Review of My Father's Journey by Sara Reguer

Review of My Father’s Journey by Sara Reguer Review of My Father’s Journey by Sara Reguer (Academic Studies Press, 2015) By Moshe Maimon About a year ago, Seforim Blog readers were informed by Prof. Marc Shapiro of the publication of Sara Reguer’s book My Father’s Journey, and they were further advised that this book would be of great value to anyone interested in the history of the yeshiva movement and Eastern European orthodoxy (see here). The following review illustrates the contribution the book indeed makes to these fields of study. This basis of this memoir is essentially a diary which affords readers a very intimate view into the mind of a Lithuanian yeshiva student in the period between the two World Wars. Interspersed between the pages of this fascinating document is a fair amount of interesting yeshiva lore, including little-known facts about prominent Torah personalities contemporaneous with the author’s father. In highlighting some of these passages, I hope to give the reader a sense of the value of this work, while also calling attention to certain historical facts that might enhance the reader’s understanding. The book, based on a Hebrew memoir by Dr. Moshe Aharon Reguer, son of the famed Brisker dayan, R. Simcha Zelig Rieger,[1] is translated and supplemented with additional material culled from interviews conducted with Dr. Regeur by his daughter, Prof. Sara Reguer, and from family lore she preserved. Additionally, it is bolstered by her insightful comments filling in detail and providing background. To avoid confusion, different fonts have been employed to represent the different sources. The translated text of the memoir appears in italics, the interviews in plain script, and Prof. Reguer’s comments in bold typeface. This arrangement is helpful in distinguishing between the actual memoir, written by Moshe Aharon Reguer as a young adult in 1926, and the remaining material that relates to a later period in his life. Dr. Reguer wrote his memoir from the perspective of a young man poised at an important crossroads in life. As the narrative moves into his later years, the story takes on a nostalgic, backward-looking tinge. Prof. Reguer deftly weaves the diverse sources that capture these epochs into a beautifully coherent story. Here I might suggest that care should have been taken to more clearly distinguish the places where the written memoir “pauses” to include later reminiscences by the author obviously not part of the original document. One example is the references to dates and events after 1926,[2] the year of the composition of the original memoir. There is no documentation for these comments which are printed together with the text of the original memoir. In some instances these secondary sources recount events already recorded in the memoir with occasional variations; to arrive at a clear understanding of what actually happened, the reader would benefit by being able to differentiate between the various sources. Take for example Moshe Aharon’s account of his farher (matriculation exam) in the Slutzker yeshiva. First, from p. 65: So I went to Slutzk and the Slutzker Rav Isser Zalman with Rav Aharon Kotler, his son in law, hired a teacher for me: Rav Shach (who is now famous in Ponovezh), who was then known as the Vabulniker”. We stayed together in an inn and he learned with me, and after a short time he went to Rav Aharon and Rav Isser Zalman and told them “I don’t wan’t to take any money – he doesn’t need a teacher!” So Rav Aharon said: “so, he doesn’t need any help and can learn alone?” and he took out a gemara, Bava Kamma 76, where there are two lines of gemara and a huge tosfot, and he told me to prepare it alone. I did it in a few hours, and I knew it, and he said: “you do not need a teacher!” at eleven years old! The editor has already pointed out that the author came to Slutzk only after his bar mitzvah; consequently he was actually thirteen years old at the time, not eleven.[3] As we will soon see, the above-mentioned scenario is fraught with additional chronological inconsistencies. Compare it with the following incident on p. 84 which seems to be referring to an event that took place the following winter, more than a year later that the author’s given date: Until mid-winter, I studied with the student Babulnikai, but one day the son in law of Rav Isser Zalman, Rav Aharon Pines, theilui of Sabislovitz, called me and on his own assigned me a “kri’a” – a group of gemara with all the commentaries, which I was to read and then be tested on. I remember that the “sugya” was in Baba Kama, p. 10. He set a deadline at which point I came to be tested. I knew the entire sugya backwards and forwards, and on the test I performed so well in both breadth and depth that Rav Aharon Pines ordered that I should study alone. This announcement made a strong impression on the yeshiva, especially on the younger students, because it was a tradition that even the best students were never told at such a young age – fifteen – to study alone without help or supervision. The core of the story is the same: young Moshe Aharon learned under the tutelage of an older, more advanced student (R. Shach)[4] until such time as a thorough test, administered by R. Aharon Kotler (Pines),[5] revealed that he was adept at independent study, and was encouraged thereafter to learn on his own. Yet other important details are different, including the identities of the parties. In the first version R. Shach initiates the test, while in the second version R. Aharon takes the initiative “on his own”. In the first version, the subject matter is an extremely difficult passage comprising one of the longest Tosfos in Shas, while in the second; it entails the knowledge of a complex but more conventional sugya. The most glaring discrepancy is the timing of this event: while the first version portrays this as having occurred within a short while after his arrival in yeshiva, the second version has it more than a year later – when the author was already fifteen years old. Which version is the true version? The clue to unraveling the many discrepancies lies in the author’s parenthetical remark on p. 65 identifying R. Shach as the rosh yeshiva “who is now famous in Ponovezh.” This comment belies the fact that the passage was not included in the original document written in 1926 (when the young R. Shach was entirely unknown), but rather dates to a later time period, at least 30 years later, and likely some 40 some odd years after the events they describe. Taking this into account it is not difficult to surmise that the later version is actually the original version and likely the more authoritative one inasmuch as it was written closer to the events they describe. The events were quite possibly conflated in the author’s mind when he recounted tales of his youth later in life, and that would likely account for the discrepancies in the details. People do not necessarily intend to set down the historical record in their reminiscences, and the mind has a way of selectively remembering events without explicit attention to historical accuracy – particularly when aided by the haze of nostalgia. Certainly there can be no blame in that; it is the job of the editor to point out what material was penned for the record and that which was recounted later in other contexts. Here is another interesting tidbit recounted by the author that has likely been blurred by nostalgic reminiscence, and should not be taken as historically accurate. Regarding the closing of the Volozhin yeshiva in 1892, in the course of an interview (pp. 29-30) the author recounts an original version of the events leading up to it: In those days the yeshiva was closed because one of the students massered (informed) and wrote a letter signing the name of the Netziv, and in a second letter he wrote that the Netziv is a spy and all the students are spies in Volozhin, and the reason why he sent this is because – father told me – when he came in on Yom Kippur, the Netziv recognized that he had eaten, which was true, and he came over and gave him a slap in the face in the presence of everybody. And this he couldn’t stand and he massered on the yeshiva, and they sent soldiers from Vilna and they surrounded the yeshiva and they asked, “where is the Netziv?” and they showed the Netziv the letter, and asked if it was his signature, and he said, “yes it is my signature”. But at the trial in Vilna he recognized that this was a forgery because in all of his letters, after he wrote “Netziv”, he never made a dot and this was with a dot. And they believed him and he was free, but they officially closed the yeshiva. The editor concedes that there are other versions to the story, and refers the reader to the attendant literature, but grants that this is another variant. However, it is readily apparent that here too, two different episodes – the story of the informant and the story of the closing of the yeshiva – have been inadvertently blended. In reality, they had nothing to do with each other. The story of the informant has been supplied by the son of the Netziv, R.

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