famed prewar rector of the Hildesheimer Rabbinical Seminary in Berlin and author of the Seridei esh compendium of responsa, halakhic novellae, and topical essays, is living out the last stage of his life in Montreux, Switzerland. Meanwhile, across the ocean in the United States, Rav Lichtenstein has just received from Yeshiva University’s Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary, having completed his doctorate in English literature at Harvard two years prior,[23] and is engaged to be married to Tovah Soloveitchik, daughter of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, Rav Aharon’s rav muvhak.[24] The couple originally planned to wed Tuesday night, 22 Kislev 5720 (December 22, 1959), in the Dorothy Quincy Suite of the John Hancock Building in Boston, the bride’s hometown (see Fig. 1).[25] Fig. 1 In anticipation of the joyous occasion, to which he apparently could not arrive in person, Rav Weinberg sent an inscribed volume ofYad sha’ul,[26] a collection of essays compiled in memory of his beloved talmid muvhak (and the person primarily responsible for bringing him to Montreux in the first place),[27] Rabbi Saul Weingort (ca. 1914–1946),[28] who had passed away following a tragic train accident while on his way to deliver a shi‘ur at the yeshivah in Montreux.[29] Through some serendipitous twist of fate, it is this copy of the sefer which made its way into the open stacks of the Gottesman Library. The dedicatory text (see Fig. 2) and my translation thereof follow:

Fig. 2 מזכרת ידידות ושי לחתונה של הרה״ג ד״ר אהרן ליכטנשטיין עב״ג מרת טובה סולוביציק ילאי״ט בתו של גאון הדור ותפארתו ידידי הגאון הגדול מאוה״ג מהרי״ד הלוי סולוביציג [!][30] שליט״א שתתקיים במז״ט ובשעה מוצלחת בכ״ב לחודש כסליו שנת תש״כ ויה״ר שהזוג היקר יתברך ממעון הברכות בחיים ארוכים טובים ומאושרים ומוצלחים בכל דרכי חייהם, והבית אשר יוקם יהי׳ לשם ולתפארת בישראל, ולמקור עונג ושמחת עולמים להוריהם הדגולים. יחיאל יעקב וויינברג מונתרה, ח׳ בכסליו, תש״כ A gift and token of friendship presented on the occasion of the marriage of the ga’on, Rabbi Dr. Aharon Lichtenstein, to his soul mate, Ms. Tovah Soloveitchik[31] – may their years be long and good – the daughter of this generation’s pride and splendor, my friend, the great ga’on and Luminary of the Diaspora, our teacher, Rabbi Joseph B. ha-Levi Soloveitchik – may his years be long and good, amen – which is set to take place, under a lucky star and at an auspicious hour, on 22 Kislev [5]720. May it be His will that this precious couple be blessed from the Abode of Blessing with long, good, and joyous lives and with success in all of their endeavors. And may the home that they build be of fame and of glory in Israel [see I Chron. 22:5] and a source of eternal delight and happiness for their distinguished parents. Jehiel Jacob Weinberg Montreux, 8 Kislev [5]720 [December 9, 1959]

I think this text is historically significant for at least two reasons. First, while I am unaware of any subsequent contact between the Lichtensteins and Rav Weinberg following the wedding,[32] this message certainly attests to a longstanding relationship of mutual regard between Rabbis Weinberg and Soloveitchik, two leading rashei yeshivah whose formative years were spent in both the Lithuanian yeshivah world and the German academy. We know from other sources that they first met while the Rav was a student at the University of Berlin in the 1920s; according to testimony cited by Rabbi Aaron Rakeffet-Rothkoff, the Rav audited classes at Rav Weinberg’s Seminary during the 1926–1927 academic year.[33] Their encounters extended well beyond the classroom, however,[34] and even though Rav Weinberg was generally not enamored of the Brisker derekh ha-limmud espoused by Rav Soloveitchik and his forebears,[35] these two intellectual powerhouses maintained a deep appreciation for one another throughout their lives[36] – as can certainly be seen in Rav Weinberg’s above inscription. The second issue that I wish to discuss here relates to the date of the wedding itself. As of 8 Kislev 5720, Rav Weinberg, quite justifiably, thought that it would take place two weeks hence. However, that very evening, December 9 – the same night the Rav delivered the aforementioned (n. 35) hesped for his uncle, Rabbi Isaac Ze’ev Soloveitchik (1886–1959) – Rav Soloveitchik “informed his family that he had been diagnosed with colon cancer, and would be returning to Boston the next day for surgery. His daughter Tovah and her fiancé R. Aharon Lichtenstein postponed their wedding (which had been set to take place in the coming days) until a few weeks later, so that the Rav could participate.”[37] Thus, the wedding was not actually held until Tuesday night, 27 Tevet 5720 (January 26, 1960) (see Figs. 3 and 4),[38] something Rav Weinberg could not have predicted at the time he penned his wishes to the young couple.

Fig. 3 Fig. 4 III In any case, returning to the present after our brief historical sojourn, it seems to me that, aside from all he taught us about avodat Hashem, lomdes, morality, and how to live as deeply committed Jews in the modern world, Rav Lichtenstein also modeled what it means to be a “totally devoted” family man.[39] As Rabbi Menachem Genack, who began his undergraduate studies at Yeshiva College when Rav Lichtenstein was already a rosh kolel in RIETS, remarked, “Rav Aharon’s gadlus batorah is well-known, but less celebrated is his gadlus as a father and as a son, his commitment and dedication to his family. Rav Aharon was always learning, but nevertheless managed to spend time with all of his children.”[40] Indeed, anyone who sees the pictures of Rav Aharon and his family featured in the aforementioned video will immediately understand what Rabbi Mayer Lichtenstein meant when he said that his father fulfilled the talmudic principle of ner hanukkah ve-ner beito, ner beito adif (Shabbat 23b).[41] With this background, it should not surprise us that, when asked, “What are you most proud of having accomplished during these years of service?” Rav Lichtenstein answered: Looking back over the past 50 years, what I am proudest of is what some would regard as being a non-professional task. I’m proudest of having built, together with my wife, the wonderful family that we have. It is a personal accomplishment, a social accomplishment, and a contribution – through what they are giving and will give, each in his or her own way – in service of the Ribbono shel Olam in the future.[42]

I think the lesson for us, his students, is clear. May we be zokheh to rise to the challenge of carrying forth all aspects of Rav Lichtenstein’s multifaceted legacy for many years to come.

* I wish at the outset to express my appreciation to yedidi, Reb Menachem Butler, ne‘im me’assefei yisra’el, for furnishing me with the opportunity, as well as many of the bibliographical sources (including the primary text itself!) required, to compose this essay. Additional thanks go to his fellow editors at the Seforim Blog for their consideration of this piece and, generally, for their great service to the public in maintaining such an active and high-quality platform for the serious discussion of topics of Jewish interest. Finally, I am indebted to my friends Eliyahu Krakowski, Daniel Tabak, and Shlomo Zuckier for their editorial corrections and comments to earlier drafts of this piece which, taken together, improved it considerably. [1] See Shemot rabbah (Vilna ed.) to Parashat tetsavveh 37:2. [2] Dr. David Berger quoted Rabbi Yosef Blau as describing Rav Lichtenstein in this way and went on to characterize him in similar terms here (listen at about 1:04:40). Rabbi Ezra Schwartz said in effect the same thing here, and in some ways went even further (listen at about 58:00). [3] For evidence of how strongly his loss has already been felt in the Modern Orthodox/Religious Zionist communities, one need only peruse the ever-expanding number of articles and tributes that have been cataloged on the websites here and here. [4] One set of verses to which maspidim kept returning when describing Rav Lichtenstein was those that appear in Malachi 2:5-7, together with the rabbinic interpretation thereof: “If a given rabbi can be compared to an angel of the Lord of Hosts, let them ask him to teach them Torah, and vice versa” (Hagigah 15b, Mo‘ed katan 17a). See the hespedim of Rabbis Mayer Lichtenstein here (listen at about 7:50), Mordechai Schnaidman here (listen at about 23:00), and my friend Mordy Weisel here (listen at about 5:05). Similarly, others have described him as angelic without specific recourse to the verses in Malachi; see the hespedim of Rabbis here (listen at about 9:25) and Avishai David here (listen at about 1:03:25). [5] So according to Rabbi Mordechai Schnaidman here (listen at about 16:00); see also Yosef Zvi Rimon, Keitsad“ magdirim gedol dor?” JobKatif (May 4, 2015). Similarly, Rabbi Ari Kahn compared Rav Lichtenstein to Rabbi Israel Salanter (1810–1883) here (listen at about 9:00 and 48:55), and Mrs. Esti Rosenberg said that the stories people tell about her father remind her of those told about Rabbi (1885–1969); see her interview with Yair Sheleg: “Yaledah ahat mul 700 otobusim,” Shabbat: musaf le-torah, hagut, sifrut ve-omanut 927 (May 15, 2015). [6] See her hesped here (listen at about 0:35 and 2:25). [7] See the hesped of Mrs. Tanya Mittleman, Rav Lichtenstein’s youngest, here (listen at about 10:15). [8] See the hesped of Rabbi Nathaniel Helfgot here (listen at about 46:55). [9] See the hesped of my friend David Pruwer here (watch at about 18:50). [10] See the hespedim of Rabbis Mosheh Lichtenstein here (listen at about 4:50), Mayer Lichtenstein here (listen at about 12:35), and Assaf Bednarsh here (listen at about 14:05), as well as the video produced in honor of Rav Lichtenstein’s eightieth birthday here (watch at about 9:25 and 11:35) and that of a public conversation between Rabbi Benny Lau and Rav Aharon and Dr. Tovah Lichtenstein on the topic of “Education and Family in the Modern World” held in Ra’anana on May 13, 2012 here (watch at about 27:45 and 28:55). See also the recently-released essay On“ Raising Children,” The Israel Koschitzky Virtual Beit Midrash (May 2015), based on a sihah delivered by Rav Lichtenstein in July 2007. [11] See the video produced in honor of Rav Lichtenstein’s eightieth birthday here (watch at about 11:25), as well as the hesped of Mrs. Tanya Mittleman here (listen at about 19:05) and Mrs. Esti Rosenberg’s interview with Yair Sheleg, “Yaledah ahat mul 700 otobusim.” [12] See the hesped of Mrs. Tanya Mittleman here (listen at about 11:00). Similarly, Rabbi Julius Berman relates in his hesped here that when Rav Aharon would stay at his house during visits to the States, he would always wash his own dishes when he had finished eating (listen at about 20:30). [13] See the hespedim of Mrs. Esti Rosenberg here (listen at about 3:05) and Mrs. Tanya Mittleman here (listen at about 19:20), as well as the video produced in honor of Rav Lichtenstein’s eightieth birthday here (watch at about 11:15). [14] See the hesped of Rabbi Shay Lichtenstein here (listen at about 23:00). See also the hesped of David Pruwer here (watch at about 18:45), as well as Rav Lichtenstein’s On“ Raising Children.” [15] On Scrabble, see the hesped of Rabbi Shay Lichtenstein here (listen at about 4:40). On chess, see the video produced in honor of Rav Lichtenstein’s eightieth birthday here (watch at about 12:20). [16] See the hesped of Mrs. Tanya Mittleman here (listen at about 19:10). [17] Ibid. (listen at about 10:30). [18] See his hesped here (listen at about 16:50). [19] See the hespedim of Rabbi Mayer Lichtenstein here (listen at about 16:15 and 17:30), Mrs. Esti Rosenberg here (listen at about 13:35 and 15:25), and Mrs. Tanya Mittleman here (listen at about 21:30); see also that of my friend Noach Lerman here (listen at about 37:35). [20] Rabbi Assaf Bednarsh recounted here that when Rav Lichtenstein would call his wife on the phone, he would address her as “darling,” rather than “rebetsin” (listen at about 14:35). (Dr. Lichtenstein herself reminisced here about how her husband would sometimes jokingly address her as “Mrs. L.,” and she, in turn, would call him “Reb Aharon” [watch at about 1:10]). Noach Lerman talked here about how Rav Aharon would open the car door for his wife when they drove somewhere (listen at about 34:25). Similarly, see the video here for a picture of husband and wife going rafting together (watch at about 12:22) and, of course, the dedication Rav Lichtenstein inscribed at the front of his two-volume Leaves of Faith (Jersey City, NJ: Ktav Pub. House, 2003–2004): “To Tovah: With Appreciation and Admiration.” For Rav Lichtenstein’s analysis of the Torah’s attitude toward the institutions of marriage and family and how they square with more modern conceptions, see his “Ha-mishpahah ba-halakhah,” in Mishpehot beit yisra’el: ha-mishpahah bi-tefisat ha-yahadut (Jerusalem: Misrad ha-Hinnukh ve-ha-Tarbut – Ha-Mahlakah le- Tarbut Toranit, 1976), 13-30, esp. pp. 21-30; “Of Marriage: Relationship and Relations,” Tradition 39:2 (Summer 2005): 7-35, esp. pp. 10-13 (reprinted here in Rivkah Blau, Gender Relationships in Marriage and Out [New York: Michael Scharf Publication Trust of the Yeshiva University Press; Jersey City, NJ: Ktav Pub. House, 2007], 1-34, and in Aharon Lichtenstein, Varieties of Jewish Experience [Jersey City, NJ: Ktav Pub. House, 2011], 1-37); and “On Raising Children.” [21] In the course of the aforementioned (n. 10) public conversation on the topic of “Education and Family in the Modern World” here, Dr. Lichtenstein recalled that at the berit milah of the couple’s firstborn son Mosheh, her father, Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik (1903–1993), sensing that Rav Lichtenstein harbored grand aspirations to save the world, spoke about the importance of the father’s role in raising his children and not leaving the job solely to his wife (watch at about 26:00). See Rav Aharon’s parallel account in “On Raising Children,” as well as his comment there that “I feel very strongly about the need for personal attention in child-raising, and have tried to put it into practice.” [22] Watch here at about 12:15. Incidentally, during a different part of that same public event in Ra’anana, available here, Rav Lichtenstein commented on the role of children in strengthening the emotional bond between partners (watch at about 35:15; see also 53:55). [23] Shlomo Zuckier and Shalom Carmy, “An Introductory Biographical Sketch of R. Aharon Lichtenstein,” Tradition 47:4 (2015): 6-16, at p. 7. His dissertation would eventually appear as Aharon Lichtenstein, Henry More: The Rational Theology of a Cambridge Platonist (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1962). [24] According to my friend Jonathan Ziring, in an e-mail communication dated May 28, 2015, the Lichtensteins first met, by chance, at the home of Rabbi Ahron Soloveichik (1917–2001), the Rav’s brother and another major influence on Rav Lichtenstein. The Rav would later encourage Rav Aharon to court his daughter, and the rest, as they say, is history. [25] Image courtesy of Naftali Balanson’s Facebook page, as brought to my attention by Rabbi Jeffrey Saks. [26] Jehiel Jacob Weinberg and Pinchas Biberfeld (eds.), Yad sha’ul: sefer zikkaron a[l] sh[em] ha-rav d”r sha’ul weingort zts”l (Tel Aviv: The Widow of Saul Weingort, 1953). [27] See Rav Weinberg’s memorial essay, “Le-zikhro,” printed at the beginning of Yad sha’ul, pp. 3-19, at p. 13. [28] The date of Rabbi Weingort’s birth seems somewhat controversial. Rav Weinberg himself, in “Le-zikhro,” 4, estimates that his student was born in either 5673 or 5674 (1913 or 1914), whereas the frontmatter of the Yad sha’ul volume gives the precise date 12 Kislev 5675 (November 30, 1914); Marc B. Shapiro, Between the Yeshiva World and Modern Orthodoxy: The Life and Works of Rabbi Jehiel Jacob Weinberg, 1884–1966 (London; Portland, OR: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 1999), 161, claims he was born in 1915; and the website of the Yad Shaoul kolel in Kokhav Ya’akov, opened in 2011 and dedicated in Rabbi Weingort’s memory, concurs with Shapiro. [29] See Weinberg, “Le-zikhro,” 15. [30] Most readers are probably familiar with the more common Hebrew spelling of “Soloveitchik” with a final kof. Rav Weinberg, however, generally preferred ending the name in a gimel (except, strangely, in the case of the Rav’s daughter Tovah). [31] Dr. Lichtenstein would go on to complete her doctoral studies in social work at Bar-Ilan University following the family’s arrival in Israel in 1971, writing her dissertation on “Genealogical Bewilderment and Search Behavior: A Study of Adult Adoptees Who Search for their Birth Parents” (1992). She is therefore referred to here without her doctoral title. [32] It should be noted that Rav Lichtenstein served as coeditor of the rabbinic periodical Hadorom during the mid-1960s and, as such, may have been involved in editing some of Rav Weinberg’s last publications to appear during his lifetime. (For a partial bibliography of Rav Weinberg’s oeuvre, see Michael Brocke and Julius Carlebach, Biographisches Handbuch der Rabbiner: Teil 2: Rabbiner im Deutschen Reich, 1871–1945, vol. 2 [Munich: K. G. Saur, 2009], 639-640 [no. 2657]. For a fuller inventory, see Shapiro, Between the Yeshiva World and Modern Orthodoxy, 239-246.) Discovery and analysis of any potential remaining correspondence between the two during this period remain scholarly desiderata. [33] See Aaron Rakeffet-Rothkoff, The Rav: The World of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, ed. Joseph Epstein, vol. 1 (Hoboken, NJ: Ktav Pub. House, 1999), 27 with n. 13. Similarly, see Shalom Carmy, “R. Yehiel Weinberg’s Lecture on Academic Jewish Scholarship,” Tradition 24:4 (Summer 1989): 15-23, at p. 16. [34] See Werner Silberstein, My Way from Berlin to Jerusalem, trans. Batya Rabin (Jerusalem: Special Family Edition Published in Honor of the Author’s 95th Birthday, 1994), 26-27, as quoted in Aaron Rakeffet-Rothkoff, “Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik: The Early Years,” Tradition 30:4 (Summer 1996): 193-209, at p. 197; idem, The Rav, 28; and idem, From Washington Avenue to Washington Street (Jerusalem; Lynbrook, NY: Gefen; New York: OU Press, 2011), 108 (available here). [35] See his letter to Rabbi Jacob Arieli of Jerusalem composed sometime after 2 Nisan 5711 (April 8, 1951), as reproduced in Jehiel Jacob Weinberg, Seridei esh: she’elot u-teshuvot hiddushim u-bei’urim be-dinei orah hayyim ve-yoreh de‘ah, vol. 2 (Jerusalem: Mossad Harav Kook, 2003), 355-357 (sec. 144), at pp. 356-357; his letters to Dr. Gabriel Hayyim Cohn, dated 27 Tevet 5725 (January 1, 1965) and 19 Kislev 5726 (December 13, 1965), as reproduced in Jehiel Jacob Weinberg, Kitvei ha-ga’on rabbi yehiʼel yaʻakov weinberg, zts”l, ed. Marc B. Shapiro, vol. 2 (Scranton, PA: Marc B. Shapiro, 2003), 219 n. 4 (esp. the latter one); and the beginning of the selection from his eulogy for Rabbi Weingort printed in Yad sha’ul, 16. For a partial translation of the Rav’s famous hesped “Mah dodekh mi-dod,” which originally appeared in Hebrew in Hadoar 43:39 (September 27, 1963): 752-759 and is referred to by Rav Weinberg in the last letter cited above, see Jeffrey Saks, “Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik on the Brisker Method,” Tradition 33:2 (Winter 1999): 50-60. For further discussion of these and similar sources, see Judith Bleich, “Between East and West: Modernity and Traditionalism in the Writings of Rabbi Yehi’el Ya’akov Weinberg,” in Moshe Z. Sokol (ed.), Engaging Modernity: Rabbinic Leaders and the Challenge of the Twentieth Century (Northvale, NJ; Jerusalem: Jason Aronson Inc., 1997), 169-273, at p. 239; Marc B. Shapiro, “The Brisker Method Reconsidered,” Tradition 31:3 (Spring 1997): 78-102, at p. 86, with n. 25; idem, Between the Yeshiva World and Modern Orthodoxy, 194-195, with nn. 95-98; and Nathan Kamenetsky, Making of a Godol: A Study of Episodes in the Lives of Great Torah Personalities, vol. 1, 1st ed. (Jerusalem: Hamesorah, 2002), 432-433. See also Rabbi Eliezer Berkovits’ assessment of his teacher’s derekh ha-limmud in “Rabbi Yechiel Yakob Weinberg zatsa”l: My Teacher and Master,” Tradition 8:2 (Summer 1966): 5-14, at pp. 5-10. For Rav Lichtenstein’s own reflections on the types of criticisms of the Brisker derekh expressed by Rav Weinberg, see his “Torat Hesed and Torat Emet: Methodological Reflections,” in idem, Leaves of Faith, 1:61-87, esp. at pp. 78-83, as well as an earlier version of this essay cited in Shapiro, “The Brisker Method Reconsidered,” 93-94. (I am indebted to Eliyahu Krakowski for bringing the Kamenetsky and Lichtenstein references to my attention.) See also Aharon Lichtenstein, “The Conceptual Approach to Torah Learning: The Method and Its Prospects,” in idem, Leaves of Faith, 1:19-60, esp. at pp. 43-44, 48-50. As an aside, and as far as I can tell, allusions to a “Rabbi Moses Soloveitchik” in Rav Weinberg’s published works, excluding those made in the above letters, generally refer not to the Rav’s father (1879–1941) but to his Swiss first cousin (1915–1995), son of Rabbi Israel Gerson Soloveitchik (1875–1941), son of Rabbi Hayyim Soloveitchik (1853–1918). [36] Indeed, Rav Weinberg would consistently refer to the Rav in writing by his honorific rabbinic handle, “Ha-g[a’on] r[abbi] y[osef] d[ov],” or a variant thereof (as in our case); see his Seridei esh, 2:196-201 (sec. 78), at p. 198 (dated 29 Adar 5716 [March 12, 1956]), and idem, Kitvei ha-ga’on rabbi yehiʼel yaʻakov weinberg, zts”l, 219 n. 4. According to Shapiro, Between the Yeshiva World and Modern Orthodoxy, 163, Rav Weinberg also contacted the Rav after the War to seek his assistance during his long recovery. For the Rav’s part, the postwar written record with which I am familiar is a bit more reticent, although Rabbi Howard Jachter reports the following in the context of a discussion of the prohibition of kol ishah and Rav Weinberg’s now-famous lenient ruling on the question: Interestingly, I asked Rav Yosef Dov Soloveitchik in July 1985 whether he agrees with this ruling of Rav Weinberg. The Rav replied, “I agree with everything that he wrote, except for his permission to stun animals before Shechita” (see volume one of Teshuvot Seridei Eish). Rav Soloveitchik related his great appreciation of Rav Yechiel Yaakov Weinberg. Rav Shalom Carmy later told me that Rav Soloveitchik and Rav Weinberg had been close friends during the years that Rav Soloveitchik studied in Berlin. See Howard Jachter, “The Parameters of Kol Isha,” Kol Torah 11:17 (February 2, 2002). For more on the shehitah controversy referred to here, see H. J. Zimmels, The Echo of the Nazi Holocaust in (New York: Ktav Publishing House, Inc., 1977), 183-189; Bleich, “Between East and West,” 260-261, 271-272; and Shapiro, Between the Yeshiva World and Modern Orthodoxy, 117-129, 192. For Rav Soloveitchik’s own involvement in questions relating to the humane slaughter of animals, see Joseph B. Soloveitchik, Community, Covenant and Commitment: Selected Letters and Communications, ed. Nathaniel Helfgot (Jersey City, NJ: Toras HoRav Foundation, 2005), 61-67. [37] Jeffrey Saks, “Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik and the Israeli Chief Rabbinate: Biographical Notes (1959–60),” BDD 17 (September 2006): 45-67, at p. 53. [38] Fig. 3 is courtesy of Naftali Balanson’s Facebook page, as brought to my attention by Rabbi Jeffrey Saks. Fig. 4 derives from the video produced in honor of Rav Lichtenstein’s eightieth birthday here (watch at about 1:03). (I am indebted to Rabbis Dov Karoll, Jeffrey Saks, and Reuven Ziegler for confirming some of the details of the Lichtenstein wedding for me.) [39] See the interview with Rabbi Dov Karoll on Voice of Israel here (listen at about 2:55). See also the hesped of Rabbi Mosheh Lichtenstein here (listen at about 5:15). Similarly, at a sheloshim event held at the Hechal Shlomo Jewish Heritage Center in Jerusalem on May 18, Mrs. Esti Rosenberg, in speaking of her father’s self-identification with the Levites as the prime exemplars of ovedei Hashem par excellence, commented that just as the Levites were netunim netunim to Aaron and his sons in Parashat be-midbar (Num. 3:9) (which also happened to be Rav Lichtenstein’s bar mitzvah parashah), so was Rav Aharon completely dedicated to his family. See the video here (watch at about 11:40). And for a visual representation of just how central avodat Hashem was to Rav Lichtenstein’s core identity, see the photograph of his matsevah posted to Yeshivat Har Etzion’s Facebook page. [40] From a forthcoming article to be published in Jewish Action. [41] See his hesped here (listen at about 10:30). [42] See Rav Lichtenstein’s interview with Yaffi Spodek: “Reflecting on 50 Years of Torah Leadership,” the YUNews blog (October 11, 2011). Similarly, see thisvideo produced in honor of Rav Lichtenstein receiving the Israel Prize in 2014 (watch at about 10:20), as well as the hespedim of Mrs. Esti Rosenberg here (listen at about 8:45) and Rabbi Baruch Gigi here (listen at about 16:30) and the former’s interview with Yair Sheleg, “Yaledah ahat mul 700 otobusim.” Finally, see Rav Lichtenstein’s sihah “On Raising Children,” where he states unequivocally: “There are very few people about whom it can […] genuinely be said that there is something objectively more important in their life than raising children.”