Rav Tendler Shlita:
There are many anecdotes told about Rav Moshe. Most of them are apocryphal. Some of them are even debasing. Rav Moshe, above all, was a normal healthy personality, a normal husband, a normal father, a normal grandfather who took great pride and joy in his family.
Rav Moshe did not overtly display any special tzidkus or chasidus. His only publicly displayed middah was his gentleness. In the evening he would often go for a walk with his wife and stop in at the local candy store to buy a glass of soda. He read the newspaper every morning at the breakfast table, whatever newspaper it might be—the socialistic Forward, or the Tag, or the Morning Journal and then the Algemeiner Journal.
Stories reporting unusual behavior on the part of Rav Moshe are by their very nature false and insulting, for they are designed to pervert his most important message for our generation, and that is that mastery of Torah does not distort the human personality but only adds grace and glory to it.
The trait of emes, of absolute integrity, permeated all his responsa, all his behavior, his very personality. As was mentioned earlier, Rav Moshe escaped the military draft in Russia by obtaining a birth certificate that made him five years older than his actual age. The same birth year was subsequently recorded on his passport and on other documents when he arrived in the United State. For the first five years after he became eligible for Social Security, Rav Moshe regularly returned his monthly checks, offering no explanation except to say, "Thank you, I do not need it. When I need it, I will let you know."
He did not want to tell the government that the birthdate on his passport was false, but he also did not want to take money to which he was not entitled. He returned his checks for five years. I had the special zechus to return many of them for him. When the five years passed, he began cashing the Social Security checks.
Rav Moshe gave a disproportionate percentage of his income to charity. He kept records of every penny that he gave for tzedakah, never returning an envelope that he received in the mail from an organization without putting in a few dollars.
Over the years he was audited five times by the Internal Revenue Service. The large amount of charitable donations he claimed seemed out of line with his salary of $7,000 a year, but he never claimed a penny for any tzedakah for which he did not have a receipt. On each of the five occasions when his tax return was reviewed, the auditor was so impressed by Rav Moshe's integrity, honesty, and meticulous care in handling charity funds that he sent him a gracious, courteous letter of apology for troubling him. Unfortunately, this never prevented his return from being pulled the next time, obviously having triggered some warning bell in the review process!
During his early years at Mesivta Tifereth Jerusalem, Rav Moshe's salary was $35 a week. He could not afford the carfare home to East New York, where he and his family resided near his brother-in-law, Rav Reuven Levovitz, ז"ל, the husband of Rebbetzin Feinstein's sister, Zlota, ע"ה. Rav Moshe slept on a bench in the Beis Medrash all week until they were able to find an apartment on the Lower East Side.
During these early years, when he was just establishing himself in the American rabbinic world, Rav Moshe was asked to adjudicate a major dispute between some of the most powerful rabbanim in the United States and some shochtim in the slaughterhouses that they supervised. Rav Moshe ruled against the rabbanim and in favor of the shochtim. He would gleefully tell the tale of how the rabbanim threatened him, saying, "We tried to help you and you turned against us. You're finished in America." Rav Moshe's response was, "My role was not to help you or myself, but to state the halachah without prejudice, which I did."
The din Torah, being a very public one with many people involved, was soon known throughout the Jewish world. Thereafter, every difficult din Torah in America was referred to Rav Moshe and he became the final arbiter for everyone who feared the political power of the "establishment." He presided at hundreds of dinei Torah, and the next volume of Iggeros Moshe (vol. 9) will consist of his halachic rulings on these din Torahs and the rationale behind the decisions.
Rav Moshe's integrity as a posek was the target of a concerted attack by the Satmar community. Their ire had been aroused by his famous responsum on donor insemination. The Satmar Rebbe sent a committee consisting of their three greatest talmidei chachamim to meet with Rav Moshe and ask him to retract the teshuvah.
The Rebbe had told them, however, not to get into a discussion of halachic sources with Rav Moshe. They did not heed their Rebbe's warning and began discussing the topic from Talmudic sources. Rav Moshe devastated them, pointing out that they had never even mastered the simple understanding of the Talmudic text. They responded, "Well, the Rebbe warned us not to talk to you about learning." To which Rav Moshe responded, "Your Rebbe is wiser than you."
The Satmar never missed an opportunity to show antagonism to Rav Moshe. When Rav Moshe visited Israel in 1964, he went to visit the leaders of the Neturei Karta. They apologized for not greeting him at the airport, explaining that the Satmar Rebbe had forbidden it. When Rav Moshe asked why he had done that, they responded, "Because you became President of the Agudas Yisroel and this gives Agudah their only prestige. We do not want the Agudah to be such a powerful organization."
They repeatedly leveled attacks on Rav Moshe, all focusing on two specific teshuvos, the one on donor insemination, and the one on the nature and height of the mechitzah in a synagogue. Rav Moshe often expressed bewilderment that a halachah could be perverted for political reasons. How sad he would be to learn how frequently that happens nowadays, especially among those who willfully pervert his responsa.
Rav Moshe could not understand holding a grudge against anybody, and he often came to the aid of members of the Satmar community when asked to do so. For example, a certain Rav had quite viciously attacked Rav Moshe, crudely denigrating him in his writings. Subsequently, this individual became involved in a criminal act. Knowing the great respect that judges and others in the legal system had for Rav Moshe, he asked for a recommendation that might ameliorate any punishment imposed on him. Rav Moshe went to great lengths to be of help.
I recall that the Rebbetzin expressed her dismay at this man's chutzpah. How could he possibly face Rav Moshe after what he had written about him? Rav Moshe answered, "What has one to do with the other? He came to me for help. Did you expect me not to help him?"
During the last years of his life Rav Moshe remained active as a posek. There were several months during which he could not write his responsa. Rav Moshe had sight only in one eye. The other eye was what we now call a "lazy eye," but since it had gone untreated, was not functional. He wrote bent over with his head very close to the written page. A bony spur in his spine made it impossible for him to sit and write. Often he had to dictate his responsa, and on such occasions he would carefully review the typewritten text before adding his signature.
One evening, while lying in bed and reviewing his daily quota of pages of the Talmud, he paused and remarked, "I have much to be grateful for. I am especially grateful that I have never had to retract any of my responsa." As all who knew Rav Moshe could testify, his unimpeachable integrity would have made him withdraw a responsum if he felt he had erred, but the certitude he had expressed even as a young Rav in Luban accompanied him all his life. It was not that he could not make a mistake—he did not. His preparation for a teshuvah involved such mastery of Talmudic sources and such attention to detail as to make it virtually impossible for him to err.
