B'chasdei Hashem, over the past almost 20 years, Beis Mevakesh Lev has produced over 13,300 audio shiurim and over 31,000 written posts, unmatched by any one-person website - all completely free of charge. There are no paywalls or anything else. Now we are turning to you for help so we can continue - any amount will help. Even 99 cents! Thank you to my sweetest and most beloved friends!!!:-)!!
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The Rebbe of the Students
Rabbi Avraham Abba Wingort, a student of the author of the responsa "Sridei Esh" and editor of his writings, told me: 'After the passing of my teacher and rabbi, Rabbi Yechiel Yaakov Weinberg, I thought I needed to find an opportunity to hear another great Torah scholar. In the summer of 1972, after our wedding, we traveled to Boston and I attended the lectures of Rabbi Yoseph Dov HaLevi Soloveitchik. He was then teaching the second chapter of Kiddushin, dinei shlichus. By the way, I remember that in that summer we davened with him on Tisha B'Av, and before each kinah he would stop and explain its content. Intellectual weeping…
I heard from Rav Weinberg that when he was the head of the Rabbinical Seminary in Berlin, the grandson of Rav Chaim HaLevi, Rav Yosef Dov Soloveitchik, who was then a young student in Berlin, would come to his lectures. I asked my teacher: "Do you consider him your student?", and he replied in these words: "No. He is too great for that."
I learned that there is another figure there who has a tremendous influence on students and professors in the United States - the Rebbe of Boston, Rabbi Levi Yitzchak Horowitz, of blessed memory [passed away on the 18th of Kislev, 5770. He was a member of the Council of Torah Sages. He immigrated to Israel after the Six-Day War with the aim of establishing his Beis Midrash in the Shuafat neighborhood, which his father purchased in 1929, but the Jerusalem Municipality changed the location to an area in the Har Nof neighborhood in Jerusalem...]. I went to meet him. I told him that I work with students at universities in Paris and Switzerland, and I asked him to reveal to me the secret of his influence on students in our generation. He answered as follows: "The lineage of Korach in the story of his dispute is detailed in the Torah up to 'son of Levi', and not up to 'son of Jacob'. Rashi there brings the words of the Sages that Yaacov asked that his name not be mentioned in the dispute. But how does this help? After all, every child in kindergarten knows that Levi's father is Yaacov! Rather, the intention is that Yaacov knew that there would be many disputes in Israel throughout history. His request was that the dispute not reach 'Yisrael', his second name. That is, that there be a deep-rooted Jewish point in every Jew that will be a holy of holies, that will not be influenced by any opinion or dispute, that will not be harmed at all. All we need to do is believe that Yaacov's prayer was accepted, to believe that every Jew, without exception, has a holy Jewish spark, a pintelele Yid, even if he is the most heretical of heretics! How does this point awaken? For one it is through a Torah thought, for another it is through gefilte fish or beautiful poetry, and countless other ways. But these are already practical ways, and what is important is to believe with complete faith that the pintele Yid exists and is eternal."
A small child changes lives…
A response that Professor Yoel Elizur sent me regarding what I wrote about Rav Yisrael Zev Gustman, with a sweet and typical story: "...A large part of Rav Gustman's immigration to Israel was due to a small ginger-haired boy - my cousin Elchanan Schmida. Elchanan then lived on Ben-Maimon Street, and as he walked down the street, an elderly and distinguished rabbi asked him in Ashkenazi Hebrew how to get to a certain address. He volunteered to accompany him there, and on the way he asked him: Where do you live? The rabbi replied: In America, in New York. Elchanan was surprised: A Jew should live in the Land of Israel! Rav Gustman later said that the simple things that the boy Elchanan told him influenced him. Elchanan would visit the yeshiva from time to time in the corner of Ramban Street, and the rabbi would seat him next to him and treat him with great respect."
I heard a completion to the story from the same child himself, Elchanan Schmida: 'I was a 10-year-old boy, I was playing in the Magnes Garden at the end of Alfasi Street. He started talking to me, asked what I was learning. I was then learning Mishnayos by heart, and I started to tell him Mishnah after Mishnah. He was very impressed that a child in the Land of Israel knows Mishnayos. He saw the great destruction of the world of Torah in Europe, experienced it personally, as is known. Since then he brought me closer.'
Ibn Ezra corner of Ramban
And Elchanan Schmida continues to tell: He was meticulous about having a minyan of Kohanim on the High Holy Days. He would want me to come because I am a Kohen. Once I told him that they daven at six and it is hard for me to get up so early, so he said: You can come at seven thirty, daven Shachris with us when we daven Mussaf, and it will be considered for you as a tefillah with a minyan.
He would often invite me to eat with him and the Rebbetzin on Shabbos, and I remember that when he opened the refrigerator he would ask me to open it with him and in a different way, as two people who did it, because of the fear of hot air entering that could cause the engine to start earlier.
He was not willing to answer me on halacha, but said that I should ask the local rabbi, according to the law of "Mara D'Asra". He had a subtle sense of humor that was expressed in many of his responses. When asked where the yeshiva is located, he said: 'Do you have a large Chumash Mikraos Gedolos at home? Open it, you will see Ibn Ezra and Ramban, so we are exactly there in the corner…'
Professor Shlomo Saloni, a Chazzan and Baal Tokea in his Beit Midrash, told me: 'Because of his great devotion to the people who studied with him, when a difficult halakhic question arose for them, he would go to great lengths to find a heter. But many times he avoided ruling. Sometimes Rav Yitzchak Hutner, author of "Pachad Yitzchak" and Rosh Yeshivas Chaim Berlin, would come to him, and this is how the argument would go: - A great man like you can pasken for himself. - No, I came because I want you to pasken for me…'
R' Meir Dorfman
