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orn and raised in Monsey, New York in the home of his illustrious parents, Rabbi Yitzchak Dahan shlita and yb’l Rebbetzin Ruthy Dahan a’h, Rabbi Dahan spent twenty years in Telz Yeshiva in Cleveland (eleven years as bochur and 9 more in the kollel, when he also taught the 9th grade) becoming a talmid muvhak of Rav Mordechai Gifter and Rav Chaim Stein zt’l. Even when he moved to Brooklyn, he remained a lifelong Telzer returning to Telz year after year for summer vacation with his family. At the urging of his Rebbe, he delved deeper into his Morrocan mesorah, until he became a noted expert in the field and a leading Torah figure in the Syrian community of Brooklyn, NY. Using the traditional Morrocan pronunciations and nigunim, with reverence and dedication to Rabbi Shlomo Lankry, Reb Chaim was a baal tefilla at the Morrocan shul, Chesed L'Avraham for more than two decades. A pre1A and first grade Rebbi at Yeshivat Shaare Torah, and a popular lecturer with hundreds of shiurim on Torah Anytime, he is missed by young and old alike across the Jewish spectrum.

How can one person fulfill all the mitzvot? Some mitzvot only a Kohen can perform, others only a nazir, etc. So, how can any one person ever achieve shleimut, if so many mitzvot are always out of his reach? The answer, Rabbi  Dahan, used to say, is through 'veahavta l'reiecha kamocha.' Klal Yisrael is really one entity and if we are connected to other Jews fulfilling the other mitzvot, we fulfill all the mitzvot in the Torah.

Just as Moshe Rabeinu’s birthday and Yahrzeit are on the same day, so, too, Rabbi Dahan was decreed to be taken from us on his birthday. Chazal teach that on the day we are born, we are entrusted with a mission. The righteous person “completes the number of his days' ' achieving his fullest potential, accomplishing his unique mission on earth in the most perfect way possible. This completion is expressed in the fact that his mission ends on the very same day that it was begun. Perhaps that is why Rabbi Dahan himself was taken from us on his birthday, Vav Nisan. Rav Dahan's 54 years of loving his fellow Jew connected him to all of Klal Yisrael.

Rabbi Dahan had an uncanny ability to look at a person and see exactly what they needed. He cared so deeply, he did whatever he could to fill that need.

Before his own daughter got married, he had already made a few weddings for girls who had no one else to make theirs. He took care of everything; the flowers, the music, the hall…

He would do anything for anyone. He left his phone on at night and when it would ring in the middle of the night, his wife would ask him to turn it off because "you need your sleep" but he answered the phone because 'if someone calls at this hour, it must be important.'

One woman wrote to the family:

A couple of summers ago, I believe you were on a family trip in Erez Israel, my cell phone rang with the Rabbi’s number, odd as my youngest was already in high school.
He was calling from the Kotel, I recall his choked voice as he told me how he just met an incredible older single girl from the community.
Why was he calling me?
It hurt him so much to see her pain, he asked that I please help her with shidduchim, that he couldn't wait until he came back to the U.S. to discuss it.

The girl herself relates that she had not opened up at all to Rav Dahan, but had only made an off-hand joke about being single. He was able to see straight through her and offered her words of chizuk. It was only later that she found out he had actually gone to the effort to make the call. And, it was only the first of many calls. He continued to do all he could to help her and be available for advice about her shidduchim.

And she was only one of many. It was not uncommon for friends and colleagues to receive a call from Rabbi Chaim when he was on a trip to mekomot hakedoshim asking for the names of their family members needing a yeshua so he could daven.

During the shiva, his own wife was surprised by the endless number of people who told her they had relied on his sound and insightful advice; in shidduchim, chinuch, shalom bayis, a broad range of personal issues and even business. A talmid chacham of note, his breadth of knowledge in Torah spilled over into other areas.

There are more stories of his quiet, unassuming chessed and concern for others than room to print them all.

Rabbi Dahan looked only for what he could do to help and to see only people's good points. He had an incredible ayin tovah and loved people, avoided judging and taught others to do the same.

He was incredibly proud of his wife, the elementary principal of the girls' division of YDE, and introduced her as such. He helped as much as he could in the house and with their daughters, so that she could do her job without distraction. He's probably one of the only fathers to have taken his daughter shopping to buy both an engagement dress and a wedding gown!

He was a Pre1A and first grade Rebbi at Yeshivat Shaare Torah in Flatbush for twenty years. Those little boys felt so loved, and so attached to their Rebbe, that several invited him to their bar-mitzvahs and weddings, years and years after they were in his class.

Rabbi Dahan was known to jump over desks, fly across tables and sing to make the lessons come alive. He played ball with the boys during recess at school and went to their birthday parties outside of school.

It is no coincidence that his name was “Chaim,” life. He was bursting with life, with love of life and gratitude to Hashem for every part of life. Rabbi Dahan wasn’t just “full of life” in the American definition of life: “animated, vital and charismatic leader”. Yes, he was all that, but his liveliness had a special spark to it because it came from a true source, “Eitz Chaim hi lamachazikim bah” Torah is a tree of life for those who hold on to it.

When his car caught fire, he texted his son in law "B"H, my car just exploded." And he meant it. If Hashem had set his car on fire, that was just what he needed.

He and his wife, Rivkah, waited 8 years to be blessed with children. People who knew them then said you would never have guessed if you didn't know. Rabbi Dahan always had a smile on his face. His emunah and bitachon accompanied him always, and he never wavered in the face of his own nisayon. He did all that he could to help others. He was always sure Hashem would give him, and everyone else, exactly what they needed.

"It was impossible to be upset, depressed or despondent with Rabbi Chaim Dahan around. He would know just the right joke or quip to say, indeed he was a wellspring of inspirational stories. The love of people that throbbed in his heart flowed into his eloquent speeches and uplifting songs. The message of hope, of Emunah, resonated into the listeners’ ears. He intuitively knew who needed the chizuk and chose the right words to say" says colleague Rabbi David Zafrani.

After his last moments on earth, his wife made sure to get the names of every single hospital staff member that had worked so tirelessly, trying in vain to bring him back, so that she could thank each one individually for his efforts. She knew that was what her husband would have wanted.

Rabbi Dahan may have completed his mission on this earth, but he is certainly continuing in Shamayim. Just as he spent his days on earth learning Torah, lauding Hashem’s greatness and caring for Hashem’s children, surely he now spends his days in Shamayim learning in Yeshiva Shel Maalah and pleading to Hashem to send Yeshuot for us all.

Yehi Zichro Baruch.

The post Rav Chaim Yechezkel Shraga Dahan Z”L first appeared on Mishpacha Magazine.

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very Thursday for the past three and a half months, I would get the email: Can you please bake challah for the zechus refuah sheleimah of Refoel Yakov Chaim ben Malya Lieba? 

And we baked. Women, girls, grandmothers worldwide. The emails kept pouring in with information on Refoel Yakov Chaim’s condition, entreaties to daven, joyful progress, and heartbreaking updates. An absolute roller coaster of emotions, but we were all holding on tight.

On Monday morning, July 13, 2020, the last email pinged into our inboxes:

Baruch Dayan HaEmes.

And even though I never met Mr. Yakov Henigson, I cried with a broken heart.

***

Mr. Yakov Henigson was a quiet man. The man who unlocked the shul in the wee hours of the morning before the sun came up, and then sat learning until neitz. The man whose name you might never have caught, but he always wanted to know yours. He wanted to know if you needed help, and if so, could he be the shaliach? He wanted to know about you, but he didn’t need you to know him.

Yakov was a Vice President, Actuary at Prudential Financial Life Insurance, yet when asked what he did for a living, his answer would always be: I work as an actuary.

Never, “I’m an actuary.” No, always, “I work as an actuary.” Because he wasn’t an actuary, he was a ben Torah. Not only did Yakov work eight to ten hours a day, fit a learning seder in, and make time for his wife and children after work, he would also guide and place actuaries into jobs. Every second was accounted for, yet he had all the time in the world for any person in need. He gave of his expertise, his experience, his connections. And he had all the time in the world for his family.

It was only during shivah that his friends and family found out just how prestigious a position he held in the company. During his career, he was offered numerous promotions that would greatly benefit him financially, but each time he turned them down. His family and his time with them were his priority. It’s very easy to get blinded by money or prestige, yet Yakov understood that adding more to his workload would take away cherished time with his wife and children and no money in the world could make up for that.

In stereotypical actuary manner, Yakov was meticulous about details, listing and charting almost everything in his life. During shivah, his family found papers of time logs he charted during his learning hours. On each line on the left side was a new date with the exact minutes he spent learning. If at any point he was interrupted, he would write “-4min,” — and make sure to make it up before ending his learning session.

Imagine answering the question, “Were you koveia itim b’Torah?” with the answer, “Yes, for x hours, y minutes, and z seconds….”

Not only would he chart his learning to the second, but Yakov would also meticulously write down his thoughts on different matters, clearly outlining his concerns, cares, and consequent opinions.

One could assume that he was methodical or emotionless since his nature was to be meticulous to every detail, but Yakov exuded only chein and anavah, a genuine sweetness and positivity. He put his family before everything and would give the shirt off his back to anyone in need.

Every morning, with almost no exceptions, Yakov would wake at four-thirty to learn a full seder before going to work. He would daven neitz in his Passaic shul, call his elderly mother living in Florida to wish her a good day, and then drive to work listening to halachah shiurim. Yakov also had a learning seder during his lunch hour, and on his way home, he would stop off at shul to learn some more.

For the times that Yakov couldn’t keep to his calculated schedule, whether for work or family reasons, he would calculate the amount of hours he would be missing from learning and then wake up that amount of time earlier the next morning to make up for it, even if that meant waking at two a.m. There were numerous times that Sora Meira, the younger of his two daughters, recalls her father learning through the whole night because the number of hours he “had” to make up left him no time to sleep.

Yakov grew up in a completely unobservant home, a fourth-generation assimilated Jew, where Yom Kipper, kosher food, and Orthodoxy were completely unknown, let alone observed. Through the years, Yakov told over childhood stories to his family, explaining the extent of his religious knowledge. He explained that it had consisted of the one day a year his mother would keep him and his siblings home from school. This made him furious because as an honors student, it was crucial to attend every class. Once he became religious later on in life, he realized that the day he was kept home every year was Yom Kippur.

The story of how Yakov became religious is fascinating. He was set to attend an Ivy League MBA program on a full scholarship, and the summer before he was set to begin, he went to Israel. Yakov’s children remember how fondly their father would retell his story, describing how he knew something was different about the country the moment he stepped off the plane. By the end of the summer, Yakov decided that going home to attend college wasn’t an option, and he had to keep seeking the truth he had discovered. He signed himself up to join the Aish Hatorah Fellowship program, and at the same time, he reached out to the university to see if they could hold his spot. He was devastated to hear that if he chose not to return in September for the program, he would lose not only his full scholarship, but his slot in the university.

Yakov contemplated what he should do. He was distraught and felt so torn. Finally, some hours later, he looked at himself in the mirror and told himself that when he was meant to go to university, he would get in somewhere else, because leaving Aish wasn’t an option.

Yakov worked on himself night and day to get to where he needed to go. No matter where Yakov stood in Judaism, he was constantly working on himself and seeking growth. From the very beginning of his journey to becoming frum, Yakov took upon himself to learn Gemara to its fullest. He sat for hours and hours every single day with a Hebrew-English dictionary and an English-Aramaic dictionary, teaching himself how to understand the Gemara fluently. Not only did he sit and dwell over the complex parts of Torah, he also studied the basics of halachah with equal stringency and diligence.

His best friend of over 25 years, Michoel, whose nephew would go on to marry Yakov’s daughter Sora Meira, adds:

“Yakov’s return to Yiddishkeit was so pure. He intellectually made the decision that the Torah was true. It was purely rational. Of course he loved meeting all the wonderful frum people and rebbeim along the way, but for him it was not an emotional decision. Torah made intellectual sense to him on every level. Once he started learning Gemara, it was clearly a case of “boy meets Gemara.” He fell in love. He realized the genius of Chazal and marveled at their world of thought and incredible levels of consciousness. Besides the intellectual Gemara discussions, Yakov also loved mussar and the moral teachings he was learning. He loved hearing any devar Torah that taught sensitivity to people. He was amazed at the level of care for one’s feelings that Chazal taught and the carefulness of all their actions. This made a big impression on him because he was naturally someone with great carefulness and sensitivity and he seemed to finally find kindred spirits like himself in Chazal.”

It was a love that grew and grew for the rest of his life.

Although Yakov was extremely busy with his learning and work schedule, the three Henigson children, Shevy, 22, Sora Meira, 20, and Aharon, 14, knew they were the main priorities in their father’s life.

“I thought all fathers learned until one thirty p.m. on Sundays and then came home to take the family on trips,” Shevy reminisces.  “He would put us to sleep every night by reading stories to us, asking us about our day, helping us brush our teeth, and saying Krias Shema together with us.”

Every morning growing up the children would find a personalized note written by Yakov waiting at their kitchen seat. Whether it was wishing them good luck in school, good luck on a test, or how proud he was of something they did, he made it a point to specify how proud he was of each of his children. Sora Meira and Aharon both saved their notes throughout the years and at the shivah, they each had stacks and stacks of love letters that their father had so affectionately written to them. Sora Meira fondly recalls how before a hard test, she would call her father from school, scared that she wasn’t going to do well. No matter how busy Yakov was, he would know it was one of his kids calling from school and answer the phone. He would calmly and tenderly ask his daughter to grade her effort, and when she replied with a mark, he said “Great! I’m so proud! That’s an excellent grade! I know how hard you studied and to me effort is all that matters.” Aharon, the youngest, and the only boy, was the apple of Yakov’s eye. Every Motzaei Shabbos was “boys’ night.” Yakov would take Aharon to various restaurants to make sure he never got overshadowed by his two older teenaged sisters and to constantly remind Aharon how cherished he is.

After 23 years of marriage, Yakov and Debbie still tried to sit together every night alone for dinner. Their three children didn’t really allow for the date to actually take place, but they still tried. No matter how exhausted or hungry Yakov may have been, that didn’t stop him from making Debbie feel like a queen. It was a regular occurrence for a Henigson child to pull open the fridge in search of a snack and find a container of cut-up fruit or a Diet Snapple on the shelf with a small Post-it note proclaiming, “For Mommy only.” He understood how much mothers give to their children and he wanted to make sure that Debbie understood how much she meant to him and how much he appreciated her.

“Titein Emes L’Yakov,” Debbie says. “Yakov’s will to do ratzon Hashem was tremendous. A Jew makes time to learn Torah daily, so Yakov awoke at four thirty to start the day with a learning seder before davening in Ahavas Israel or sometimes Kol Hareyim, and then heading off to work. A Jew asks sh’eilos, so Yakov turned to his rav with sh’eilos when necessary, even when he was ill with coronavirus. A Jew conducts a Shabbos table in the spirit of Shabbos, so Yakov infused his Shabbos table with Torah and zemiros. A Jew provides for his family and helps them any way he can, so Yakov was an involved caring father and husband. A Jew treats others with respect, so Yakov, in his soft-spoken manner, addressed everyone with respect and dignity. When I was cleaning out his car, I found a reminder he made himself and kept in his trunk: ‘Middos are caught, not taught.’

“Yakov, in his short life in This World, succeeded in becoming a walking kiddush Hashem.”

He fell ill Shabbos Hagadol with coronavirus and remained in the ICU almost the entire time until he was niftar, on 23 Tammuz.

***

We still bake challah, but now it’s in the zechus aliyas neshamah of Yakov Chaim ben Dovid. May the exalted neshamah of this special man have an aliyah. May his family be comforted, b’shaar avlei Tzion v’Yerushalayim.

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Erev Shabbos, I learned that Yakov Henigson has passed away from Covid-19 in July. Many years ago, Yakov was one of my primary tutors in the Aish Hatorah learning program, when I was in the early stages of of becoming a baal teshuvah. As we had generally discussed Torah topics, I didn’t feel that knew him extremely well, but he always came across as a gentle and reasonable person. The fact that he was also volunteering to tutor me for free, speaks for itself. Though scheduling issues prevented us from continuing our learning together, he invited me to his wedding. He moved away, and we lost touch.
Reading the description of his character in the Aish.com’s extract of Ariella Schiller’s beautiful Mishpacha article memorializing him, I got the clear impression that the positive impression I’d had of him, really was his nature; a gentle, principled person, devoted to Judaism. The few people I’ve known or met who passed away from Covid-19, were all individuals who gave of themselves to Am Yisrael to a greater extent than most. Not coincidentally, all of them helped or benefited me in my own life, some to an extreme degree.
Reading Miss Schiller’s article, I felt regret that I hadn’t renewed contact with him.

May the neshamah of Yakov Chaim ben Dovid have further aliyos from the efforts of his children, and those who remember him.

—Refael Cushman

The post Mr. Yakov Henigson first appeared on Mishpacha Magazine.

abbi Dr. Norman Lamm ztz”l (1927–2020), was a towering figure whose influence cast a lasting legacy, a sterling example, and timeless ideas throughout the Jewish community. He began his career as a pulpit rabbi, after Rabbi Samuel Belkin (then president of Yeshiva University and a student of the Chofetz Chaim), convinced him to leave a promising future as a scientist.
In 1976, Rabbi Dr. Lamm succeeded Rabbi Belkin as the president of Yeshiva University. As a fellow student of Rabbi Soloveitchik, I always marveled at Rabbi Lamm’s capacity to be both a talmid and a leader. In fact, his capacity to hold opposites, embrace dialectics, lead with sensitivity and poise, and champion Torah values in a changing world marked his entire life’s work and career. He received his formative Torah education at Torah Vodaath and developed his own leadership at the helm of Yeshiva University. He contained multitudes and endowed them all will dignity and royalty.

In 1997, just before President Clinton’s second inaugural, I was invited to speak beside him at the opening ceremony of the second inauguration. It was a moving gesture and a testament to my long-standing friendship with President Clinton. The only issue, however, was that it was being held in a church and I knew I could not attend. There are few people who can help navigate such a dilemma. But I knew one such person, Rabbi Dr. Norman Lamm ztz”l. My response required delicate language, passionate commitment, and a sensitive approach to an esteemed friendship. Rabbi Lamm possessed all of those qualities and this incident highlighted so much of what made him such an extraordinary man.

Rabbi Lamm helped masterfully affirm the centrality of religion in American life without veering into relativistic grounds of halakhic issues. This story demonstrates his ability to respond to dignitaries because Rabbi Lamm himself possessed such an aristocratic quality. Rabbi Lamm’s Haggadah, which the OU published, was in fact called The Royal Table. In his introduction, he explains the dual nature of the shulchan melachim, the royal table in Jewish thought. In one respect, “the phrase was used to express contempt for this crude class-consciousness.” As we find in geirus, a convert is rejected if they are motivated by sitting at the shulchan melachim — converting simply for the financial gains that affiliation may provide. Pirkei Avos reminds us not to aspire to a shulchan melachim, but rather to the table of scholars. We also find that shulchan melachim, certainly in the context of Shlomo Hamelech, is the gold standard of excellence.

This dialectic, Rabbi Lamm explains, must be our attitude toward royalty. And it was this duality that Rabbi Lamm embodied. He was at once self-effacing and uncomfortable with any sort of honorifics, while also imbued with a natural majesty that suffused his eloquent words and dignified manner.

Throughout his career, as pulpit rabbi, notably in The Jewish Center or later as president of Yeshiva University, Rabbi Lamm always had the right words to move communities. His words and drashot were timeless. His eloquence was able to capture fundamental truths that still resonate today.

There is another quality the incident with President Clinton highlights, though it is not explicit in the letter. Rabbi Lamm had a marvelous sense of humor. His first reaction, after I presented the dilemma to him, was to suggest, with a smile, that I figure out a way to check myself into a hospital. Afterward, he suggested, with another characteristic wink, that I append to the letter in a postscript that I have many colleagues who are not so principled who would be happy to join in my stead. His humor, like his scholarly ideas, was sharp and sophisticated. Never a gag, always a clever word.

Another of Rabbi Lamm’s qualities was the ability, and perhaps a striving, to bridge intellectual gaps and to encompass what seem to be irreconcilable opposites. His doctoral thesis on Rav Chaim Volozhin (the basis for his book, Torah Lishmah) is an in-depth study of what could be considered the quintessence of the misnaged approach to Yiddishkeit. One of Rabbi Lamm’s other major works, however, is The Religious Thought of Hasidism: Text and Commentary, winner of the 1999 National Jewish Book Award in Jewish Thought.
Rabbi Lamm’s writings also express how highly he valued secular knowledge, while at the same time he staunchly defended Orthodoxy and warned of the corrosive effects of contemporary culture. Rabbi Lamm wanted to embrace disparate counterpoints of knowledge, but always under the rubric of Torah. Rabbi Lamm was able to embrace opposing poles and had a magisterial quality to preside over a wide range of ideas that through his prose became his subjects, of sorts.

Finally, above all, Rabbi Lamm’s treasured our mesorah. In his introduction to the Haggadah, Rabbi Lamm recalls sitting at the Seder of his zaide, the famed author of Sheilos u’Teshuvos Emek Halachah. He vividly remembers how his grandfather would react when recounting the Jewish people’s servitude in Mitzrayim. “He was totally silent,” Rabbi Lamm writes, “as we continued to read aloud from the Haggadah. He said nothing, but tears streamed down his face and onto his beard. I do not recall if anyone else noticed, but I did.” Rabbi Lamm, reflecting on this memory, saw his grandfather relive the horrors and traumas he witnessed during the Holocaust. As he read the story of the Jewish people’s suffering, he wept for his own mother, his brother and his sisters all lost in the Holocaust. Mesorah, for Rabbi Lamm, was something deeply personal and, as he saw in his grandfather, it was the mechanism through which the past continued to reverberate in the present.

In 1958 he began the Torah journal Tradition and in his editor’s note in the inaugural issue he explains the title:

Tradition is perhaps one of the most misunderstood and maligned words in our contemporary vocabulary. It has been misconstrued by some as the very antithesis of “progress” and as a synonym for the tyranny that a rigid past blindly imposes upon the present. For others the word evokes different associations. Tradition becomes for them the object of sentimental adoration, the kind of nostalgic affection which renders it ineffective and inconsequential, like the love for an old naïve grandmother — possessing great charm, but exercising little power of influence

Rejecting both, Rabbi Lamm eloquently explains his approach to Tradition and our mesorah:

The focus of Tradition, is then, the future and not the past. “Tradition” is thus a commitment by the past to the future, the promise of roots, the precondition of a healthy continuity of that which is worthy of being preserved, the affirmation that the human predicament in general, and the Jewish situation in particular, are nor frighteningly new, but that they grow out of a soil, which we can know and analyze and to use to great benefit.

This is the mesorah that Rabbi Lamm so bravely protected when ensuring the financial health of Yeshiva University. This is the mesorah Rabbi Lamm so revered in his deference and esteem for his rebbe, Rabbi Soloveitchik ztz”l. This is the mesorah that motivated his life’s work of bringing Torah to thousands and his singular defense of mechitzahs in American synagogues as much of the country looked at such traditions as antiquated. And this is the mesorah he helped me convey in that letter to President Clinton. Royal words couched in a welcoming and warm tone.

Rabbi Lamm was truly an aristocrat of the Torah community. His absence makes us all a bit more plebian while his memory and example continues to ennoble.

The post Rabbi Dr. Norman Lamm first appeared on Mishpacha Magazine.

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cousin of the Loebensteins called on Chol Hamoed Pesach from Switzerland. Was Meir okay? It was the first time in decades that he hadn’t received a Gut Yom Tov phone call from him.

He wasn’t. Always fit and healthy, and just 59 years old, Meir was fighting for his life in the COVID ICU.

All his life, Meir Loebenstein had been there for others, as if blessed with a sixth sense to know what they needed, and get it done. Meir Loebenstein was that caring neighbor who didn’t need to be asked, didn’t talk, just took his neighbors’ excess garbage to the city dump after a simchah. Who without being asked, personally delivered 80 chairs to a friend who was hosting a sheva brachos. On an icy December night in his hometown of Manchester, he showed up at the hospital with chocolate, food, and a Chumash for an acquaintance who had rushed to the emergency room with an ill child. He then drove him home to pick up his own car.

A genius at making others feel cared for, he called his widowed sister daily, his aunts and uncles weekly, and all relatives when they celebrated simchahs. Even family members in Australia were not exempt. One aunt, who had suffered a stroke and was in a nursing home for years, couldn’t even hold the phone. But each week, the nursing staff brought the phone to her, saying, “You have a call from Meir in England.” Those present saw her face light up — she had not been forgotten. If, when Meir called her on Thursday, his aunt was sleeping or unavailable, he would call again on Friday. Australia being ten hours ahead of England, and Shabbos coming in early, this could mean getting up at four a.m. on Friday morning to wish his aunt a good Shabbos. Not a problem.

Quietly and humbly, he regularly visited the housebound and called the lonely. Not even his wife knew how many lives he brightened each week with a friendly phone call. And this care and courtesy for the elderly also extended to a non-Jewish woman living on their predominantly Jewish block, for whom he picked up groceries.

He had learned in Sunderland Yeshivah as a bochur, and so Meir kept in touch with his roshei yeshivah, Rav Zecharia Gelley and Dayan Chanoch Ehrentrau, always asking hadrachah and she’eilos from his own rebbeim. Characteristically, his hakaras hatov and sensitivity included calling Rebbetzin Gelley regularly after the Rav’s petirah.

“When I arrived from Ireland to Sunderland Yeshivah for the first time, I did not know anyone there,” recalls Rabbi Yonason Yodaiken, principal of Manchester’s Yesoiday Hatorah Jewish Day School. “I was very anxious, until a bochur ran over to me with a big smile, took my bags, brought me to my room, went downstairs to get me hot soup, and then introduced me to the rosh yeshivah. The next morning, I noticed that the bochur who had welcomed me was the gabbai — Meir Loebenstein. He gave me an aliyah, and throughout the time I was in yeshivah with him, he did everything he could to make me feel at home there. Roll on a few years, and I was welcoming his children to our school in Manchester. The evening before every term began, for a few decades, Reb Meir called me with his special warm brachos for the year ahead.”

Shidduchim and Marriage

Meir returned home from learning in Sunderland Yeshivah and then Gateshead, and began to work in Manchester. While he was in shidduchim, shadchanim suggested he consider moving to London. Many American and European girls would consider a boy from London, but who would want to move to the provincial, small community of Manchester? Meir stuck to his principles — he was not going to move away from his parents, because he wanted to be there for them. At 29, he married Bracha Benjamin from Lucerne, who gladly moved to Manchester and supported Meir’s desire to be available, at his parents’ beck and call, day and night. As they aged, he would go in after Shacharis to prepare their coffee and siddurim, then again many times throughout the day. In later years, he escorted his father to daven and stood at his side for every tefillah. On Motzaei Shabbos, he was there to fold the tablecloths and put away the silverware. When his mother was alone, he did everything he could, with incredible patience until, for the last few years, she moved into the house next door so that Meir and Bracha would always be there for her.

The home they built was a beautiful one, with values, warmth, and happy children. Meir and Bracha hosted guests royally, from seminary girls who felt right at home to young nieces and nephews who recall that, “Uncle Meir made sure we had an amazing time whenever we were in Manchester. The house was full of fun and excitement and he was the funny uncle. He even knew the names of our dolls.” Whatever hour of day or night the guests were leaving, it was no trouble for him to drive to the airport or train station. He did not ask, he just went ahead and did it. One lady arrived late for a wedding in Manchester and went straight to the hall. She was staying at the Loebensteins. Unasked, intent on saving her from schlepping her suitcase and worrying about its safety all evening, Meir came to pick it up from the hall and placed it in the guestroom.

His coworker recalls having a carpool issue. “Meir said, ‘I’m doing carpool today, does your Miri have a ride?” At first I believed him, later she told me she was the only kid in the car. He was doing carpool for my Miri alone.” In fact, rides were a chesed specialty. The Loebenstein minivan would even make a U-turn or a special journey to pick someone up. In the office, although a senior member of the company he worked for, Meir brought others drinks and did the jobs others would diplomatically shy away from — taking out the garbage when required, and assembling IKEA desks for new employees. And no matter how long he worked for the company, he referred to all female staff as Mrs. or Miss.

The Unforgettable Mi Shebeirach

Meir Loebenstein was raised in Manchester’s Adass Yeshurun shul, and he never left it.

The shul was his second home; he came early to daven every tefillah and often served as gabbai, delighting in running over to newcomers to show them to available seats (often, to his own seat) and bring them siddurim of their preferred nusach. One fellow mispallel wrote: “Meir paid good money for four seats in shul, for him and his boys. But I can count on my fingers how often I saw him actually sitting on his own seat.” All this somehow happened without him speaking, because he never spoke in shul.

It was so important to him that other people should feel comfortable there, especially elderly members. For one old lady, he went upstairs to the ezras nashim before davening began, and prepared a specific comfortable chair and siddur. His kavod for rabbanim was absolute. When a respected rav who lived near Adass Yeshurun started to daven there due to age and infirmity, Meir would have been kind just to ensure that the rav had a nice seat. But he would go each Shabbos to bring him to shul, and escort him home afterward, like a dutiful son.

He would personally bring chairs for the seminary girls who attended on Yamim Noraim and had a sixth sense for when a woman was trying to call her husband out of shul. He personally polished the silver of the shul’s sifrei Torah. On Thursdays, Meir would slip into the shul, get out the vacuum cleaner, and vacuum the shul’s carpets and the steps to the aron kodesh. He felt it was not kavod for the beis knesses to be cleaned by the non-Jewish cleaning crew. He was a doer and a real Yekkeh. Simchas Torah, after the seudah, he headed back to shul with a broom, sweeping every last candy wrapper and crumb from the house of Hashem.

Once, he noticed two individuals trying to best each other over an ArtScroll siddur, one trying to put it away in his desk so he’d have it for next time, the other one putting it back on the shelf. Meir went to buy another one out of his own pocket, and placed it in this man’s desk.

He lived with a youthful joie de vivre, but certainly did not wear his emotions on his sleeve. Yet Meir’s Mi Shebeirachs became a legend. Even on a regular Monday or Thursday morning, the caring in his heart overflowed. He couldn’t hide it. That set formula of blessing was far from a rote recital in Adass Yeshurun. Coming from Reb Meir Loebenstein, it was a warmly recited, sincere prayer for another Yid, for his family, his success, his children. Dozens upon dozens of letters received by the family mention the Mi Shebeirachs that regulars and visitors loved receiving, a caress of care from someone who sometimes did not even know their family. On the Yamim Noraim, the Mi Shebeirachs entered another league entirely.

A Yekkeh through and through, a wonderful husband and father and an upright balabos with fixed learning sedarim, Reb Meir’s life was an example of yashrus to his community. But beneath the public eye, there was more, a current of chesed that laced through his days, almost unnoticed. His father had been active on the chevra kaddisha, and when he was no longer able to continue, Meir joined. His company allowed him to leave the office when called, and in characteristic fashion, he would quietly tell coworkers that he had “to go out and see to something,” later returning without a word. A coworker did not know that Meir was on the chevra kaddisha until he joined himself, seven years later. For that was Reb Meir — do what’s right, and do for others, with no fuss or fanfare.

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everal years ago in this publication, my friend Eytan Kobre penned a poignant feature about the Tishah B’Av shiur given for six decades in Camp Morris by my late father, Rabbi Moshe Homnick. The word “shiur” and Tishah B’Av rarely share a sentence, but when they do, one imagines a one-hour talk covering some lesser-known facet of the Beis Hamikdash and concluding with a reminder to avoid the baseless hatred that brought that holy structure down.
My father’s shiur was a marathon, beginning with 90 minutes or so in the evening, after Eichah. He resumed in the morning after Kinos, then went on all day with a pause for Minchah. All told, he put in eight or more hours covering the sad sections of Gemara that may be studied as we mourn. He began this project as a single student in his early twenties and continued into his eighties. He took off in 1967 for one year, because Israel had just recaptured the Kosel and he thought he should experience the Churban at its source, the better to be its spokesman in subsequent years.

This was his one day a year to reach yeshivah bochurim directly, so he tried to work into his presentation some messages he thought those students needed to hear. For example, the Gemara tells of the wealthy heiress who sent her servant to the market to buy wheat on the day the storehouses of grain had been burned down. He came back empty-handed, saying wheat was sold out and only barley was available. She sent him back for barley but by that time there was no barley either, and she wound up with nothing to eat, despite her vast holdings.

My father would quote Rabbi Henkin ztz”l, saying that the confirmed bachelors follow this life pattern. By the time they are willing to settle for what they can get, they can no longer get that, either.

By sharing life wisdom of this variety, my father was able to effect attitude adjustments even in his one-day-a-year access. The more troubled personalities had the option to become paying customers of his counseling practice, where they could benefit from his advice at any time.

Although that was his livelihood and he could not afford to give away the goods for free, he was constantly being pressed by people facing difficult struggles and often offered lifesaving assistance without charging. Thus, as children growing up, we knew that every walk home from shul on Shabbos would involve someone accompanying us home and buzzing in his ear. The same was true every time we tried to eat out quietly at a restaurant.

My father started school in RJJ but ended up in Mesivta Rabbi Chaim Berlin at age 15 in 1946 via a free summer in Camp Morris arranged by his uncle, Sam Gottlieb. Uncle Sam was one of the founders of Lakewood Yeshiva and was friends with Morris Meltzer, the philanthropist who had given the camp a lot of money… and his name. My father went because the price was right, but he fell in love with the students and never looked back.

Rabbi Avigdor Miller had just been hired as Mashgiach and my father was the first student he tested for admission. My father was so impressive that the yeshivah accepted him directly into the highest shiur, which already included two 15-year-old geniuses, (Rav) Gershon Wiesenfeld and (Rav) Aharon Lichtenstein. My father had the advantage that the rosh yeshivah, Rav Yitzchak Hutner, had been a principal at RJJ when my father’s mother presided over the Sisterhood.

Rav Hutner only referred to that once in their relationship, when he said, “I detect in you a quality that I saw in your mother.” Although his rebbi (as my father always called him) did not elaborate or specify, my father felt endorsed by that on many levels: the care and interest in the student rooted in a respect for his family.

My father’s first two roommates in Chaim Berlin were two of our great gedolim today, Rav Dovid Cohen and Rav Yonason David. After my father started going to college at night, they asked him if he thought they should go, too. He told them not to do anything without asking the rosh yeshivah. When they posed the question to Rav Hutner, he said to them, “If I let you two go to college, they will put me in the seventh level of Gehinnom and never let me out!”

Besides being one of the top learners in the yeshivah, my father evinced a joyous personality that made people want to be around him. Reb Michael Raitzik tells me that one evening Rav Hutner called the payphone outside the beis medrash and asked for my father. He told my father to pull a group of guys together and drive down to a catering hall in Williamsburg where a chassan from the yeshivah was experiencing a decidedly unlively wedding. My father enlisted another bochur who also owned a car and they arrived at the wedding with two carloads of bochurim. To trigger extra excitement, they actually danced their way in from the door and brought a new life into the party.

This charisma extended to his non-Jewish work associates as well. When I was about six, circa 1964, my father began working for the City of New York in a civil service position. He ran a high school equivalency for teenagers and young adults who had done prison time. He used that opportunity to give his mother, Jenny Homnick (1900–1975, born in New York City), then in her sixties, the chance to finish high school. She’d had to leave before graduation when her mother passed away and her father needed help in the store. Now she sat surrounded by street toughs who adored her as she tirelessly helped them with their schoolwork.

His supervisor at that time was an African-American, Doctor Abrams, and my father would sit for hours after work schmoozing with him about life. Once Abrams asked: “There are very few things that achieve universal agreement. One of those seems to be that Jews are no good. How would you explain that?” My father responded by reminding Abrams of his most awful childhood trauma, the day Abrams’s mother bought him a new suit. When he went outside, the other kids were jealous and kicked up dirty water from puddles onto his suit. “The way those boys looked at you is the way the world looks at the Jew.”

As children growing up (I am the oldest of nine), we benefited from that boisterous spirit. Our Shabbos and Yom Tov tables were very leibedig. My father’s father had a tradition that he was the twelfth consecutive generation of chazzanim, so although he made a nice living as a pharmacist, he made sure to keep his position as baal Mussaf for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur at a shul next to Prospect Park. My father let his brother continue the chazzan chain going in the world, but at home we sang all the family tunes with gusto. He spiced up our home life with funny words he made up – to get us going he would shout “Acsiones!” (a mock Spanish version of “Action!”), and impromptu performances.

In fact, the late Rabbi Thaler of Massachusetts told me that when they were in Chaim Berlin together, they had a seder every night in a classroom that consisted of mostly learning, with a few minutes of dancing at the end. He particularly recalled them dancing “Hamaavir Banav Bein Gizrei Yam Suf.” That flashback of two yeshivah bochurim in Brooklyn, a few years after the Holocaust, spontaneously recreating the atmosphere of the Splitting of the Sea fills me with joy, just imagining the scene.

Rav Aharon Feldman was one of my father’s close friends from those days. He tells me that my father once invited him into his dorm room to share a steak with him that he would prepare on a new electric grill he had bought. The secret got out soon enough, when the aroma of steak on the flame spread all the way down the hallway. The result was that so many friends came by for a piece that in the end my father had none for himself! Rav Aharon was watching him intently and concluded that he was not upset at all.

Rav Yaakov Perlow, another friend, liked to tell me about the time my father called him on Erev Shabbos on an impulse and said to be ready outside his house with a suitcase in ten minutes. “We’re going to Camp Morris for Shabbos!” They were already in their mid-twenties and had outgrown the weekday camp atmosphere, but Shabbos was something different. They had some mechanical difficulties going up the mountain and wound up making it to camp just minutes before candle lighting.

Rav Yaakov Perlow, the Novominsker Rebbe, passed away just hours after my father. I could not help but think that they were hitching a ride together to Gan Eden….

With his son (the author) and grandchildren in his younger years (l) and more recently (r)

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I was zoche to be a neighbor to Rav Homnick's brother, lehavdil ben chaim lechaim, in Jerusalem years ago.

His brother Rav Yaakov shlita related that their father was the only Shomer Shabbos pharmacist around, Itself a rarity in those days. According to the law, there was a need for him to be open very late, and he could not afford to hire another worker due to the loss of shabbos business, thus necessitating his working long hours away from his family all week. Instead, as your article mentions, it was the zemiros of their father on shabbos that brought them together once a week and uplifted them.

I also fondly recall meeting the niftar many years ago on a visit to Flatbush praying in the Landau shtiebel in the summer time. After davening, Rav Homnick gave a short talk in which he emphasized the importance we ascribe to mitzvos ben adam lachavero need be strengthened. "It did not used to be emphasized in klal Ysrael historically by the gedolim in Europe for fear we would also engage the non Jews and assimilate,," he explained.

However, nowadays he stated,  that his Rabeiim held that we need to make sure to emphasize ben adam lachvero just as much as ben adam lamakom.

As a dignified and true master of ben adam Lachavero and ben adam lamakom, my brief and impressionable encounter with his persona has generated a lasting impression, as I am sure it will on all who knew him.

Yehi Zichro Baruch, and may the family be comforted among the mourners of Zion.

— R' Yehuda Levin 

The post Rabbi Moshe Homnick first appeared on Mishpacha Magazine.

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is was a life that was lived with a full heart.

Whether it was his passion for learning, his love for his fellow man, his exceptionally close relationship with his family or his tremendous simchas hachaim, Heshy Mermelstein was someone who didn’t do anything halfway, and his passing leaves behind a tremendous void that extends far beyond the Flatbush community that he called home.

The oldest of five children born to Reb Shalom a’h and Chana tblc’t Mermelstein, Heshy lived the first four years of his life in a Boro Park duplex that was also home to the Chusta Rav and his shul. The families shared a close relationship, and the seeds for Heshy’s exceptional capacity for hasmadah were sown in his youth in the Rebbe’s shul. His father would often pair him up with the talmidei chachamim who came to learn and he spent several summers as a teenager enjoying a chavrusashaft with Rav Avraham Yehoshua Heschel Bick. His brother, Pinny, recalled being sent to wake Heshy for shul one Shabbos morning, only to discover that he was already awake and surrounded by seforim. Pinny’s efforts to get his brother’s attention were completely fruitless — Heshy was so deeply immersed in his learning that he didn’t even realize that someone else was in the room and trying to catch his attention.

Heshy’s talents as a masterful orator were also evident early on. While some find public speaking daunting, Heshy was a natural and by the time he was 17 he was teaching bar mitzvah boys their pshetls. As a high schooler at Yeshiva Torah Vodaath, Heshy gained a reputation as someone who was both resourceful and bright, and his high school yearbook lauded him as someone whose “stamina and determination will lead him to great heights.” Heshy continued on at Torah Vodaath for beis medrash as well, moving on to Rabbi Yisroel Zev Gustman’s Netzach Yisroel-Vilna Ramiles Yeshivah in Rechavia, and even years later, he was still able to explain Rav Gustman’s pshat when discussions arose on particular sugyos that he had learned there.  

“It clearly was the most impactful year of learning,” said his eldest son, Binyomin Mermelstein. “Abba had written every pilpul shiur over word for word, and each one had lasted for three hours.”

Heshy married his eishes chayil, Bluma Steinmetz, in 1978 and the young couple settled in Flatbush where they raised their four children. He went on to become a CPA and also sold insurance, taking a personal interest in every client and developing lifelong friendships with them, his work a natural extension of who he was. Heshy was a people person, through and through, someone who saw the good in everyone and loved to make people feel better about themselves. His ever-present simchas hachaim was evident in his perpetual smile and he took a genuine interest in people’s lives, making it clear that he cared for everyone he met, their mutual encounters leaving everlasting impressions.

“Growing up, we all knew that whenever we went anywhere with Abba, he was bound to find someone he knew from elementary school, high school or camp, and would strike up a conversation with them,” recalled son Dovi Mermelstein. “If he didn’t know anyone there, it wasn’t long before he got to know a few people. Abba always made people feel really good about themselves and that is a chesed that is so important in our times when people aren’t b’simchah for many different reasons.”

Heshy’s chavivus for Torah was another of his defining characteristics. In his younger years he was a fixture at Rabbi Yisroel Reisman’s Motzaei Shabbos Navi shiur, adding multiple others to his schedule as time went on, and he was never embarrassed or afraid to raise any questions no matter where he was and how many people were there. He was a regular at Rabbi Gedaliah Weinberger’s 6:20 a.m. daf yomi for well over 20 years, walking about a mile each day to attend the shiur, both for the health benefits and to avoid having to look for parking. When Heshy broke his ankle some years ago, he called into the shiur every day, refusing to miss even a single day of daf yomi. He never hesitated to point out if Rabbi Weinberger had presented a particular daf differently during the previous daf yomi cycle and refused to let the shiur continue if a particular point was unclear, something that Rabbi Weinberger said ultimately benefited the entire group.

Not satisfied to be learning just for himself, Heshy would always ask his nephews what they were learning and he could speak to someone about any sugya at any time. As a Partners in Torah mentor, he learned with his chavrusa for twelve years and two months until his partner passed away. He tried everything he could to convince surviving family members to bury the niftar k’halachah and was heartbroken when the family carried through on their plan for cremation. That incredible ahavas Yisrael was evident in other facets of Heshy’s life as well, including his complete refusal to become involved in any kind of machlokes and his ayin tovah that truly had him seeing the good in every person he met.

In addition to being an integral member of the Flatbush kehillah, Heshy’s presence was equally valued at Twin Bridges Estates in Hurleyville, where he and Bluma summered for 33 years. Looking ahead to their retirement, the Mermelsteins bought a home at the Enclave in Lakewood, spending Shabbosim there to be closer to some of their grandchildren, all of whom called him not Zaidy, but Abba. And indeed, Heshy was an involved father to the next generation, pushing them tirelessly on the swings, getting down on the floor for playtime, learning with them, and drawing on seemingly endless reserves of energy as he made priceless memories with his grandchildren.

Heshy leaves behind his wife, Bluma, his children Binyomin and Naomi, Ita and Yossi, Dovi and Sari, and Bryna and Aryeh, and his ka”h many grandchildren. Adding to the family’s tremendous loss is the knowledge that they did not have the ability to say a final goodbye to the role model who shaped their lives and taught them to use their kochos to better the world and gladden the hearts of others.

“You were a healthy man, full of love for life on that last Friday that I spoke to you,” said Dovi Mermelstein, directing his words to his father at the shloshim. “We don’t know what Hashem’s calculations are but we beseech you to be a meilitz yosher for the entire family to beg the Ribon Hakol to give Mommy the strength to lead the mishpachah for many more years to come in good health. May we be reunited in the immediate future with the coming of Mashiach.”

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I am still in shock. Your face with your pleasant countenance is in front of my eyes. I did not know you were ill until almost the last day. I still managed to say some Thilim for Shmuel Tzvi ben Chana Nicha.

As somebody who knew you for more then 60 years I only have pleasant memories. I remember the Shabbos afternoons when either I would go to your house or you would come to mine.

What about  the 5 years of Shabbosos that we learned with R’ Gedalia A”H? Wasn’t it at your initiative that I joined you?

Who can forget the Maasei Chessed your father performed? You were raised in an atmosphere of Torah and Gemilus Chasodim.

You are sorely missed

May you be a Meilitz Yosher for your mother L’Rfus”h,  for your wife and children, your siblings and your good friends.

—Chaim Eliezer Frankel

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t was before the UK decided to go on lockdown, before the urgency of coronavirus had penetrated the traditional British laissez-faire attitude. Schools, businesses, and yeshivos up and down the country were still running. In the northern enclave that is Gateshead’s Jewish community — a stronghold of Torah and old-style communal life — the town’s committee sat and debated. The facts, as far as they were known, were laid out. The risks were weighed. And the rosh hakahal, Reb Yankel Kaufman, made a difficult decision. Gateshead must close. The nurseries and daycares and schools. The shul. The illustrious kollelim. For the time being, it was too dangerous to continue.

With the agreement of the town’s rabbinic leadership, the law was laid down. This being Gateshead, it was kept unequivocally.

Three weeks later, Reb Yankel was taken. His last act for his beloved community was to protect them.

A multifaceted, homegrown leader, Reb Yankel was the rosh hakahal (locally known as “the Parnas”) of a community that retains an old-fashioned kehillah structure perhaps unique in the 21st century. Gateshead has one kehillah, one Rav, and one central committee that runs all the towns’ mosdos and amenities. The committee is headed by an elected leader, someone respected, with shoulders broad enough to carry the responsibility of organizing and representing a community. Someone decisive, yet sensitive. Like his father before him, Reb Yankel Kaufman was the Parnas of Gateshead. Also like his father, he was loved as much as he was respected.

If a new institution wants to open its doors in Gateshead, or when someone starts a new business to serve the community, they turn to the Parnas. Reb Yankel was responsible for the financial affairs of the community, the community-run shechitah, the shul, the mikvaos, and the committee to find a new rav after the recent departure of Rav Shraga Feivel Zimmerman. Gateshead’s Kashrus Authority was his innovation, as was the town’s initiative to facilitate shidduchim for its daughters by offering financial incentives to shadchanim. The recent ambitious multimillion-pound project to rebuild the Gateshead mikveh was under his direction. Reb Yankel himself raised hundreds of thousands of pounds for the campaign and oversaw it with his exceptional sense of achrayus. The vast new boros that had been ordered arrived with bittersweet timing — just as his sons waited outside for their father’s levayah.

With Rav Falk zt"l

Reb Yankel was also the devoted (volunteer) President of the Gateshead Chevra Kaddisha. As do many chevra kaddisha gabbaim, of course Reb Yankel left his phone on every night, prepared to respond to anyone who needed his services. With foresight and initiative, he arranged for the Gateshead Chevra Kaddisha to purchase its own premises for taharos. He went to great lengths to develop good relationships with the local coroners. When necessary, he sometimes drove niftarim down to London himself in order to facilitate kevurah in Eretz Yisrael. Once, a lady in Gateshead heard on a late Motzaei Shabbos that her father had passed away in London. It was too late for the last train, and that family did not own a car, and had no way to travel to London in time for the levayah the next morning. Then there was a knock on the door and Reb Yankel Kaufman stood there, holding his car keys. “I’m taking you down to London,” he said, simply. (It is a five-hour drive.)

He was warm, friendly, and down-to-earth, a man of the people, born in Gateshead and raised in the heart of that small, distinguished community built around the famous yeshivah. His father, Reb Yosef Kaufman, was the Parnas of Gateshead for about 40 years. Reb Yankel was one of eight Kaufman children. As the oldest son to settle in Gateshead, he accompanied and assisted his father. Yet he would never join the committee that ran the town during Reb Yosef’s lifetime, so as not to have to contradict his father if he felt differently from him.

When Reb Yosef Kaufman was niftar, in 2006, Reb Yosef Schleider became rosh hakahal with Reb Yankel serving as vice Rosh Hakohol and eventually filling the position of Rosh Hakohol for over a decade.

Reb Yankel was a businessman. In recent years, though, working for the kehillah was his day — and night — job. He gave hours upon hours of time to others. The thing that remained untouchable were his chavrusas. Because in a sense, he was a yeshivah man still.

One of several sedarim he maintained was in daf hayomi. Reb Yankel learned daf hayomi every night, sometimes for two hours. He would then revise the daf during the day, and not move forward until complete clarity was his. His simchah at the recent Siyum HaShas included taking part in siyumim in Gateshead, Manchester, and London, and then making a festive siyum at home.

This focus on Torah learning was the legacy of a strong Torah chinuch. Reb Yankel had learned in Gateshead Yeshivah under Rav Leib Gurwitz and Rav Leib Lopian. At that time he became close to his rebbi muvhak, Rav Matisyahu Salomon shlita. Following that, he spent a few years learning diligently in Ponevezh. In later years, with great excitement, he’d retell his memories of Rav Shach, Rav Chatzkel Levenstein, and Rav Shmuel Rozovsky. His children knew that if they mentioned Ponevezh, his face would light up.

In conversation with the Rosh Yeshiva, Rav Avrohom Gurwitz shlita

Then there was the period in Sunderland kollel, where he learned several masechtos be’iyun and forged bonds with the likes of Dayan Chanoch Ehrentreu, Dayan Gershon Lopian, and Rabbi Chaim Shmuel Lopian. During this time, Yankel married Esther Morgenbesser from Zurich, Switzerland, who partnered with him in setting up a home that bustled with guests and chesed.

Rosh Hakahal

Reb Yankel took his position as rosh hakahal to the next level. Gateshead’s kehillah matters, he felt, were his personal achrayus, but he remained sensitive and warm, not losing sight of the individual for the community. Who should resolve issues between schools and parents, achieve workable solutions in the gray area between the family’s needs and the town’s standards, and help different organizations work together for their mutual benefit? The community grew, and the demands on the Parnas’s time grew. Reb Yankel ironed out disputes with a sure hand and wise advice. A newcomer who was struggling to find his feet in business received a fatherly letter full of encouragement from Reb Yankel.

In private life, he was a quietly generous man. When he heard that one of the yeshivos in town had no soda for Yom Tov, he realized that the bochurim would be upset and quietly supplied the drinks, forbidding his children to tell anyone. For years, Reb Yankel sponsored free milk for all of the town’s kollelim, knowing that the yungerleit would all learn better when coffee was freely available.

When he noticed that a fellow shul goer wore an extremely threadbare tallis and was not replacing it, Reb Yankel purchased a new tallis and gave it to the man’s brother. “Give it to him from you.”

On a much larger scale, an acquaintance from America had successfully applied for his daughter to attend Gateshead Seminary. However, he could not afford the tuition fees. He called Yankel Kaufman to inquire about student grants and scholarships that might be available. A few days later, Reb Yankel called back to say he had sorted out a grant for this student and informed this father of the remaining sum to be paid. The family were pleased, but they never realized that the “grant” was from their friend’s own pocket.

He was a father figure in the town, looking after Gateshead — its people, not just its community — absorbing many tzaros and able to assess situations with seichel hayashar and experience.

He took the responsibility so seriously that he didn’t like to leave the town for Shabbos, feeling that he should stay in Gateshead and daven in the shul. In fact, until Reb Yaakov was admitted to hospital, he was busy with the needs of the community, especially setting Gateshead in the new reality of the corona situation.

Reb Yankel had a close relationship with the Toldos Avraham Yitzchak Rebbe shlita

Reb Yankel had planned to be buried in Eretz Yisrael, but his petirah on Tuesday morning, the day of bedikas chametz, at the nadir of the corona crisis, made this seem highly unlikely. With a three-day Yom Tov approaching, there was much concern. A cargo plane was leaving to Tel Aviv from London on Tuesday afternoon. In order for the aron to be loaded, it had to be in a metal coffin.  Just one hour before Reb Yankel’s levayah, a delivery of metal coffins ordered ten days previously suddenly arrived in Gateshead.

The levayah and kevurah on Har Hamenuchos took place on Erev Pesach. For a man who had been so devoted to chesed shel emes for years, miracles had opened all gates for his own final rest.

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he location isn’t what matters — yet the scene was always the same: An empty beis medrash late at night, perhaps the Satmar shtibel on Northumberland Street, or maybe Chodosh next door, and one lone, lingering figure inside, the rest having long ago retired for the appeal of their homes. If you listened closely you could make out the occasional rustle of his slow, deliberate movements, or the gentle rise and fall of his singsong voice against the rhythm of what was likely another Manchester rainfall outside.

But not the silence, nor the weather outside, and certainly not the hour, could deter Reb Ezra Bloch’s resolve when it came to avodas Hashem. Because in my father-in-law’s world, no time was inconvenient, no time too early or too late, when it came to serving the Creator. In fact, time wasn’t even a factor in his world; all that mattered was Torah and tefillah and a deep, deep she’ifah to touch whatever holiness he could, whenever he could. His absence at home often spanned hours, but you just knew: if Papa wasn’t around, there weren’t many options; he was either in the beis medrash around the block, or in the other beis medrash around the other block. In Manchester, there was no shortage of addresses for Reb Ezra’s thirsting soul.

That was the thing with Reb Ezra. You always got the feeling — watching him, speaking to him — that he was stretching, that there was somewhere he was trying to get to, but could never quite reach. Reb Ezra’s Shabbos table was a sacred space, but not merely for the good food and lively family atmosphere; for him, the taste of Olam Haba meant so much more than a chance for steaming soup. It was a weekly occurrence for the Blochs: soup would be served and inevitably my father-in-law, with his beautiful, melodious voice, would launch into a heartfelt rendition of Menuchah V’simchah, or Kah Ribon, or both, as though his soup would stay hot forever and Shabbos was here to last all week.

Neiros Chanukah was a similar affair. The kids would urge him along. “Papa, we need the room, our friends are coming, we’re having a party,” they’d say, hopeful that this time their father would accommodate. But Reb Ezra didn’t understand the problem. “Let them come, shoyn,” was his rejoinder. Why would his singing disturb anyone? No way was he going to pass on saying his slow, earnest vehi noam the full seven times. It wasn’t an option.

Choosing arba minim each year was one of his annual highlights. Often, he’d be so determined to do the mitzvah right that he’d bring home several esrogim, much more than the family could afford. He’d choose the right one later, he’d assure his family, and return the rest. But later Reb Ezra was more undecided than ever, and by the time Succos came in, he often had enough esrogim for each of his three sons and sometimes even another one to spare. That’s how it came to be, one year, that a little boy from Satmar got to boast his own beautiful esrog. Whether the boy or my father-in-law was happier, you couldn’t tell.

Reb Ezra Bloch’s trajectory didn’t begin in Satmar. Or in Manchester, for that matter. In fact, growing up in his Zurich hometown, in a family that belonged to the IRG yekkish kehillah, young Ezra Bloch had little to do with chassidim. From there it was Lucerne, then Gateshead, then the Mir. Twenty-seven years ago, if you had asked his then-kallah, Rivka Chana Chissick of London, she would have laughed at the notion of her chassan one day donning a shtreimel — not out of contempt but out of amusement at the incongruity.

But when it came to it, it made perfect sense. In the spring of 1996, after spending the first years of their married life in Eretz Yisrael and then London, the couple decided to settle in Manchester. There, the lure of the Satmar beis medrash just a few minutes from their home was too great for Reb Ezra’s essentially chassidishe soul, which longed for connection and meaning. First it was the gartel, then the beketshe. Naturally, the rest followed. Looking at him in 2020, seeing his conduct in shul, at the mikveh, you couldn’t imagine Reb Ezra any other way.

Twenty years ago, when the activist who ran the boys’ after-school woodwork program was looking for the right person to teach his workshops, he had three criteria: that he be good with his hands, good with children, and that he be a yerei Shamayim. In Reb Ezra, he found all three. Since then, some 3,000 children, from all ends of the religious spectrum, have crossed over that threshold, over the course of time learning more about middos tovos, generosity of spirit, and yiras Shamayim than about the workings of wood — though from the masterpieces the boys would bring home, they learned about that, too. At woodwork, Reb Ezra would often treat his boys, a pound here, a pound there, “go buy yourself something nice,” not for any reason, just because.

Because Reb Ezra loved to give.

Because giving was Reb Ezra’s lifeline.

When they would host his mother-in-law for Shabbos, one bouquet wouldn’t suffice. There needed to be two, one for his wife, another for Bubba. At the mikveh shop on Fridays, they used to joke that a separate checkout was needed for Reb Ezra; he’d put this on the counter, that on the counter, another salad, more arbes, until the pile teetered and Reb Ezra could feel assured there’d be ample supply to go around. Not because he doubted his wife’s ability to cook up her weekly Shabbos storm, not at all, but because of his deep penchant for plenty.

Erev Yom Tov, his only concerns were for others: “Make sure your wife has something new for the chag,” he’d quietly tell his son. His grandkids, his nieces and nephews, they all knew — if Papa was around, it meant not just one nosh to share, but one for each kid, and not just one for each, but the biggest package the store carried.

Sometimes, a Yid would come around on Fridays and ask for money. Barely a man of means himself, if it meant borrowing money to have what to give, that’s what Reb Ezra did. “Surely we’re not mechuyav to give him,” his wife would reason, but Reb Ezra wouldn’t listen.

That was Reb Ezra. He loved his fellow man — so much, that you never heard a word of lashon hara, or any hint of scorn, cross his lips.

His children meant the world to him, too. When he’d sing and dance with them, it was all-nachas, all-joy — and often a gift, too, while he was at it.

But, oh, he struggled too. Not the kind of regular, everyday frustrations of the ordinary person. Reb Ezra’s pain was simply that of a neshamah searching for emes in a world of sheker, the grief of a nefesh longing for infinity in a world so constrained by desire, time, space. Reb Ezra wanted nothing more than to be able to spend his days immersed in tefillah and avodas Hashem and was frustrated by the interruptions of mundane life to his slower, more careful pace.

When the 48-year-old Reb Ezra collapsed suddenly, on the fourth day of Chanukah, from his inability to breathe through his swollen tonsils, and stayed unconscious throughout Chanukah, I said to my husband, “Imagine Papa’s horror when he wakes up and realizes what he missed.” I was referring, of course, to my father-in-law’s special kinship with the Yom Tov of Chanukah, the Yom Tov of flames, of neshamah. We didn’t dream then that Reb Ezra, our beloved father and father-in-law, would also miss Purim. Neither did we dream of the impact of the deadly virus rapidly making its way though the world and about to sweep the country.

A couple of days prior, a choshuve talmid chacham walked into Chodosh looking for someone to learn with. It was late, but Reb Ezra was still there, learning, davening. They talked of beginning a chavrusashaft.

That first night, it lasted a couple of hours.

The second night, Reb Ezra got sick. I won’t make it tonight, he wrote in a text message, not unbegrudgingly. I’m not feeling well. Be”H I will get in touch as soon as I’m better.

But Reb Ezra didn’t get better.

That message was to become Reb Ezra’s last message, his parting gift.

For weeks until the virus hit, Reb Ezra balanced between life and death. But the oilam — all those who knew Reb Ezra and loved him — came battle-ready. With the amount of Tehillim being said, it was hard to envision another outcome. He was still so young; there was still so much, we knew, that Reb Ezra wanted to accomplish. We held our breaths.

In the end, it was corona that took him. How immobile, unconscious Reb Ezra caught the virus will forever remain a mystery. But in what felt like a hug from the One Above, it was clear that Reb Ezra went peacefully, bli tzaar. It was in the late afternoon on the first day of Pesach, on Erev Shabbos Chol Hamoed, on the Erev of Shabbos Shir Hashirim, the song that speaks of longing.

If Reb Ezra could have chosen the time for his levayah, no doubt he would have said Erev Shabbos. Erev Shabbos, preparation for peace.

Reb Ezra’s parting comes with no small amount of pain and heartache to all those who knew him — though surely, no doubt, he is in the best possible place. Surely, Reb Ezra, who hovered between the two worlds all his life, whose whole raison d’être was one long desperate striving for connection, has at last found true menuchah v’simchah. Surely, he can’t be anywhere else other than in the heichal ha’elyon, relishing the emes of the World of Truth.

There, we are sure, he has finally found what he was looking for.

And that, along with Reb Ezra’s beautiful, pure legacy, will be our nechamah.

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May 8, 2020 / Pesach Sheini, 14 Iyar, 5780

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huva — k’shma kach he.

This is the story of a woman who loved and was loved.

Pesach Sheini is a chance for a do-over, an opportunity to reclaim that which we may have missed the first time around. My sister Ahuva a"h returned her pure neshamah to Hashem four weeks ago, on the night of the second Seder. We made that Seder with heavy hearts full of love, faith, and pain. Four weeks later we can talk about and begin to understand the gift that we lost.

Forty-five years ago, in a Detroit hospital, my then 28-year-old mother gave birth to a baby with Down syndrome. This was long before amniocentesis, and my parents were completely shocked and devastated. One day, as my mother lay crying in her hospital bed, a nurse leaned over and whispered, “Send her to an institution and pretend she was never born.” Horrified, my parents named their baby “Ahuva,” meaning Loved, and set out to give her the best life possible.

Doctors told them she’d never read, write, nor be capable of daily tasks. My parents would have none of that. They invested hours teaching her basic life skills, and then some. She learned how to be organized, tidy, and to pack a suitcase (you could bounce a quarter off of her folded shirts). She learned to socialize and be comfortable around others. In fact, she was exceptionally popular.

Ahuva was something of an iconic figure both in Detroit, her hometown, and in Camp Agudah Toronto, her home away from home. Now it is the norm to raise our Down syndrome children with love and acceptance as cherished members of our community. When Ahuva was born 45 years ago, that was not the case. My parents’ decision to bring her home and raise her as “one of the girls” was a heroic move that went against conventional medical advice. It gives us great comfort to know that Ahuva played a role in creating a cosmic shift on this earth, helping to pave the way for tolerance and inclusion of our special children. For many people she was their first and sometimes only exposure to Down syndrome. And she carried it with class, spunk, and a smile!

Sitting shivah alone meant we all heard different things, but the common thread was that Ahuva was an inspiration. So many people mentioned her smile. Her simchas hachaim made a real impression on people, and it didn’t take much to make her happy. A trip to 7-Eleven with one of her nieces and nephews to get a Slurpee, and she was in heaven!

My sister Michal recounts: "She came to visit us often. I loved her visits — they were so much fun! She lived in the moment and when I was with her, so did I. I’ll forever envision her wide, happy smile as she walked up to my front door in her light-up sneakers, a Mocha Dunkaccino with hazelnut and whipped cream drink in hand, and a perfectly packed suitcase trailing behind her."

Ahuva had a graciousness about her, an intuitive sense of respect for others that was expressed in her highly developed social skills. She addressed you by name, looked you in the eye, and took time to organize and articulate her thoughts. She was always on the mark.

Simchahs were her thing. She loved her nieces and nephews and was so proud of them. She purchased the tefillin bags for each of the bar mitzvah boys. It wasn’t a family simchah until Ahuva took her turn to speak. She made her way up to the podium amid cheers from the crowd, “Ahuva! Ahuva!” She would revel unabashedly in the love of her family and then return that love as she shared heartfelt brachos with the baalei simchah. She loved our parents intensely and shared a deep bond with them. She thanked them always and took her responsibility of kibud av v’eim very seriously. Every speech included her gratitude to them, followed by divrei brachah for the baalei simchah that were tailor-made. She always managed to capture the essence of the bar mitzvah bochur or the kallah in a sentence, often delivered with a humorous punch.

Many people described Ahuva as “so sweet.” And she was. There was an innocence to her that she never outgrew and which endeared her to so many. And she was also feisty and hilarious. She loved to laugh but, even more so, to get you to laugh. She had a sharp sense of humor and an uncanny ability to really peg an issue.

Ahuva was fiercely loyal. She protected her people and she defended her values. She didn’t understand not doing the right thing. My sister observed that she could give you mussar without making you feel judged, because she would just note with wonder and pain that someone might not be doing what they were supposed to. She didn’t blame them. She just didn’t understand it. How could you not do what you’re supposed to? It didn’t make sense to her. But she never judged you for it.

She was passionate about her mitzvos. Even as we tried to absorb the shock of her death on that night, we were struck by the Hashgachah that Ahuva was niftar on the first night of the omer. That was HER mitzvah! All the years that she lived in New York, Ahuva would call home dutifully every night and count sefirah together with my father, slowly and deliberately saying every word. Now it was time to count with the malachim.

Ahuva had an incredible capacity for acceptance. She never asked us to be anything more or less than who we were. Even as we always pushed her for more, to be as “normal” as possible, she never demanded anything in return. She loved us for who we were, and I believe that is why she was so loved. Old Agudah girls will remember the dining room booming with the declaration, “Ahuva means love, and we love Ahuva.” Camp afforded her the opportunity to express her inner soul and creativity and she would go on stage with full confidence and perform dances and songs for the entire camp. No inhibition, just pure presence and expression of her heart.

Ahuva lived a full and happy life, with plenty of friends, and a list of accomplishments. She stayed quite busy in the group home where she lived, in New York.  She was in Drama Club, loved to dance and sing, and knew how to read, write, and text. She excelled in baking and arts and crafts. She often played the lead in the yearly play put on by HASC.

In that vein, Ahuva was endlessly patient and grounded. Whatever she was engaged in, she was fully present. She could color for hours on end, spend hours packing her suitcase just so, enjoy a meal at a leisurely pace, and just sit on the couch and enjoy the people around her. You never felt like she was running somewhere else, like there was someplace else she’d rather be. She was mindful long before it was in vogue.

And she was ahead of her time in her ability to intuit what has taken us so long to understand: life is complex, but it doesn’t have to be complicated. When she moved to her HASC home 19 years ago, we were so conflicted. We knew it was the right decision, but everything about it was so hard. When I called her later that week to check on her, I was so conflicted that I just started babbling. “Ahuva, do you like New York or do you miss home?” To which she simply answered, “Both.”

She taught us that life is sometimes messy and that’s okay. We don’t always have to figure it all out. We can live in the both and grow from both.

It was a lesson I thought I had internalized but it seems Ahuva was a teacher to the end. I spoke to her the day she was admitted to the hospital and I assumed she must be terrified. In my desperation to fix it, to try and comfort her, I asked, “Ahuva, are you very scared or are you okay?”
And wouldn’t you know it? She simply answered, “Both.”

So, Ahuva, we know that you are in Shamayim, close to Hashem and are very happy there. And that you also miss us. We are so happy for you that you are enjoying the rewards of the impact you made on this earth. And we miss you very much. Both.

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My first encounter with Ahuva was at United Hebrew School for students with special needs. My son Yudie was in the  same class and was also the same age. We carpooled together. Ahuva was always so friendly and well mannered. So would always ask how we were feeling and she was always B'H fine. When my oldest daughter got married the Broners hosted some of our guests over Shabbos. I remember them telling me how personable and helpful she was. She showed them to their room and asked if she could get them something or if they needed anything. They were really impressed by her.  

When Yudie moved to NY so did Ahuva. Whenever she came back to Oak Park and we would run into her, she would always ask me how Yudie was and how I was feeling. She always answered with B'H. I was so impressed with her faith in Hashem and her wonderful memory. 

She was so independent, and while she seemed to always be growing, unfortunately my son went the other way. He was very ill about 10 years ago and since then he can't travel and come to visit here. He has lost a lot of skills and has trouble walking. Yudie was also in the hospital with corona about 10 days before Pesach. We were so worried about him. We couldn't speak to him or go into NY to see him. He has deteriorated so much we were really worried. But B'H a day before Peasch he was able to go back to his home. 

When I heard about Ahuva during chol hamoed, I couldn't believe it. We had just seen her in Shul with her mother over Rosh Hashana, and she looked so happy and was dressed beautifully for Yom tov. She greeted me and wished me a good year. I was so touched, she hadn't changed she was so polite and personable. I can't say that about Yudie, he's lost so much of his social skills. Ahuva hadn't changed a bit, she was the same sweet girl she always was. May her neshama have the highest Aliyah,  I sure she is looking down from shamayim and smiling that beautiful smile she always had. May her memory be for a blessing.

—Chaya Youngworth 

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So Human, So Great

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was 13 years old and living in Scranton, Pennsylvania when my mother remarried a special widower: the venerated mashgiach and unmatched baal eitzah of BMG, Rav Yehuda Jacobs. People say that when you get close to greatness you start to see the flaws. But I experienced the opposite.

I won’t pretend to understand or try to define the giant who became a father to me; I can only attempt to describe what I saw from my unique vantage point of a very great man.

Rabbi Jacobs – or as we called him, Tatty -- was totally congruent. He saw himself as the most ordinary of people; the only difference being that he didn’t demand the ordinary amount of respect.

A lifelong talmid of Rav Aharon Kotler, his hallmark was commitment. He had an incredible sense of achrayus to Hashem, to Klal Yisrael, to his wife and children. He was always deeply thinking, always pondering the truths of life, aiming to achieve a deeper appreciation of everything important. For example, I once asked him what he was thinking about. “Yehei shmei rabbah,” he told me. “When we say ‘rabbah,’ what picture comes to mind? Does it in any way reflect the greatness of Hashem’s name? How great is that name?”

Tatty achieved opposite extremes with seeming ease. On one hand he was self-effacing, always putting his needs last. He would move methodically from effort to effort doing what he called “the next right thing…” On the other hand, he was one of the firm and powerful leaders of the world’s largest yeshivah.

On one hand, he carried the weight of the world on his shoulders. He felt the pain of the people he counseled all day, every day. His own life was replete with yissurim, both emotional and physical. On the other hand, he was always in a great mood. When I picture him, I think of him humming to himself, exuding serenity and contentment.

On one hand, he was the ultimate baal avoda and baal mussar, a talmid of Reb Yisroel Salanter’s mehalech and Reb Nosson Wachtfogel. On the other hand, he never seemed to be acting from a place of pressure or guilt, and his approach was the furthest thing from preaching. Instead, you felt his desire to live life as a better human being.

As a teenager in yeshivah, I remember asking him for his take on wearing a black hat. His simple answer stays with me still. To him, it wasn’t just a badge of Torah affiliation, but about his self-esteem as a human being. “When I was a kid,” he told me, “every man wore a hat. A man’s hat is a simple sign of self-respect. President Kennedy changed the style at his inauguration by appearing without a hat. But I don’t feel like letting Kennedy affect my choice of style or self-respect.”

Another seeming paradox: Rabbi Jacobs seemed most comfortable meeting and conferring with gedolei Torah v’avoda and the talmidei chachomim that he held in the highest esteem. But he seemed equally comfortable caring for Lakewood’s estranged “kids of the lake,” who would visit him on Shabbos afternoon, or spending time with his grandchildren.

The theme that remains with me most about my step-father was his deep appreciation of the human being. He loved humanity and managed to discern the inherent greatness within every person he met. I believe that his greatest aspiration was to be a true human being.

Now that he is in the Olam Ha’Emes, I wonder how a human can be so great. And I wonder, too, I wonder how greatness can be so human.

— Rabbi Ephraim Stauber

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 809)

THE BEST ADVICE

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long with the pain and darkness of these days, there is also the confusion and lack of clarity: What does it all mean? How are we to respond? Where can we find the tools to cope, to keep the atmosphere in our homes and hearts calm?

And then the man who so many turned to for the answers -- the voice of reason and truth and seichel hayashar, Rav Yehuda Jacobs, mashgiach of Beth Medrash Govoha of Lakewood -- was himself taken.

On Monday morning, the 3^rd of Iyar, the dreaded virus claimed him as well. It wasn’t only his family and talmidim that were plunged into mourning, it was a great anonymous network, a mass of people who’d come over the years seeking advice and direction, homes he’d helped build and families he’d kept together, known to no one but him, them, and the Ribbono Shel Olam.

The Lakewood roshei yeshivah were maspid Rav Yehuda by quoting the Mishnah in Avos, that one who learns Torah lishmah merits that “venehenin mimemu eitzah veshoshia,” people benefit from his advice and assistance.

The fact that Rav Yehuda was the baal eitzah of Lakewood -- the yeshivah, the community, and the olam haTorah it spawned -- was itself a product of his Torah learning. He arrived in Rav Aharon Kotler’s Lakewood in the late 1950s, a bochur determined to attach himself to the Rosh Yeshivah. And attach himself he did, becoming one of the close talmidim, respected as a lamdan and masmid in a chaburah filled with lions.

In time, he would publically review Rav Aharon’s shiurim with the other talmidim, and by the time Rav Aharon was niftar, Rav Yehuda was a fixture in the beis medrash. The new rosh yeshivah, Rav Schneur, wanted him to remain as part of the administration and appointed him mashgiach.

In Lakewood, Rav Yehuda Jacobs was the mesorah, the link back to that small chaburah that had founded the yeshivah, available not just to clarify the substance of the Rosh Yeshivah’s Torah, but the spirit.

One of today’s most prominent roshei yeshivah recalls arriving in Beth Medrash Govoha as a young kollel member and having the zechus to be set up as a chavrusa with Rav Yehuda. It was a special privilege to learn with this senior talmid, and the new study partners sat down to learn on the first day of the zeman. It quickly became clear to the avreich that his path in learning was different than that of the mashgiach, and that he wouldn’t do well in the chavrushaft. He tried it the next day, and at the end of seder, he felt that he had no choice -- uncomfortable as it was, he broke up with the respected mashgiach, explaining that he felt he needed a different type of chavrusa. Rav Yehuda gently accepted it and wished him well, and the next day, they both found other learning partners.

The yungerman was still feeling uncomfortable about it, but in the middle of first seder, Rav Yehuda Jacobs approached where he was sitting with his new chavrusa. “I’m sorry to disturb, but you said a pshat in the Ritva yesterday. Can you just share it with me again? It was so geshmak,” Reb Yehuda said.

The yungerman shared the approach again, and Rav Yehuda thanked him and walked away, leaving his former chavrusa-of-a-day with an overwhelming sense of awe: awe at the way the mashgiach had managed to put him at ease -- reassuring him that everything was okay between them and there were no hard feelings -- through the Torah itself, the Toras chesed that guided him.

“I’ll Help You”

Rav Yehuda Jacobs was blessed with natural perceptiveness and wisdom, a keen insight into people. As a three-year-old boy, arriving with his parents from Germany, he noticed the worry on his mother’s face as they embarked from the ship onto US soil, into a new world. “Don’t worry, Mammah,” little Yehuda said, “I will help you.”

It was a statement that would mark his destiny – always taking notice of the needs of others and having the ability to encourage them.

In the yeshivah that would become the station of bochurim looking for their life-mates, his listening ear and wise advice was the final step in making shidduchim happen. After the engagement, when there was confusion or anxiety, it was back to the mashgiach’s house for another session. How many chassanim and kallahs came to him with cases of cold feet? He knew not just to validate, listen and guide, but also to give them pure Torah hashkafah, his advice layered with the very kedushah of Torah itself, the ultimate truth.

The final ingredient was the achrayus, the sense of responsibility. He well understood insecurities and fears, and was willing to stand behind the advice he gave. It was this last factor that built homes, that kept children in school, that empowered people to accept positions.

In this world, the effects of that generosity of spirit could never be measured. It’s only in the world of truth that the full effect of the mashgiach, Rav Yehuda Jacobs, and what he accomplished will be rewarded.

— Yisroel Besser

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