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A Letter from R. Nathan Kamenetsky,Midrashic Exegesis and Biblical Interpretation in the Meshekh Hokhmah,German Orthodoxy, Hakir

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A Letter from R. Nathan Kamenetsky,Midrashic Exegesis and Biblical Interpretation in the Meshekh Hokhmah,German Orthodoxy, Hakir A Letter from R. Nathan Kamenetsky A Letter from R. Nathan Kamenetsky In response to my last post on the Seforim Blog, R. Nathan Kamenetsky sent me a long e-mail. Because of its value to those with an interest in the Lithuanian Torah world, I asked Rabbi Kamenetsky for permission to post it here, and he graciously agreed – Marc Shapiro The central figure, albeit a mostly passive one, in the story I shall tell below is R’ Maisheh Finkel, one of the twin sons who were the youngest children of the Alter of Slabodka, born around 1887. The other twin was R’ Shmuel Finkel, whose son became a caterer in Chicago and is the father of the recently deceased son-in-law of R’ Bainish Finkel (son of the the Alter’s oldest son R’ Laizer-Yudel), R’ Noson-Zvi Finkel, a namesake of his great-grandfather the Alter of Slabodka who served as the Rosh of the mighty Yeshivat Mir of Jerusalem for about thirty years. R’ Maisheh was far superior in Torah talent to his twin R’ Shmuel. Someone described to me R’ Maisheh’s learning pose; he would pace back and forth the length of the beit midrash, and if someone asked a good question, R’ Maisheh would give him one reply as he passed the questioner on the first time he transversed the beit midrash, then give him a second answer when he passed by him a second time, and a third answer when he passed him by for the third time. Raised by his mother – the Alteh lived in Kelem, not Slabodka, till the latter part of the first decade of the 20th century: see MOAG pp. 594-596 — the Alter had at first sent him to learn under R’ Baruch-Ber Leibowitz in Hlusk, and then brought him to Slabodka. R’ Maisheh married Zlateh, the daughter of the Slabodka Rosh Yeshiva, R’ Moshe-Mordkhai Epstein, in 1913, and was appointed as a maggid shiur in the Slabodka Yeshiva. When the Slabodka Yeshiva opened a branch in the city of Chevron in the winter of 1925, R’ Maisheh was sent along with the first talmidim to be a maggid shiur there. The Alter himself came to Palestine in the summer of 1925 – not as the mashgiach, but as a retiree – and three months later, R’ Maisheh died. Chiddushei Torah of R’ Maisheh Finkel were published beginning in 1986 by R’ Chaim-Dov Altusky, Rabbi Pinchas Scheinberg’s late son-in-law, under the name “Chiddushei Hagram Mislabodka” (together with “Chiddushei Hamasbir”, with the last word created from the acronym of Harav Morainu Soloveitchik Ber Yosheh, Reb) on various massekhtot. Rabbi Altusky had gotten R’ Maisheh’s manuscripts from a (posthumous) daughter-in-law of R’ Maishe’s. Before we go on with the story, I will quote Rabbi Altusky from one of the introductions of “Chiddushei Hagram Mislabodka” where he quotes R’ Yeruham Levovitz, celebrated Mashgiach of the Mirrer Yeshiva, as having written about R’ Maisheh: “I always said that in a generation which has a great timber as he (ilan gadol kamohu), Israel is not yet widowed (od lo alman Yisrael), and in his light shall we see radiance (b’oro nir’eh or).” Rabbi Altusky points out that R’ Yerucham wrote this when such greats as R’ Chaim-Ozer, R’ Shimon Shkop, R’ Baruch Ber Leibowitz and the Kovner Rav fully functioned; but Rabbi Altusky does not explain why it was R’ Maishe Finkel’s presence that assured R’ Yeruham thatlo alman Yisrael. The Alter and his talmid R’ Yeruham saw the ideal gadol baTorah, the ilan hagadol, as one who is equally great in Torah and in Musar – and this combination was very rare to find. They both saw that R’ Maishe filled that prescription – also cf. MOAG pp. 805-806 on what the Alter thought of his son. Verily, according to one of Altusky’s introductions, R’ Maisheh was “designated (m’yu’ad)” to succeed both his father as Mashgiach and his father-in-law as Rosh Yeshiva; this is surely something that his daughter-in-law had heard within the family and passed on, together with the manuscripts, to Rav Altusky. Also see MOAG pp. 756 and 765 that R’ Maisheh would be his father’s agent to carry through sensitive matters. [Do you, R’ Mailech, have my Improved Edition or only the original MOAG? The Improved Edition has a asterisked footnote on page 1278 regarding the Alter’s high estimation of his son and also pertains to the subject of your landmark book, viz., to R’ Yehiel-Yankev Weinberg.] Now to the body of the story. I shall tell it in the way it came to me. My father had said several times, “The (Slabodka) Yeshiva was so dear to the Alter, that he would be willing to sacrifice a child for it.” I never understood what he meant by this Aqaidah metaphor (nor did I question my father about it) until I arrived in Israel and repeated it to R’ Laizer Goldschmidt, a dayyan on the Beit Din Hagadol and husband of Miriam nee Plachinsky, a granddaughter of the Alter of Slabodka, asking him what my father had meant. He explained that Slabodka talmidim attributed R’ Maisheh death at so early an age to his having broken his engagement to another girl in order to marry R’ Moshe- Mordkhai’s daughter. He had been engaged to Chava-Leah Hutner of Warsaw (who later became the wife of R’ Tzvi-Yehudah Kook). (You may look up MOAG pp. 791-798 where I conjecture that this breakup brought about [in a convoluted way] R’ Hatzqel Libshitz’s decision to turn down the rabbanut of Kovno – thus opening the door for R’ Avraham-Dober Kahana-Shapiro’s appointment.) Incidentally, when R’ Yitzchak Hutner, later of Yeshivat Rabbenu Chaim Berlin, came to study in Slabodka after WWI, the Alter was ill at ease with him because he was closely related to the jilted young lady, and had his major talmid R’ Avrohm Grodzinsky, by then part of the Musar-hanhalah – see MOAG p. 806 – deal with the neophyte. And why did R’ Maisheh break up? Because the wife of the Rosh Yeshiva, R’ Moshe-Mordkhai, insisted on it: she insisted that R’ Maisheh marry her daughter Zlateh. The Alter of Slabodka felt that if he would enter into bad relations with (Menuhah Epstein, and hence with) R’ Moshe-Mordkhai, the yeshiva would suffer. And he was willing to sacrifice his son on the altar of Yeshivas Slabodka. It is said that when the Alter was told of his son’s demise, he repeated Job’s words (3:25) “What I greatly feared is come upon me; what I had apprehended has come on me.” In MOAG, I have an excursus on pp. 1061-1064 about the power certain wives of rashei yeshiva wielded in some old yeshivot – especially the Netziv’s (niece, who became his) second wife, sister of R’ Baruch Epstein. When R’ Maisheh broke his engagement, R’ Hayyim Soloveichik was angry with the Alter, saying, “For politics one does not embarrass a Jewish daughter” – see MOAG pp. 419-420. But I had a problem: if Menuha Epstein was intent enough on having the ‘iluy Maisheh Finkel marry her daughter that she would have him break his earlier engagement, why did she allow him to get engaged to someone else to begin with? Why didn’t she interfere with Maisheh Finkel’s proposed shiddukhim immediately?. This was bothering me for a long time – until I heard another story about R’ Avrohm Kalmanowitz, of Va’ad Hatzalah fame, from a son of his sister, R’ Osher Katzman, an author of many popular articles in the Aguda monthly “Dos Yiddisheh Vort” (and whose son Eli’ezer is on the editorial board of “Yeshurun”). R’ Avrohm Kalmanowitz had learned in Slabodka, having come there from the town of Aishishok (the town perpetuated by Yaffa Eliach) where he learned with its rav, Reb Zundel Hutner. In his famous speeches in the United States after WWII, Rav Kalmanowitz would often refer to his study sessions with Reb Zundel and would recall that they studied through the long commentaries of the Shakh in Section 25 of Hoshen Mishpat (about the laws of a judge who erred in his ruling) – and that Reb Zundel lamented that there is no one “nowadays” who learns thoroughly through the subject at which the Shakh had toiled so hard. R’ Avrohm then studied under Reb Laizer Gordon in Telz (see fn. t on p. 964 of MOAG), and, by the time he came under the wing of the Alter of Slabodka, he was already close to 20 years of age. By that time he had already completed the 4 Sections of the Shulkhan ‘Arukh. In fact, when he arrived in Slabodka, he would look down upon a bachur his age who had not completed covered as much Torah as he had. He was considered a ‘iluy in the yeshiva, and there was an ongoing debate among the talmidim of the Yeshiva on who was the greater ‘iluy, Avrohm Kalmonowitz or Aaron Sislovicher (later Kotler). In fact, when R’ Avrohm died, in 1964, two years after R’ Aaron Kotler, my father za”l remarked, “The last member of our chabhurah in Slabodka is gone.” According to “Kulmos Hallev”, a volume about Rav Kalmanowitz and “his Da’ath Torah and spiritual fervor (sa’arot ruach)” (published by his family in Jerusalem, 1996), p. 4, R’ Zundel had spread his pupil’s fame as a “wondrous ‘iluy” and the Alter sent a wagon to fetch him and bring him to Slabodka; the Alter then arranged that he should learn together with his talented son R’ Maisheh.
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