From Yated
Concern for a Donkey
Once, on Purim, Rav Elyashiv returned home from the megillah reading to find a white donkey standing in the courtyard outside his home. The perpetrators of the prank had hoped to elicit a smile from the ever serious rov. Rav Elyashiv indeed laughed, but he immediately asked, “Have you fed it?”
Long Enough for a Photograph
There are a number of shiurim in halachah that are expressed in terms of a specific amount of time, such as the span of “kedei achilas pras” or “toch kedei dibbur.” Rav Elyashiv invented a new concept: “kedei temunah” – the amount of time required to take a picture.
Rav Elyashiv always gave priority to attending the simchos of his talmidim, but on one occasion, when he attended a bar mitzvah, his time was severely limited, and he instructed his grandson to help him leave the event as quickly as possible.
“How long does Saba wish to stay?” the grandson asked.
“Kedei temunah – long enough to take a picture,” Rav Elyashiv replied. He explained, “How do I bring joy to the baalei simchah? By allowing the bar mitzvah boy, as well as the grandfathers and the father, to be photographed with me. After those pictures, we can leave.”
The Seforim Shelf
Rav Elyashiv’s home was filled with seforim, even though the entire apartment contained only a single room, to the point that it became necessary to add an additional wooden bookcase in the narrow vestibule where visitors waited to see him. Once, one of his grandsons asked why Rav Elyashiv didn’t occasionally remove seforim from the shelves that he did not use. Those seforim, he suggested, could be donated to an otzar haseforim or given away as a gift, thus clearing up valuable space. Rav Elyashiv was surprised at the suggestion. “People bring me seforim as gifts and want them to remain in my possession,” he said. “Imagine how one of them would feel if he came here and saw that his sefer was gone.”
“What Do You Like to Eat?”
Dr. Gabriel Munter is the head of the endocrinology department at Shaare Tzedek Hospital in Yerushalayim. He was asked to fill in for the doctor in charge of monitoring Rav Elyashiv’s glucose levels, and he ultimately became the rov’s personal physician at the time when Rav Elyashiv was hovering between life and death and Dr. Daniel Clair was called in from the United States to perform a lifesaving operation. The entire Jewish people were focused on Rav Elyashiv’s condition at the time and were davening for his recovery. Ultimately, the gadol hador was miraculously healed. Dr. Munter recently related that Rav Elyashiv once had a problem with his sugar levels and it was necessary to correct the imbalance. In order to prepare a personalized menu for him, the doctor asked, “What do you like to eat?”
“What does that mean?” Rav Elyashiv replied. “I will eat whatever you tell me to eat.”
Cakes for the Soldiers
During the Lebanon War, a program was arranged in a certain chareidi neighborhood to bake cakes for the soldiers. The cakes were baked in private homes and brought by Bais Yaakov students to the local community center. From there, they were shipped to various army bases or to the front lines in Lebanon. One avreich told Rav Elyashiv that his wife did not participate in the program, feeling that it was not a mitzvah to bake cakes for soldiers who did not observe Shabbos.
Rav Elyashiv replied, “I wonder if she would have said the same thing if her own brother was among the soldiers.”
Who Must Tear Kriah?
The halachah is that a person who hasn’t seen the Kosel Hamaarovi in thirty days is required to tear kriah upon seeing it. The practice to refrain from tearing kriah is baseless, and even the statement in Sefer Eretz Yisroel and in the Chidah that a person who lives in Yerushalayim is exempt from tearing kriah applies only to someone who lives in the Old City itself. Furthermore, Rav Moshe Feinstein disagrees even with this, ruling that “even someone who lives in Yerushalayim, if he hasn’t seen the place of the Bais Hamikdosh in 30 days, is obligated to tear kriah.”
Rav Elyashiv rules that a person can exempt himself from the obligation of kriah by renouncing ownership of his garments in the presence of three people, or by transferring the ownership to another person through the process of kinyan sudar, by accepting an object such as a handkerchief from the “recipient” of the garments, who will thereby acquire them, and who must then state explicitly that he does not permit the wearer to tear his garments. Nevertheless, it is proper not to employ this tactic. Rather, a person should wear an old garment – if he doesn’t wish to tear an ordinary garment—and perform kriah.
Elsewhere, Rav Elyashiv writes that there is, in fact, no way to exempt oneself from kriah by transferring ownership of a garment to another person, since it is almost certain that the new “owner” of the garment intends to “lend” it to the wearer in such a way that he can fulfill all the mitzvos associated with it, including kriah.
On the subject of kriah, there is an interesting dispute between Rav Moshe Feinstein and Rav Elyashiv. In Igros Moshe (Yoreh Deiah, vol. 3, sec. 52, par. 4), Rav Moshe rules that if a person visits the Kosel for the first time on Shabbos, Yom Tov, or some other time when it is forbidden to perform kriah, this does not fully exempt him from the obligation. It merely makes him incapable of fulfilling it. Hence, the next time he sees the Kosel, even if it is within 30 days, he will be obligated to tear kriah once again. Rav Elyashiv disagrees with this ruling, noting that even though logic supports Rav Moshe’s view, the accepted practice does not follow it. “Therefore,” he adds, “if a person sees the site of the churban on Shabbos, he is not obligated to perform kriah on Motzoei Shabbos. This is the custom of the elders of Yerushalayim for many generations: If 30 days elapse during which they do not see the site of the Bais Hamikdosh, they go to the Kosel on Shabbos. Even if a person remains there until Motzoei Shabbos, he would still not be obligated to perform kriah. But if he arrives at the Kosel only on Motzoei Shabbos, even if he is wearing his Shabbos clothes, he must tear kriah.” Several possible explanations may be advanced for the basis of this dispute.
