Photos: Jeff Zorabedian

IT was a lazy spring Saturday in the early 1970s in the mixed Italian/Jewish neighborhood of Bensonhurst, Brooklyn — the kind of afternoon when many of the locals could be found taking in a ball game at the park or polishing their cars.

Not this day, however. Word had leaked that none other than New York City’s Mayor John Lindsay was coming to these parts, bringing the area’s staunchly conservative Italian-American residents out in force in a spontaneous show of displeasure with Lindsay, their liberal Democratic nemesis. Scores of people gathered outside the apartment building on Avenue P which the mayor had come to visit, as shouts of “Down with Lindsay! Down with Lindsay!” reverberated throughout the surrounding streets.

But why in the first place had Lindsay made the trip — police entourage, blaring sirens and all — from Gracie Mansion to Brooklyn, just a few miles from Bensonhurst but worlds away politically? He was there to hold a meeting of the New York City Board of Education at the home of Dr. Seymour Lachman.

The Board — a five-member body charged with setting policy for the city’s sprawling public school system — usually met either at City Hall or at Board of Education headquarters at 110 Livingston Street in Brooklyn. But this time, Mayor Lindsay had convened a Board meeting for a Saturday, and when Lachman learned of it he explained to the mayor that as an Orthodox Jew he would be unable to attend.

“I know about the Sabbath,” the mayor countered. “But I can travel to you, can’t I?” Despite Lachman’s attempt to explain that this, too, was not in keeping with what he called the “spirit of the Sabbath,” the mayor remained unmoved.

That Shabbos afternoon, an official meeting of the Board went forward in the Lachman living room. It was a day to remember for Bensonhurst, but just another day in the colorful life of a consummate public servant, Seymour Lachman.

Over a career spanning decades in academia, politics, and Jewish communal activism, Dr. Lachman has worn many prestigious hats — but always, with a yarmulke proudly perched underneath.

Sitting with Dr. Lachman in the comfortably furnished apartment he shares with his wife, Susan, on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, it’s clear that although he’s no longer teaching or politically active, retirement for this nearly 91-year-old isn’t yet on his agenda. Engaged as ever even with a full nine decades behind him, he’s currently hard at work on a soon-to-be-published book — his eighth — this one a memoir of his years as chairman of the Greater New York Conference on Soviet Jewry and his role in advocating for the Jews once trapped behind the Iron Curtain.

Firm as his religious convictions are, however, Dr. Lachman has never been a provocateur looking to flaunt his principles whether others liked them or not. Quite to the contrary, he stresses his belief that it’s both crucial and achievable for disparate segments of society — black and white, Jew and non-Jew, Republican and Democrat — to learn how to get along.

The post Idealistic Insider first appeared on Mishpacha Magazine.

Image sourcing & additional research by Dovi Safier

Rav Simcha Wasserman built communities, one after another, but as soon as he established them on solid footing, he would hand over the reins and move on. He was in the background, which is exactly where he wanted to be. But the cornerstones he laid l’sheim Shamayim grew into solid edifices. Over 30 years after his petirah,  his legacy endures

The flourishing growth of the contemporary frum community would be unthinkable were it not for the seeds planted by great individuals in 20th century America. There were roshei yeshivah of towering stature and legendary mechanchim who founded institutions of lasting importance, klal activists who engaged in lifesaving hatzolah work, and pioneers of kiruv who brought countless Jews back from the spiritual brink.

And then there was Rav Simcha Wasserman.

For nearly three decades, from the 1950s through the 70s, he and his wife, Rebbetzin Faiga Rochel, crisscrossed the American Jewish landscape together — east to west and north to south — teaching Torah, seeding schools, touching lives with love and caring, and drawing distant Jewish souls near. Wherever they went, the influence they wielded was enormous, and endures still. And yet, three decades after his passing, Rav Simcha Wasserman remains a relatively lesser-known American gadol — which is precisely as he would have wanted it.

Reb Simcha’s story spans entire eras and four continents, and capturing his life in all its magnificent fullness requires a very wide lens. He once recalled how in Telshe, in far northern Lithuania, summer nights are extremely short, and while walking one Motzaei Shabbos in the fields on the town’s outskirts he saw a sunset and sunrise at the same time. This struck him as an apt metaphor for his own life, during which he witnessed the sunset of a thousand years of traditional European Jewish life, followed by the blackest of nights during the war years, and the simultaneous rising of the sun of a new Jewish generation in America and Eretz Yisrael.

The Novardok Launch

The eldest son of Rav Elchonon Wasserman, legendary head of Baranovitch’s Yeshiva Ohel Torah, Reb Simcha spent his formative years in the company of prewar Eastern Europe’s most storied Torah leaders. His father was the Chofetz Chaim’s prime disciple, and little Simcha spent time sitting on that renowned tzaddik’s lap. He was also a nephew of Rav Chaim Ozer Grodzinsky, whose second wife, Yacha, was a sister of Reb Simcha’s mother, Rebbetzin Michla Wasserman.

As a young man, Reb Simcha learned in some of the finest yeshivos of the day, spending years in Telshe, where he was a chavrusa of Rav Elya Meir Bloch, and in Grodno as well, learning from Rav Shimon Shkop, who had been his father’s rebbi, too. For five years following his marriage, until age 29, he learned under Rav Isser Zalman Meltzer in Slutsk. And of course, back home in Baranovitch he also spent much time learning privately with his father; many years later, he would go on to publish many of Reb Elchonon’s Torah writings.

But if there was one period more formative for Reb Simcha than any other, it was perhaps the four years he spent under the wing of Reb Yosef Yoizel Horowitz in Novardok, from age 13 to 17. Rabbi Dr. Dovid Fox, a well-known Los Angeles-based psychologist and rav who was a close talmid of Reb Simcha, quotes a leading mussar personality’s observation that wherever Reb Simcha went, “he carried Novardok with him,” embodying its principles and modeling them for every other Jew whose path he crossed.

Alone among Europe’s great Torah academies, Novardok set out to disseminate Torah in unique fashion, sending its talmidim out to found yeshivos throughout the Russian countryside. After launching a school in makeshift quarters, they’d begin combing the nearby villages for young boys whom they could recruit as students. Once the new school was on sound footing, it was on to the next town, to establish yet another makom Torah. Rav Shmuel Berenbaum, rosh yeshivah of Brooklyn’s Mirrer Yeshiva, was one such youngster who owed his entry into the world of Torah to the recruitment efforts of two intrepid Novardoker bochurim.

The Novardok yeshivah system continued expanding in this way until 1922, when the Communists’ viselike grip on the Soviet Union made the future of religious life there impossibly bleak. On the Chofetz Chaim’s say-so, 600 Novardokers made a successful break over the Polish border. Once in Poland, Novardok’s work of spreading Torah resumed, and in the ensuing 18 years until World War II, its educational network came to encompass some 100 yeshivos on both elementary and advanced levels, numbering 4,000 students between them.

Already at the tender age of 15, Reb Simcha was chosen by the Alter of Novardok to join a group of fellow bochurim in creating some of these new yeshivos dotting the Russian landscape. During the war years, the Nazis decimated the ranks of Novardok’s army of marbitzei Torah, and the yeshivah’s glorious legacy was nearly extinguished. But even before the whirlwind of war convulsed the European continent, Reb Simcha and his wife, who possessed her own sterling Novardoker pedigree — her father, Rav Meir Abowitz, a Torah gaon who authored a commentary on all of Talmud Yerushalmi, was the rav of Novardok — had already decided to dedicate their lives to carrying that mission forward.

The post Building Worlds first appeared on Mishpacha Magazine.

Photos: Jeff Zorabedian

A cool Tuesday evening found me driving along the winding lanes and rolling hills of scenic Monsey, New York. For a city slicker like me, I might as well have been in Montana.

Zipping down Viola Road, I hung a right at Number 161, turning onto a spacious expanse of land surrounding a building that looks like it could pass for a countryside church. Half a year ago, it was. That’s when a big-hearted dreamer named Benjie Brecher bought it and turned it into the new home of the Lev Teen Center.

The metaphor of the converted church — turning the profane into the something so precious and holy — is an apt one for Lev Teen, which has been a vehicle of transformation for countless chassidic teens in the Monsey area. For the past seven years, the center has been a home and a haven for kids who need one. And now it, too, has a home of its own.

I spent several hours at the center that night, and here’s what I saw: No amazing miracles. Nothing.

Nothing but kids being kids. Tons of food, lots of schmoozing and chilling — mainly chilling — and a night seder, and Maariv in the mix, too.

And that’s the Lev Teen miracle. It’s a place where kids whose lives have been filled with dislocation and dysfunction can go to spend time on an island of genuine acceptance, sometimes for the first time ever.

The kid who’s been through seven elementary schools and five high schools — in tenth grade. The boy from a home broken beyond repair who’s been living in a tent in the woods — and not because he’s into camping. The top bochur in a top yeshivah who slowly slid way down and out the door of Yiddishkeit — while no one had the faintest clue why.

Every boy here has had far too much drama in his young life, often due to trauma in the family — death, divorce, jail, you name it — and needs a place where he can just be, and belong. Amid all the craziness, they’re desperate for a bit of normalcy. And Lev Teen Center is Normal City.

Here, no one bats an eyelash when a boy walks in with curled peyos and a buzz cut, along with a multicolored yarmulke — or none at all. The lingua franca for almost all of them is Yiddish, but the conversations are a far cry from what one hears on the streets of Williamsburg or Monsey.

But however a boy might dress or talk or act, he’s met with neither shock, condemnation, nor coddling, just unquestioning affirmation. He’s allowed to be who he is — and the lack of reaction is itself a great healing balm for a wounded soul. And ever so slowly, it starts the process of coming back home.

Mechy Brandwein, who helped run programs in Lakewood’s Minyan Shelanu teen program for seven years and is now doing the same at Lev Teen Center, observes, “Our basic philosophy is that every human being has a fundamental need to belong. So, give them a nonjudgmental place to belong, and which along the way promotes good values — and they’ll be happy there. There’ll be no reason to walk out.

“No one ever walked out of here because it was too frum for them. You know why? Because the frumkeit wasn’t forced on them. We’ve never shied away from being frum; in fact, we are unapologetically, proudly, very frum. But we don’t preach, we don’t coerce and we don’t insist. It’s just who we are.”

The post Heart of the Matter first appeared on Mishpacha Magazine.

Photos: Family archives

Bayis means house. Standing alone, it usually connotes a family home, but there are various other “houses” as well: a beis knesses, for davening, a beis medrash, for learning, and a beis sefer, for teaching. For the past 14 years, there was a house on East 27th Street in Brooklyn that was all of those rolled into one. It’s where Mendy Rosenberg lived until his petirah just over a month ago.

Fifteen years ago, Mendy was diagnosed with ALS or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, once commonly known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease, and over the decade and a half that he lived with the dreaded illness, it transformed him from a regular Flatbush balabos into a teacher’s teacher.

He and the doctors, they taught each other. They taught him that modern medicine’s prognosis for ALS is a life expectancy of three to five years. In return, he taught them that when there’s a will to live, all the prognoses in the world go out the window. If you love life dearly enough, anything becomes possible — even 12 more years, in which to celebrate two sons’ bar mitzvahs and three children’s weddings and to be sandek at several grandchildren’s brissen.

And he taught what gadlus is. Decades ago, there were people who’d come to 145 East Broadway, hoping to catch sight of Rav Moshe Feinstein in his yeshivah, thinking they’d be wowed by a larger-than-life, magnetic persona. But only those who knew what to expect understood what greatness really looks like.

Mendy, too, taught what greatness really is. And this regular guy and his ordinary family, living in just another house on just another block in Brooklyn, have given every other Jew alive a lesson in the greatness that lies within them, too.

The post Hour by Grateful Hour first appeared on Mishpacha Magazine.

The other day, I went into a store to buy a particular item, and after I’d paid for it at the counter and was about to leave, I heard someone calling after me.

“Rabbi...” I turned around. It was someone behind the counter whom I didn’t know.

“I miss you in the magazine,” he said. I explained that although I would be continuing my association with Mishpacha, I’d no longer be appearing in its opinion section. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ll miss you.” I smiled without saying anything, but thought to myself, “Me, too, my friend. Me, too.”

One of the absolute best things about my nearly 12-year run here at the front of the magazine has been the readers. The ability to hear from readers like that one behind the counter and to know, or at least hope, that I’ve made some small difference in someone’s life. Isn’t that what we all hope for in this life we’ve been given to live?

Despite the strangeness of penning a column without knowing who will be reading it, I’ve tried to be open with readers whose names I don’t know and whom I might never meet. I’ve invited you into my life, although as a private sort of person it wasn’t always comfortable to do so.

I’ve taken you back to my childhood, with memories about shuls and schools and summertime at home and in camp. I’ve introduced you to beloved figures in my life like my father and father-in-law, and mentors and good friends whom I’ve lost along the way.

And I’ve shared experiences: encounters with over-zealous TSA agents and humorless traffic cops, eventful trips to the Belorussian tundra and snow-covered Yerushalayim and even more exotic locales, like Milwaukee. I’ve painted word portraits: putting on tefillin in a darkened airplane cabin, explaining Shabbos to a clueless gentile big-firm attorney, translating the Citifield Asifah into hipster-ese.

I’ve even written about what it’s like to bear an off-beat name like Eytan — and still not be the only Eytan Kobre.

Family members have made cameo appearances over the years (Avrumi holds the record, I believe, at three), and friends, too (even Simi from Spruce Street finally made it in). One of those friends could even have been my successor here (maybe…), except that Yaakov, a brilliant, funny, multi-talented psychotherapist, is far too modest to want his name in print.

And, of course, I’ve tried to share something of me, my own inner world and how I see the larger one in which we live. I’ve tried to give you a feeling for what I get excited about, the people I revere and the things I fear for. I’ve been up-front about the times I’ve written things I shouldn’t have and what I’ve tried to do to make it right, and how I’ve tried to relate to very irate readers.

I’VE ALWAYS FELT that one of this column’s strengths was the way we mixed it up on a weekly basis. Opening to this page any given week, a reader might have found any of the following and more: social commentary, biographical and historical vignettes, more and less successful attempts at humor (and we’ll just make believe all that pun-ditry never even happened), hashkafic perspectives, analyses on politics, media and law, critique of anti-Torah movements and media, introductions to hidden treasures of the frum community, personal experiences and reflections, essays on Yamim Tovim, parshah, and other aspects of our lives as Jews.

Regular readers know that there are topic areas we returned to often, because they were important to me, like anything about Jews learning Torah more and better, or were fun to write about, like anything about words and writing.

There were the recurring Text Messages fundamentals. A sampling: That there’s a Jewish way to read the newspaper. That the great challenge to authentic Yiddishkeit these days is soul-hollowing chitzoniyus, and our greatest battle as both Jews and humans is to thwart the technological juggernaut. That it’s better to focus more on hating goyishkeit than goyim, not the other way around. That the Torah worldview and value system is unique, neither right nor left politically. That the ever-thickening frum culture threatens to overwhelm and stifle frum religion.

What a privilege this has all been. To be able to elicit a smile with a snappy turn of phrase or delight the oppressed minority of language lovers by trotting out some recondite word or delicious double entendre. To help a reader clarify fundamentals of Torah outlook or feel confident that he’s thinking straight and it’s the world around him that’s gone haywire.

To say things that may not be easy to say and even harder to hear, yet need to be said and heard — and to find a way to say them that will give them the best chance to be heard and considered. To wield the mighty pen in defense of what is true and innocent — and misunderstood.

But it has very much been a two-way street. I’ve gained much more chizuk from readers’ feedback over the years than I can possibly describe, even keeping a file of the things people have written to me or to the magazine about the column generally or specific pieces. By now it’s quite big, and I read through it sometimes, because it restores my belief in me and in you (and is way less expensive than therapy).

My colleagues here have played a role in the column’s success, too. My personal editor, Mrs. Rachel Ginsberg, in particular has saved me numerous times from the excesses of one of my worst enemies as a writer — me.

If you’ve enjoyed my feature articles in these pages (a collection of which, entitled Greatness, has just been published by Mosaica Press), you may still have the opportunity to do so. And if, like that Yid behind the counter, you miss my column, you can find lots of my past pieces and maybe even some new ones — and a picture of what I look like now as opposed to 12 years ago — on my new, eponymously named website (and no, you won’t find it by searching for “eponymous”).

And now that it’s time to take leave, I’ll do so with two words that can’t go wrong. Thank you, for both your honest feedback and your friendship-from-afar.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 939. Eytan Kobre may be contacted directly at kobre@mishpacha.com)

The post I’ll Miss You More first appeared on Mishpacha Magazine.

This was the week of the day called Election Day in the United States. But I prefer to call it something else.

When one stops to consider it, this business of elections is quite an amazing phenomenon from a Jewish perspective. Here’s a day that arrives every other year, and with even greater intensity every fourth year, that actually poses a massive nisayon to a frum Jew. And unless he’s mentally prepared to face it, he might well fail the test.

For months in the run-up to this day, he’s inundated — even if all he takes into his home is Jewish media — with punditry and polling and ads and endorsements and much more, all designed to make him think it’s the voters who will decide the fate of the government and its various officials. And he’s warned ominously that with his one vote he too plays some tiny role in this man-controlled drama. As the day itself approaches, both the volume and the pitch of the onslaught reach a zenith.

But what happened to the words we uttered so fervently in unison just a few weeks back, phrases such as “Hamamlich melachim v’lo hameluchah” (Hashem coronates kings and ultimate kingship is His) and “Mi yishafel u’mi yarum” (Who will fall and who will rise)? Or how about just a basic “Yisrael betach baShem”? Hashem alone runs the world, with no apparent exception I’m aware of for mortal politicians, federal, state or local. For us Torah Jews, this is as basic as it gets.

In the choices we make in our personal lives, from momentous to seemingly inconsequential, many of us try to live our days based on that fundamental truth. When I was at the supermarket this week stocking up on dessert for the upcoming Shabbos, I opted for the more expensive sorbet because it tastes better, and because I actually believe the truth of Chazal’s teaching that a person’s annual allotted income doesn’t include Shabbos expenses. (I admit I didn’t buy the most expensive item in the freezer, which I hope doesn’t peg me as mikotnei emunah.)

And then along comes election season and the authentic bitachon we’ve painstakingly worked to acquire in our daily lives absorbs a massive shock to the system. Everywhere one goes, in shul and yeshivah, the grocery store and the mikveh, political prognostication rules the day. G-d is nowhere to be found. It’s not — G-d forbid — that He’s unmentionable. He’s just not mentioned.

And that’s why I prefer to call it Deflection Day. It’s when we deflect what ought to be our focus on the Prime Cause and Mover of Events and instead give our rapt attention to exit polls and incoming vote totals. It’s the season when rather than “hope to Hashem,” we pin our desperate hopes on some pathetically impotent mortal.

IT’S THE DAY WHEN as a  community,  time and again we fail mightily in our designated role on this earth, that of a goy kadosh — a holy nation chosen to bring G-d-consciousness to humanity. Perhaps we actually do behave like a “goy kadosh,” indeed, a heilige non-Jew, our sacred-looking outer trappings masking the fact that we think and talk about politics not a whit differently from our gentile neighbors.

Each of us, in our personal lives, faces a host of tests to our emunah and bitachon. Like everything else in our spiritual growth, we win some and lose some, we progress and regress, but hopefully over time we move higher in our awareness of Hashem’s control over our lives. What makes election season seem so different, so alien in Jewish terms, is that it’s as if we’re suddenly struck by an attack of mass amnesia. All the inspiring shiurim we’ve heard and internalized, all the best-selling books on bitachon fade from memory in a split-second because some politico or pundit with whom we share neither values nor worldview warns us in the most ominous terms that THIS IS THE MOST IMPORTANT ELECTION IN OUR LIFETIMES and that THIS WILL BE THE END OF AMERICA AS WE KNOW IT.

Yet haven’t gedolei Torah going back many years encouraged Jews to vote? Certainly, but purely as an exercise in hishtadlus. Just as we put in significant effort to find a job and consult a doctor, knowing all the while that Hashem is in charge and we’re just going through the motions, so do we vote to express our views and to let politicians know we’re here and to show gratitude to a welcoming host country. But no adam gadol ever suggested trading in the truth of our precious bitachon for the sheker of all the electoral majorities in the world. —

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 935. Eytan Kobre may be contacted directly at kobre@mishpacha.com)

The post Deflection Election first appeared on Mishpacha Magazine.

We’re now at a point in the year when the number 101 takes on a spiritual connotation. In the world at large, that number might trigger a mental association with Dalmatians, but for observant Jews dogged by forgetfulness, it has another significance entirely.

With the words “Mashiv haruach umorid hageshem” newly present in our Shemoneh Esreh since Succos, the more absent-minded among us turn to the halachically-sanctioned device of repeating the words from the paragraph “Atah gibbor” through “Mashiv haruach” 101 times. This saves the mnemonically-challenged from a never-ending loop of self-doubt and repeated tefillos for most of Cheshvan.

It was only a few short weeks ago, however, that I got a glimpse of the truly transformative power of the big One-O-One.

It began with an email forwarded to me by my dear friend Rabbi Dovid Newman. Although most renowned for his Vhaarev Na program of Gemara learning and review for yeshivah bochurim, Reb Dovid is a true Torah entrepreneur, constantly dreaming up new, innovative ways to light the fire of ahavas haTorah under his fellow Jews of every age and background.

One of his successful spin-offs of Vhaarev Na is Kinyan Hamasechta, a framework for Gemara retention and review being successfully used by balabatim around the world. And according to the email’s author, Moshe Goldstein, it had changed his life dramatically. An excerpt:

I’ve gone from casual learning by myself a couple of nights a week without really retaining much and listening to shiurim to and from work in the car — not quite lighting the world on fire, you might say — to seeing tremendous hatzlachah in Torah like I never imagined or dreamed of.

To actually know masechtos well, to have a geshmak in learning, to sit with a chavrusa on Shabbos afternoon and realize when you come up with a chiddush, that is real oneg Shabbos. To make siyumim every Shabbos, to completing roughly 4,000 blatt chazarah this year, to going from no chavrusa to many chavrusas and to realize that now you’re really living, experiencing a life surrounded by and impacted by Torah. This was truly unimaginable for me and has yet become mine and my family’s new reality.

The “4,000 blatt” (that’s about one and a half times all of Shas) wasn’t a typo, either.

Attached to the email was an invitation from Moshe and his wife to a siyum celebration. It was to take place on Sunday evening in the Inwood section of the Five Towns, two nights before Yom Kippur, which would begin on Tuesday evening. Frankly, it wasn’t what I’d had in mind to be doing 48 hours before Yom Kippur.

But I had to be there, to see this for myself.

As I parked my car outside the Soroka home on a quiet Inwood street, the booming music coming from inside the house told me I was about to experience a different kind of Aseres Yemei Teshuvah gathering from those to which I was accustomed. There was dancing to live music and a catered dinner for several dozen Inwood chevreh, at least half of whom seemed to be chavrusas of Moshe, judging from the remarks he delivered. Rabbi Dovid Newman was there too, of course, shepping richly-deserved nachas. It was, in short, a chasunah in miniature, the culmination of a story of what Rav Avigdor Miller used to call “boy meets Gemara.”

And the particular reason for that evening’s celebration? Moshe Goldstein’s completion of Maseches Makkos for the 101st time (although my sources tell me he’s already made a number of further siyumim since then).

In Chagigah 9b, Hillel expounds a pasuk in Malachi that distinguishes between two righteous people, one of whom serves Hashem and one who does not. The difference between them, explains Hillel, is that the one “who has not served Hashem” learns a passage of Torah 100 times, while his fellow, by dint of having studied the same passage one more time, for a full 101, merits the appellation of “one who serves Hashem.”

The question is obvious and compelling: How can someone who has invested the toil, the time, the dedication needed to review a piece of Gemara 100 times possibly be referred to as one who hasn’t served Hashem?

I once suggested that Chazal speak of someone learning a piece of Torah 100 times in the same vein that the number 100 is used elsewhere in Shas, to denote the outer limits of one capability. Thus, for example, Chazal ordained that the finder of another’s lost object must keep returning it to its owner “even 100 times,” meaning as repeatedly as is humanly possible.

What, then, in the “wisdom language” of Chazal, does it mean to learn something 101 times? It denotes an individual who has broken through the barriers of nature, transcending his limitations and “breaking” his very self, as it were.

Of course, anyone who seriously toils in learning is an oved Hashem. But he might very well have other considerations at heart, too. He might also be enjoying the prestige that learning brings or the intellectual challenge it presents. He might be hoping it will earn him a coveted shidduch or sought-after position. He might, in other words, be serving Hashem and also be self-serving at the very same time. And that’s okay, since Chazal encourage a person to learn with vested motives, with an ultimate goal of reaching the level of altruism.

But there comes a point when a person becomes so committed to his learning, when he so surpasses the normal bounds of endurance and stamina that he can only be regarded as a pure oved Hashem. When one acts in seeming disregard for his own interests as the world defines them, it means he has lost his self in Torah, becoming entirely other-directed toward the One Who gave the Torah.

The seforim point out that the name of our arch-enemy, Amalek, can be read as the phrase ‘Amal (and the letter) kuf,’ implying some point of comparison between Amalek and one who toils (“amal”) through 100 (“kuf”) rounds of review of his learning — but no more. What could that be?

Amalek is the ultimate nihilist, and there’s nothing Amalek loathes more than transcendence, the notion that there’s meaning that goes beyond the finite, material universe, and that there’s a soul that can express that meaning and a G-d Who created that soul. Amalek can perhaps tolerate one who learns Torah within the parameters of the humanly normal. But he who learns that 101st time has by definition transcended the self, and that Amalek will never abide.

Moshe Goldstein will insist, as he did that night in Inwood maybe 101 times over, that he’s just an ordinary guy who happens to have fallen in love with Torah. And that’s the secret of that extra “one.” How ordinary people can accomplish extraordinary things in learning if they have the will.

Reb Moshe Goldstein is you and me and so many of us. And that’s precisely what makes his example — of what happens when you horeveh and break through the barriers of the finite — so powerful. It’s Amalek’s biggest nightmare.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 934. Eytan Kobre may be contacted directly at kobre@mishpacha.com)

The post One More Round first appeared on Mishpacha Magazine.

Because part of what I do is write about things news-related, I often think about the two ways, broadly speaking, for a Jew to process and react to events taking place in the world at large. On the surface at least, these approaches seem to be opposites.

One way is to react with disdain or disregard, devaluing anything that happens outside of our Jewish world. The other is to attach a certain value to what one observes and to find the lesson within it.

To illustrate these divergent responses, let us consider the recent events surrounding the passing of the British queen and her son’s subsequent elevation to the throne. Both of these rare events were marked by pageantry and pomp the likes of which few of us alive today have ever witnessed.

The ancient rites observed in intricate detail amid the ornate trappings of royalty — the bejeweled vestments, the solemn processions replete with elaborately costumed officials, horsemen and the flourish of trumpets — were all designed to bestow high honor upon the deceased queen and her heir. But even more, they were a way of paying homage to the institution of the monarchy itself and the momentous passing of the scepter from one generation to the next.

It’s not hard to look at this cynically and say, “All this honor, and for what?” We can easily deride the ceremony and circumstance as just that — an empty, overdone display of undeserved tribute to mere mortals, glittering to the eye but devoid of any deeper meaning. We can look down our noses, dismiss the entire thing and move on.

But then again, perhaps it is indeed too easy to simply deride all the ceremony and circumstance. If we stop and reconsider, we can look at the episode through very different eyes, deeply Jewish ones, too. We can find in its details the outlines of the Torah concept of kavod, and come away personally enriched.

Kavod is actually quite a big deal in Yiddishkeit. Not the kind of honor paid to a building donor or dinner honoree, but that which is owed to the Creator of Heaven and Earth. As the Mishnah in Avos (6:11) teaches, “All that Hakadosh Baruch Hu created in His world, He created only for His honor, as Yeshayah himself states (43:4), Kol hanikra vishmi v’lichvodi beraasiv, y’tzartiv af asisiv.”

Yet when we first encounter the centrality of Hashem’s honor in the scheme of things, we might wonder: Don’t Chazal cast kavod in a decidedly negative light? The very same Pirkei Avos states that kavod is one of three drives, along with jealousy and lust, which can actually take a person out of this world.

And, in any event, how can it be that an infinite G-d, Who has no needs, created this world just so that we mortals would give Him honor? And can the piddling honorifics of puny mortals possibly mean anything to Him, anyway?

But then we open the siddur and read these words in the first brachah of Krias Shema: “Tov yatzar kavod l’shmo — the Good fashioned honor for His name,” and we begin to understand. Honor is not an intrinsically bad thing. Indeed, it has a very important, even vital role — the very purpose of Creation itself. It just depends upon whom the honor is being shown and why.

Kavod, the seforim explain, is related to k’veidus, weightiness. To give honor to something or someone is to attribute weight and worth to it/them.

Hakadosh Baruch Hu isn’t just good; He’s The Good, the only One worthy of being called simply “Tov,” because He encompasses all that is good. And so, “Tov yatzar kavod l’shmo” expresses the idea that He created the universe in order that everything it contains will proclaim the honor of — that is, give the greatest weight to — His Name: The Good, the Source of all goodness.

And in so doing, we too partake of that goodness. Hakadosh Baruch Hu doesn’t need this honor — we do. It enables us to rise above our human limitations and be connected to The Good.

The various types of honor that we are required to give as Jews are all variations on this theme. The kavod due parents, talmidei chachamim, elderly people, a shul — all are in essence ways to attach significance to a concept, an ideal that is embodied in a person or object. And these too are given not to benefit the recipient, but to make us, those who bestow it, better people.

However, when we look at the world around us, “honor” has for the most part a very different, far less honorable meaning. It is merely a way to stroke the ego of the honoree, to fill a void within him that hungers for acclaim, while also allowing the one granting the honor to curry favor with him. This kind of “honor” is actually a response to human weakness.

But even in our very material world, there are exceptions, where the honor accorded begins to assume a spiritual form. When people come together to pay tribute to those who’ve fallen in the line of duty, as soldiers or policemen and firefighters and first responders, that’s honor for an ideal. It stems from the need of those bestowing it to respond to human greatness rather than from the need of the recipient to appease his human weakness.

And then there is the display of honor for a monarch like that which recently held much of the world in thrall. It was as close as human beings come to giving honor for honor’s sake, not to satisfy someone’s ego needs nor even to recognize achievement, but simply to honor that which is intrinsically deserving of honor. And if we are attuned to realizing what we are seeing, it can give us an inkling of what true honor really is.

Is there a justification to look upon all that pomp with cynicism, even derision? Chazal teach, “All leitzanus is prohibited, except for leitzanus regarding idolatry.” Leitzanus is a precision instrument, perfect for deservedly knocking avodah zarah, whether literal or metaphorical, off its societal pedestal. Whether it’s idol worship or modern-day heresies or the veneration of the god of Mammon, well-placed ridicule is what’s needed to puncture the aura of reverence and lay bare inanities.

And yet, we need to proceed with caution. It can be tempting to lump everything going on in the world into the category of “avodah zarah” and unleash the barbs of leitzanus bearing Chazal’s supposed hechsher.

Rav Yitzchok Hutner observes (Pachad Yitzchok, Purim 1:5) that leitzanusa d’avodah zarah shares nothing in common with other forms of mockery. The latter are rooted in a nihilistic denial of all significance. The derision we direct toward avodah zarah, in contrast, is specifically rooted in granting chashivus, significance, to the things that truly deserve it. By taunting idolatry, we deprive it of the ill-gotten respect it usurped from all that is holy and return it to where it rightfully belongs.

Hashem created a world full of natural wonders, brimming with opportunities to gain inspiration and awe (a la Perek Shirah). But there’s also a world of humanity, filled with untold billions of actions and interactions, foibles and triumphs, past history and current events. And that world, too, is filled everywhere we look with metaphors for spiritual truths, which can teach us so much if we are attuned to looking for them. But if we blithely wave away all that occurs in the world as just so much nonsense that can’t possibly possess any deeper meaning, we’ll never access those truths.

Perhaps there’s a superficially good feeling of superiority when we are dismissive of everything beyond our narrow context. But, as Rav Hutner taught, genuine leitzanusa d’avodah zarah flows not from pure zilzul, but from chashivus for the emes. Why, then, not take note of events to discern lessons that can only enhance our sense of chashivus for what is good and true? —

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 932. Eytan Kobre may be contacted directly at kobre@mishpacha.com)

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Every Yom Tov is special, but there’s something different about Succos.

It’s one of the three regalim, of course, along with Pesach and Shavuos, and like them, it is a remembrance of Yetzias Mitzrayim. But, as the pesukim in parshas Emor make clear, Succos also has its own unique character.

Chapter 23 of Sefer Vayikra, known as the Parshas Hamoadim — the Passage of the Festivals, is introduced by a verse declaring, “These are the festivals of Hashem which you shall declare as holy times, these are My festivals.” The Torah then proceeds to discuss each of the festivals in chronological order, beginning with Pesach, followed by the days of Sefiras Ha’omer (which, Ramban writes, is a Chol Hamoed-like period between Pesach and Shavuos), and then in succession, Shavuos, Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur and Succos.

At this point, a concluding pasuk (23:37) appears, which summarizes all that came before, stating (in paraphrase), “These are the festivals of Hashem which you shall declare as holy times, on which to bring sacrifices each day.” Thus, the passage has addressed each of the Yamim Tovim, bookended by opening and closing verses.

But then, strikingly, the Torah returns in the very next verse to again speak specifically of the Yom Tov of Succos. This time, however, it calls it the “Chag Hashem,” not “Chag HaSuccos,” the name used earlier. It repeats the date on which Succos begins, but adds that this is the time “when you gather in the produce of the land.” It also describes Succos using the unusual phrase, “seven days in the year.” And only now does the Torah set forth the mitzvah of dwelling in the succah for seven days.

Succos is a Yom Tov, but it is also more — it is a microcosm of life itself, of how a Jew is to experience quotidian day-to-day living throughout the year. The message and the mission of Succos are that of bringing trust in Hashem fully into our lives, and specifically at harvest time, when the gathering in of our plentiful bounty might otherwise make us prone to delusions of self-sufficiency.

To enter the succah is to take shelter under His wings from all the storms, literal and figurative, that gust about, to cast all our worries and fears and insecurities onto Him and thereby achieve inner serenity and genuine joy. Succos’ character as the “time of our rejoicing” is unthinkable without its complementary aspect as the quintessential Yom Tov of bitachon.

The other Yamim Tovim are ours; even when the Torah writes, “Atzeres laHashem,” it means we take our holiday and dedicate it to His purposes. But of Succos the Torah says, “Tachogu es chag Hashem” — meaning that it is His chag that we celebrate. We spend it with Him, as guests in His own home, the succah, which according to Chazal (Succah 9a) “has the Name of Hashem resting upon it.”

Succos is “seven days in the year,” meaning that by comprising one complete week-unit of the year, it serves as a model for how the year as a whole ought to look, even once we make the trek back inside our year-round homes to resume our mundane lives. Succos is a laboratory of emunah and bitachon, and the more time we spend in it, the deeper we absorb the wordless lessons it has to teach about how to feel completely secure in Hashem’s embrace, how to let go — but truly, once and for all — of all the imagined supports we’ve been so terrified to give up.

THIS, PERHAPS, is why so many great Jews went to such lengths to treat their succah as their literal home, holding nothing back. I recall, for example, speaking with Rabbi Elysha Sandler, mashgiach ruchani at Yeshiva Shor Yoshuv, about the Succos of his rebbi, Rav Hillel Zaks, the Chafetz Chaim’s grandson and rosh yeshivah in Chevron and of Kiryat Sefer’s Yeshivas Knesses HaGedolah. He recalled that Reb Hillel’s succah, built without any metal whatsoever, was huge, with a main room furnished with his breakfront and a bookcase filled with seforim, and a separate bedroom.

In earlier years, when he’d lived on Rechov Tzefania in the Geula neighborhood, his succah had featured several bedrooms and even more seforim. Reb Hillel virtually never left the succah throughout the seven days of the Yom Tov. The minyanim, the seudos, receiving all those who came to spend time with him, even the reading of Mishneh Torah on Leil Hoshana Rabbah — all took place in the succah.

Part of this, of course, may have been about performing the mitzvah of succah in the most ideal way. Rabbi Sandler certainly remembers his rebbi as “a great medakdek b’mitzvos, with many chumros and hiddurim, whose avodas Hashem was always vibrant and thought-out. For a period of time, he would shecht his own chicken and meat and press his own wine. All food in the Zaks home consisted of unprocessed, homemade ingredients and needed to have terumos and maasros removed regardless of their source.”  And so too, to truly fulfill the requirement of teishvu k’ein taduru, to dwell in the succah as one does at home, Reb Hillel transformed the former into the latter.

But beyond the mitzvah of succah, and the dikduk b’mitzvos it calls for, there’s also the idea of the succah. Its priceless resources of bitachon and kirvas Elokim can’t be accessed if we treat our succos as mere booths to step into a few times daily at mealtime.

When it came to the mitzvah of succah, Reb Hillel Zaks didn’t just want to perform it; he longed for it to transform him. And he knew that in order to profit, you need to invest, to go “all in.”

And so, he did.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 931. Eytan Kobre may be contacted directly at kobre@mishpacha.com)

The post Home Is a Succah first appeared on Mishpacha Magazine.

Photos: Itzik Roytman

The sign hanging in Rabbi Avraham Juravel’s office in the kashrus division at the Orthodox Union’s lower Manhattan headquarters says it all about his approach to the field of kashrus — and life — in five words: “Think out of the box.” It’s an attitude that has made him, in the words of Rabbi Sholem Fishbane, executive director of the AKO kashrus umbrella group, “the most unique person working in kashrus today.”

His career as the OU’s reigning expert on food production has taken him to 50 American states and 40 foreign countries, enabling him to identify thousands of ingredients (sans a chemistry degree) and tour a plant while pointing out where every pipe leads and what every piece of machinery does. He’s a sought-after lecturer on kashrus topics, too, whose shiurim were recently published as a popular sefer.

Blessed with razor-sharp sleuthing skills and a preternatural sixth sense for what the eye can’t see — and, he emphasizes, a heavy dose of siyata d’Shmaya — Reb Avri, as he’s known to kashrus mavens worldwide, is able to catch things that elude most other people. That, in turn, has enabled him to spare kosher consumers from serious problems they didn’t even know existed, and sometimes, to solve a manufacturing mystery, too.

Once, he inspected a huge chocolate factory which had two completely separate production lines for milchig and pareve, with two separate sets of equipment. The non-Jewish owner approached him with a problem he was grappling with: He kept finding between a hundred to two hundred parts-per-million (PPMs) of dairy in his pareve chocolate, which meant lactose-intolerant consumers could no longer buy his products. He’d hired expensive consultants to find the source of the contamination, but to no avail, and turned to Rabbi Juravel in desperation.

“So I’m walking through the place,” Rabbi Juravel recalls, “and looking at the various machines… There were three storage tanks, three sweco [filtering] machines, every pipe connected to the right machine — I checked it all. But one worker operates all three, and as the chocolate is going around and around in the sweco filter, some of it will hit the side and become solid. So he has a spatula to scrape the chocolate off the sides. And then I saw it — the spatula is in his back pocket, and he’s using the same spatula for all three machines, dairy and pareve alike. I said to the owner, ‘Marty, right there are your PPMs — and by the way, it’s a kosher violation too.’ He didn’t even give me a chocolate chip for solving his problem, but I think I made a kiddush Hashem. So you have to see the metzius and you have to have siyata d’Shmaya to be there at the precise moment when the worker walks by.”

In another instance, Rabbi Juravel traveled to a Chinese vegetable cannery to examine their records before giving a hechsher to their canned bamboo shoots.

“They assigned a Chinese college student to be my translator,” he recalls. “The kid was like a walking, talking dictionary but didn’t understand a thing. As it turned out, that was the best thing that could have happened.

“I asked to see the records, but they were in Chinese, so I gave it to the translator to read. He told me it said the company had three workshops, one for fruit, a second one for vegetables, and a third one for treife seafood. When I asked to see Workshop # 3, I was told, ‘We don’t have the key, it’s locked.’ I said I just wanted to see it from the outside. When I looked through the window, I saw it had the same equipment as Workshop #2 where the bamboo shoots were supposed to be made.

“So I now knew the shoots could be made in either workshop, which meant that I needed real records of where they were, in fact, made. I told the translator, ‘Keep going,’ and he read on: ‘The workers from Workshop #2 were on vacation so we had to make it in Workshop #1 but we put on the code from #2 because it’s a vegetable and supposed to be made in #2.’ I asked for a copy of the records and took the next plane out to Hong Kong, where I was staying over Shabbos.

“I called New York and said, ‘No hechsher this year.’ They asked me why, and I said, ‘These people are playing games, their codes mean nothing.’ I faxed the records to someone at the importer’s office who said, ‘I’m dealing with them for 20 years — how did you catch this?’

“ ‘Because Hashem smiled at me and helped me to do my job so people could keep kosher,’ I answered.”

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