Today's discovery in the Wait, What? Dept.; also, Jewish utopian communities, farming and otherwise

"Jew Valley is a basin in Lake County, Oregon, in the United States.

Jew Valley was named for a colony of Jewish farmers who settled there in the early 20th century."
(Thanks Wikipedia)


Wait, what? I grew up in Oregon and I never heard of this.
Apparently the colony, founded by 25 families 'including a shochet,' experienced success for a few years before disbanding.


II.
Speaking of utopian Jewish farming communities... there's a new one in the offing:

The "Frum Farm"

I spoke with the family behind it & it seems to be quite a serious endeavor.

III.
Of course, to me one paradigmatic utopian Jewish community that I never got to see (born just slightly too young; nuts!) is Rav Bulman zt"l's kehilla in Migdal haEmek.
Here's one article that mentions it briefly: by Mrs. T. Katz.

IV.
And before that there was Frankfurt.
This is a wonderful, sparkling article about Frankfurt: Hermann Schwab's memoirs

Eruvin Comes Alive with the All-New Eruvin Lego Set!

The Portland Kollel using Legos for a visual aid in its studies

More Victorian Jewish Miscellany: hats, secession, and Schone Aussicht

1. In high school, I searched earnestly online for the paintings of Moritz Oppenheim, and found only tiny, blurry reproductions.

Today I searched again and lo! Quite a number of them are on Wikipedia, in extremely high resolution – yay!

You know in vol. VIII, where a man in the train pokes fun at a young woman for having her hair covered? – I always wondered, How could he tell? – because in the pictures of Rav Hirsch's family all the women look (to my untrained eye) perfectly à la mode in their headdresses, such that a stranger would have a hard time telling whether a woman was covering her hair or not – well! here is the answer. You can see in the Oppenheim paintings that those beautiful frothy bonnets are worn over a sort of under-cap, which was not the case in the non-Jewish population.

this young lady is also standing under a tallis, at her chassuna.

  

2. Q. What did the rabbanim of the time have to say about the US Civil War?

A. IIRC somewhere in Rav Hirsch, after slavery ended in the South, he mentions its end with some relief.

Today I re-found a website that I misplaced years ago, which has --among a great many other curios -- lectures on the subject from American rabbis. Here, for one thing, is R' Illowy's lecture on States' Rights, which apparently pleased the secessionists of New Orleans so much when it was published that they invited him down to become rabbi of that city.

 

3. Schopenhauer lived in the same building as Rav Hirsch and at the same time, but apparently there is no evidence that the two ever met. I always thought that fascinating, wow, like a particle accelerator gone awry.

Anyway, because Schopenhauer also lived in that (now vanished) house on Schone Aussicht, it is a famous house and there are loads of pictures and a virtual tour of it online – here.

The Push-Button Umbrella

Here's one I hadn't heard before, reprinted with the kind permission of Project Genesis -- torah.org.
Retold by one R' Becker, who elaborates on it here.

A well-known story is told wherein Rabbi Nosson Tzvi Finkel, (of blessed memory, known affectionately by the Torah world as the "Alter [Lit. elder]" of Slabodka) was diagnosed as having a condition requiring medical treatment at one of the larger medical centers in the area. After listening carefully to the pros and cons of each medical facility, the Alter elected to go to St. Petersburg for treatment. A student escorted the Alter throughout the extended period of his recovery. Upon his return to Slabodka the Alter was approached by a community member who inquired regarding the Alter's absence. The Alter indicated that he had been in St. Petersburg. When asked what occasioned his visit there, the Alter responded that he had gone there to see the push-button umbrella. The astonished student, who had accompanied the Alter throughout the difficult medical ordeal, asked the Alter for an explanation.  

The Alter explained that he had, indeed, chosen St. Petersburg after carefully weighing the pros and cons of each facility. However, a short while earlier, the Alter had been traveling on behalf of his yeshiva and had passed through the train depot at St. Petersburg and was intrigued by the sight of the new invention, the push-button umbrella, being opened by a resident of that cosmopolitan city. The Alter, ever vigilant for traces of bias within himself, wondered whether, on some level, his decision to have the procedure done in St. Petersburg was not adulterated by a trace of interest in seeing the novel inventions which premiered there. At the moment that the gentleman asked him why he had traveled to St. Petersburg, the Alter took the opportunity to reflect on his motives rather than to glibly respond with an answer which was too obvious to be useful.

Those Guys in Black Hats

This is supposed to be a loopy, poetic blog, but I'm going to be blunt.

Over the past week I have heard a number of people report (or demonstrate) that they are self-conscious entering a synagogue where the rabbi/men's section/social scene is populated in (small) part by guys in black hats. They feel like those guys are judging them.

I am the wife of one of those scary guys in black hats.
How you live is between you and G-d, not the guy in the black hat. My husband and the rest of 'em are not not judging you. We're not preoccupied with whatever it is that makes you self-conscious. We're happy to meet a new person and we don't care what you're wearing. Relax. You came to shul for a reason; being self-conscious was not it.

Sometimes after people have been coming to shul for awhile they begin to assume that the guys in the black hats want everyone to "be hareidi"; that is, to adopt the culture that the hat-wearers grew up or studied in.
I find these conversations frustrating because I know those guys, my boss and my husband and my rav are those guys, and not one of them is out on a missionary warpath to make everyone "hareidi". But no one ever thinks to ask them.

As someone once put it, "The God you don't believe in, I don't believe in either."

A most wonderful person

My all-time favorite vignette in Rabbi Bechhofer's biography of Rav Avraham Elya Kaplan, who has been quoted here before, is this:

When Rabbi Aharon Kotler married Reb Isser Zalman's daughter, Reb Aharon delivered an extraordinarily profound pilpul [intricate Torah discourse]. None of those present fully comprehended its contents. Up stood Reb Avraham Elya with a smile, and repeated the entire pilpul clearly - in rhyme! 

...which still makes me laugh over breakfast, 98 years later.

Rav Scheinberg

I wish I knew a story about Rav Scheinberg's righteousness, but the only story that comes to mind is a spooky one.

A girl - I'll call her Bridget - had met a young man and wished to marry him. "Don't," said all her teachers. "Don't," said all his teachers -- which tells you something. But Bridget went ahead and married the fellow, and soon realized his true nature, and they divorced.
Every time Bridget looked in the mirror, she hated seeing her head covered, because it reminded her of her unfortunate decision. She asked Rebbetzin H. to take her to ask a rav whether it was really necessary for her to cover her hair now that she was divorced.
Rebbetzin H. (who told us this story) took her to a rav who spoke English: Rav Scheinberg.
"Why did you bring her to me?" asked Rav Scheinberg. "You know how I pasken."
He told Bridget that she did have to cover her hair. Bridget was displeased.
He suggested a way that she could do it prettily. Bridget would have none of it.
Ultimately, he gave her a blessing - what it was I can't remember; I think it was something like that her covering her hair should lead her to good things.
While in the Scheinbergs' apartment, Bridget struck up a conversation with Rebbetzin Shain, his sister-in-law, and in the end she wound up a regular companion of the Rebbetzin.

Fast forward.

A mother and a son - I'll call him Yitzchak - were sitting on a bus, having a conversation.
"You've met so many nice girls," said Yitzchak's mother. "Why can't you settle down and get married?"
"I want a very special girl," said Yitzchak. "See that married woman helping Rebbetzin Shain - how solicitous she is of the elderly rebbetzin's needs. I would like to marry a girl like that." This story takes place in a society in which Yitzchak would never look at an unmarried girl on a bus - he referenced the stranger only because her covered hair indicated that she was married.

"Rebbetzin?" asked Yitzchak's mother, some hours later. "That woman who accompanied you on the bus today -- does she have, perchance, a younger sister?"
"Why do you ask?" asked Rebbetzin Shain.


...and a few months later, there was a wedding.
And they all lived happily ever after.

A Field Guide to Jewish Disputes

This post is based on something I heard from a rabbi I shall call Rabbi St. Helens, because he is ancient, majestic, and grey, and so always reminds me of the mountain by that name.
Rabbi St. Helens learnt from Rav Elya Lopian.

Torah distinguishes between two types of disputes. There is a machlokes leshem shamayim, a dispute for the sake of Heaven. And there is a machlokes shelo leshem shamayim, a dispute not for the sake of Heaven - by default, for the sake of someone's ego.

A machlokes shelo leshem shamayim, stay away from. Do not get involved.
As for a machlokes leshem shamayim...?

Rabbi St. Helens rumbled at us:
 "Leave the machlokes leshem shamayim for someone else!"

Good advice.

If I can see only one thing in London...

A seven-hour stopover gives you just enough time to whizz out of Heathrow, see one thing, and return.

Buckminster Palace? The British Museum?
I went to have tea with Rav and Mrs. Baddiel.
They are most extraordinary people... the number one tourist attraction in London, in my book.

Rav Baddiel is much amused that a lecture of his has been put up on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pzn4zdYd7sk  

It is in English, despite the German title (he gave it in Berlin). Do check it out.

Levaya

A few days ago, Rav Scheinberg was niftar.

Rav Scheinberg was an American boy. He grew up playing stickball on the Lower East Side.
Then the legendary Rav Herman sent him off to yeshiva in New Haven, and he became one of the preeminent Torah sages of the generation.
He also became Rav Herman's son-in-law.
Rav Scheinberg
He made a seudas hodaah (thanksgiving meal) on the day that he was able to hear that "his" baseball team had won the World Series without getting excited.

I have never learnt his sefarim -- I know him mostly as an awesome presence in Mattersdorf, where on Friday nights all his neighbors (and seminary girls staying in the neighborhood) troop up to his apartment for a blessing.
("Doesn't it bother him to have to spend his time giving people blessings?" we asked our teacher. "He did the same thing to the Chofetz Chaim," answered Rabbi A.)
When people rattled off the names of the major rabbis in Jerusalem, it was always special to hear the name of Rav Scheinberg -- whom I met, who spoke to us in English.

I heard later that 150,000 people attended the funeral.

How tragic that he has left us.

Mind the Gap

Which gap?
The synaptic gap?
The gap between who you are and whom you want to be?

Pick your gap, and mind it.

Purim, Mishloach Manot, and Fear

One of my favorite insights from R' Shlomo Carlebach is this:

On a regular day, you never go up to a friend, let alone your teacher, and offer him an apple and a banana. Were you to do so, he would wonder, "Why are you giving me food?"
On Purim, however, you can go up to anyone and offer him an apple and a banana. You can bring an apple and a banana to the Queen of England.
The lesson of Purim is not to be afraid: you can do anything.

Every year before Purim, there is some flurry in the mishloach-manos making department: what should I put in them, so that they are nice enough to give out?
And then Purim actually arrives, and the day itself sweeps away the questions. I can send an apple and a banana to the rebbetzin who so intimidates me that I put on heels whenever I have to telephone her, just to feel like a grown-up. I can send an apple and a banana to our local Aikido master, to Ira Glass, and to the Queen of England. Why be afraid? You can do anything.

The story is told that Rav Shlomo Zalman's family, in the impoverished Jerusalem of yore, sent his fiancee's family dried fruit for Purim; and her family, being equally short on finances, baked it into a fruitcake and sent it back.

Don't be afraid; you can do anything.

Another note on Rav Hirsch

Today, 27 Teves, is Rav Hirsch's yahrtzeit. So I will say a bit more.

I.
A rav here once observed that Rav Hirsch is directly or indirectly responsible for the five defining characteristics of Torah life in America:

1. Formal education for girls
2. The publication of Torah materials in the vernacular
3. The independent kehillah model of community structure (austritt)
4. Outreach to Jews
5. Formal "secular" education (needs a better name -- no part of a Jew's life is really "secular")

II.
On a personal note -- I discovered Rav Hirsch when I was twelve, in the footnotes of the Artscroll Chumash. I had been going through the parsha writing down all my questions ("why did he do that? That's not very nice, that's not consistent with human dignity, that's not remotely PC"), and Rav Hirsch caught my attention because he was always the commentator who addressed them -- and gave the most wonderful answers.
I am no longer twelve, I have lived in a few Jewish communities, and still Rav Hirsch is the one who addresses my questions, and gives the most wonderful answers.
And, better yet, gives them in the poetic style of nineteenth-century German literature -- if you are lucky enough to find the older translation.

III.
Rav Hirsch is still available through the Multnomah County Library system... The Nineteen Letters Yikes! I thought they had the whole Chumash. Well, start there.

What to Do with a Landfill - part 3

It's DIY time here at A Jew in the Rain!
Today I'll show you, in twenty-seven professional-quality photographs, interspersed with gratingly chirpy prose, how to craftily transform a landfill into cotton by the yard.

I wish.
The film in question is here:
The Story of the Hiriya Recycling Park

...
This serves nicely to illustrate another point about teshuva:
Teshuva done out of love turns a misdeed into a mitzvah.
The analogy I usually hear for this idea is that when a rope connecting two parties has been severed, tying it back together shortens the distance between them.
That analogy goes only so far. The idea (someone correct me if I'm wrong) is that what once served as a means of disconnection has become a means of connection. I made a mistake; now, through recognizing that and doing teshuva, I use it to connect. 'Hashem created teshuva before He created the world' -- that's part of how the world works.
(This is what that sign in shul meant. A person who has fallen and used that fall to ascend, can 'stand in a place' where someone who has never fallen could not.)
You can see something similar in certain human relationships -- or in the Hiriya Recycling Park.

And this is how you remind me of what I really am.

Adopted Minnesota Man Learns He Is a Prince - part 2

This Is How You Remind Me of What I Really Am, part II.

The first time I came to shul in Oregon - I was about eight years old - a large sign on the foyer wall read,
In the place where the true penitent stands, even the most righteous cannot stand,
which is a quotation from the Talmud.

Admitting to myself that I was neither a true penitent nor most righteous, I looked at the many seats available in shul and wondered anxiously which were for the true penitents and which for the most righteous, and whether I would get into trouble if I stood in the wrong place.
Which is not what the sign meant.

Let's drop the word penitence right here. It makes me itch -- I must be associating it with hairshirts and other peculiarities of the Christian Middle Ages. No.
The Hebrew concept that that sign extolled is teshuva, "return".
To 'do teshuva' is to return from what I'm doing that I would rather not do, to the person I would rather be. We say every morning that "the soul You have placed in me is pure" -- no matter what I have obscured it with.

Teshuva is the first thing I thought of when I read this:
Adopted Minnesota Man Learns He Is a Prince

You think you are an ordinary human being... and then something reminds you, or you make an effort to remember, that you are nobility.
And strive to live up to it.

This Is How You Remind Me of What I Really Am - part 1

Disclaimer: I do not know what the lyrics to that song are about, I have never listened to it deliberately, and I have not heard it in years.

When I was in high school, whenever we drove out of town to an NCSY Shabbaton (youth group Shabbat event), it was on the radio. I came to think of it as the theme song of our trips. We frequently drove several hours, and so heard it over and over and over, passing from one radio zone into the next.

Personally I am not a pop music girl -- quaero mihi similes, et adiungor pravis - and these were about the only occasions on which I was compelled to listen to hours of it on end.

So a  decade or so later here I am in a hareidi neighborhood of Jerusalem on Chol HaMoed, and the not-so-religious-and-in-fact-downright-peculiar neighbors are playing very loud American pop music in their sukkah; and we are sitting in our sukkah wondering when they are going to stop blasting that awful noise -- and I start feeling extremely inspired. And suddenly I realize: to me, that awful noise is the music of Driving to an NCSY Shabbaton, and as such it arouses within me extremely strong teenaged emotions of the yay we are Jewish and life is awesome! variety.

And this - of all things - is how you remind me of what I really am.

A note on Rav Hirsch

Over Shabbos I was reading Rav Hirsch.
Yay! Rav Hirsch.
I once received an e-mail from someone saying, "I was just reading Rav Hirsch, and he said something very beautiful, which I am forwarding to you in the original language because it defies paraphrase and I thought you'd like it."
Thereupon followed several paragraphs.

Ha, I said, this has got to be this man's first time reading Rav Hirsch -- because if he keeps reading, he will discover that everything Rav Hirsch writes is stunning and beautiful and impossible to paraphrase, and although he will be desperate to forward it to everyone he knows because it is so exquisite, he will abandon the effort because Rav Hirsch was - lucky us - such a good friend to his pen that there is just too much to type up and mail to everyone we know.
It would be like someone e-mailing you two pages of The Tempest and saying, "I was reading Shakespeare and I am sending this to you because it is an impressive bit of English."
And to test my hypothesis, I looked to see which passage of Rav Hirsch this man had sent me.
And sure enough: it was the very first few paragraphs of the very first essay of the very first volume of Rav Hirsch's writings.
Yup.

Rav Hirsch -- Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch -- lived in the mid-1800's in Germany Prussia and wrote, among other things, the best explanation of Judaism in a nutshell I know (The Nineteen Letters) and the book on Judaism that I would take to a desert island if I had to pick one, since it was written for that purpose (Horeb), and a commentary on the Torah, and another on Psalms, and quite a lot more.

And you can please add him to the list of things I wish you'd go read instead of this blog.
The Multnomah County Library system has some copies.

1906 observation of Jews

It is always cute to run into your nation in other people's books.
I found this today in a treatise on education, written in 1906 by a Christian Englishwoman:

"The writer is familiar with a German watering-place much frequented by Polish Jews of the poorer sort, sent thither probably by benevolent brethren of their race. These men are by no means phlegmatic; groups of three or four will engage in talk for hours at a spell, enviably earnest talk, impersonal, one would gather, from the faces of the speakers, and not like the chatter about baths and symptoms to be heard in passing other groups of talkers.... But the curious thing about all these men, whether of the ruddy or dark type, is their tranquility of aspect; their faces are like those of little children, simple, interested, untroubled, and very free from lines of anxiety. Is it that, like Goethe, they are aware of themselves only as "sheep of His pasture," and for the rest, take life as it comes?"

Charlotte M. Mason, Studies in the Formation of Character, pp. 415-416.

Koreans Visit Ponevezh Yeshiva

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=seAUU2K3BYk&feature=player_embedded

It is by now fairly common knowledge that portions of the Talmud have been translated into Korean and are avidly studied in South Korea.
The fascination of Koreans with the Talmud is partly because of its values, and partly because they recognize that its study sharpens the intellect. But as the rav in this short film explains, the real value of Talmud study is changing oneself.

Elul in Slabodka - 1913

Rabbi Bechhofer graciously granted permission for his translation of this diary entry from 1913 to be posted here in its entirety.
I will add a partial glossary at the bottom; and - I hope Rabbi Bechhofer doesn't mind - move his introduction to the end, also.
Elul is the month leading up to Rosh Hashana, the beginning of the yeshiva year. I thought about saving this post for next Elul but I can't; it is too delicious.
If you are one of those people who can't read anything longer than a paragraph, make it the last paragraph of the entry.

The original link is: http://www.aishdas.org/rygb/elul.htm

From the Diary of Rabbi Avrohom Eliyahu Kaplan zt"l:

[Elul 5673 (1913). Slabodka]
Excitedly and joyously I jumped from the train's steps. Within me sparkled the happy thought: "Kovno!... Slabodka!..." [Slabodka is a suburb of Kovno.]

Even though I couldn't find even one acquaintance among all the people that I saw in the terminal and that traveled with me in the tram car, they all seemed related to me. The streets through which I passed all gladdened my still heart, as if they were calling to me and saying: "Here you are, drawing closer to Slabodka. Another street, then another, the bridge, the sand, Yorburg Street - and, then... the Yeshiva, the Rav's [Rabbi Nosson Tzvi Finkel zt"l, the Alter from Slabodka] small house. And then... the Rav himself!" But who knows if he's here? Perhaps he hasn't yet returned home... While walking on the bridge, my eyes began to glance around with special eagerness. Perhaps I might meet one of my friends. There at a distance, two young men are coming closer! Who are they?... Perhaps Yechezkel [Rabbi Yechezkel Sarna zt"l, later Rosh Yeshiva of Yeshivas Chevron in Jerusalem, then a student in Slabodka, a close friend of Reb Avrohom Elya], or another one. My heart started pounding... But I was mistaken: A young Ben Torah that I did not know passed by.

I passed over the entire bridge and did not meet a single acquaintance. I became angry. Another unfamiliar bochur passed by and I greeted him angrily, thinking inwardly: "Be it as it may! Perhaps I do know him but have forgotten..." So distorting was my powerful desire to meet some Slabodker that I knew. This is a bit of that Slabodker egoism!

By now I was already standing by Chaim Meir's [Reb Chaim Meir Gitelson zt"l, later of Jerusalem, then a student in Slabodka, a close friend of Reb Avrohom Elya] doorway. Before I managed to open the door, it opened before me, and opposite me came, nodding and smiling - Yechezkel himself. "Shalom Aleichem - Aleichem Shalom!..." - "Is the Rav here?"

- "Not yet," answers Yechezkel, "tomorrow."

Two or three of our friends came over. The conversation dragged a bit, as among people who have no idea what they should discuss. I could not look into their eyes. I wanted to spill everything... to grab Yechezkel from among them, to bring my mouth close to his ears - and to spill everything. Within me were amassed so many fragments of thought and emotion which had arisen from various events and incidents. These feelings now demanded revelation from mouth to ear ...

Yechezkel arose and said: "Let's go!" We scattered, each to his own way. Yechezkel and I remained to stroll on Slabodka's dusty and stony main street, waiting for each other with a little embarrassment and anxiety, wondering where to begin our conversation.

In the end I told him all that transpired with me. After I finished my account I suddenly saw that it was all emptiness: I had only taken leave of Slabodka for two months. I had imagined that it had been a long time, because in the meantime I had ample time to pass through several new segments of life and its events... Now, after I had told him all these things over the course of a few minutes, I suddenly realized that it was all nothingness. There was no significance to those entire two months. The essence of it all was that I had bathed in the sea and returned to Slabodka - and nothing more... Indeed, "Fools when will you learn!"

The next day, Monday of the week of Ki Savo, was the great day of Slabodka: The Rav has arrived! When I came to seem him a somewhat amusing and uncomfortable incident occurred: He stood among a group of younger students who greeted him by shaking his hand. They did not kiss him. I, however, without thinking, bent over to kiss him... Of course, he too "responded" with a kiss, but I was very embarrassed. I felt compelled to hide behind their shoulders. The pleasant experience that I always have when first meeting with the Rav after having been away for a while was a bit marred. I stood hiding and listened to the course of conversation between him and them...

"We come now from the material vacation to the spiritual vacation: From the months of Tammuz and Av in the forests and the fields to the months of Elul and Tishrei in the house of the yeshiva. What distinguishes that vacation from this vacation? We know, of course, that just as that vacation is essential to fortify the body, so too this other one is necessary to heal the soul. Even more so, for all are sick vis a vis Elul..."

- Indeed, Am I an "Elul"-seeker? Am I a yarei Shomayim?

What then - am I not an Elul-seeker? Am I not a yarei Shomayim? ...

How amusing and how pathetic, that I can ask these two questions in quick succession, yet they do not contradict each other.

When later I went out into the street I met Shaul Margolis [later a Rav in several cities in Polish Lithuania, then a student in Slabodka] walking alone, stick in hand, eyes fixed on it, pacing slowly and pondering. I saw him from a distance... I knew instantly that he had something to say to me. And indeed! "The man is amazing," Shaul said as I came to him, "He is mighty beyond compare. The man comes from Krantz, sits next to the table, surrounded by youngsters, and immediately begins from where he left off two months ago... He speaks pleasantly, clearly, sincerely, and [yet it is] his silence [that] is [most] profound, sure and penetrating to the heart... When he is silent, it seems that he has nothing at all to relate about all that transpired with him through the entire summer, what he met and whom he saw. He forgets it all, forgets himself [There seems to be a typographical error in the original Hebrew here. The Hebrew here reads "ve'eino yodei'a elah es atzmo." I translated the phrase as if it had read "ve'eino yodei'a es atzmo." Rabbi Tzvi Kaplan shlita (Reb Avrohom Elya's son) wrote to me, however, that he believes there is no mistake here, and that the intent here was that the Alter was only aware of atzmo in the sense of atzmi'us, essence, i.e., the lofty ideal that he lived, with which he identified and to which he constantly dedicated himself] - and is silent... This restraint of all emotions upon careful consideration is true mightiness. Mighty!..."

That evening I heard a shmuess. He [the Alter] stood in the middle of the small room, next to the table, and around him they gathered. The students packed together. They yearned to hear and to understand. They gazed with eyes partly happy and partly anxious, a decent number of young men, and immediately my heart began to absorb the warmth...

It is a time of true and thorough pleasantness: Every matter is clear, every thought succinct and every movement measured and balanced. The entire experience bespeaks tranquility and sincerity [ne'emanus]. There is no confusion nor haste.

He stands before us and states his complaint: People [outside Slabodka] lack belief in the power of Mussar. They do not acknowledge that the young men here genuinely involve their hearts, more or less, in the subject of yir'as Shomayim . Though he tries to impress this upon them, they remain adamant. They claim it is all superficiality, verbal pilpul, an empty and muddled waste of artificial ideas.

Immediately after this complaint he consoles himself: In the final analysis it is this [lack of appreciation] that provides all the contentment that there is in Mussar. If Mussar was not a hidden thing that the world does not recognize, it would be entirely worthless. It would stand only on the same level as "lamdonus," as a tool of public discourse. Let us be grateful to those who indict Mussar. It is because of them that the little that we do have is genuine and modest, in "hatznei'a leches"... After all, no matter how much positive publicity Mussar receives, all that the publicity achieves is that people will not mock Mussar, not complain against it. To recognize and believe in its depths [pnimiyus] and in the education of hearts in which Mussar deals - that will not happen!

Immediately after this consolation (that followed his original complaint) came another complaint: We have acquired something, we feel inside ourselves traces of the impression Mussar has made upon us. When, however, we analyze this impression deeply, we realize that it has only come about because we habitually steer our thoughts in that direction. Our minds constantly review the realizations that they have absorbed from the [literally: "kneaded from the dough"] words of Chazal and the Rishonim. Because of this habit, our hearts have been conditioned to identify the negative components that the Torah perceives as "evil" in any situation. Naturally, the heart then distances itself somewhat from that situation - because it has become conditioned to thinking of it as base - but not because of yir'as Shomayim.

In other words, it is not because I fear the sin [that I avoid it], but rather because it is unpleasant for me to get involved in something that I have already become conditioned to hear of and consider as a "sin". If, however, some powerful issue overcame that unpleasantness, then I might no longer distinguish between good and bad, and I would do what my heart desired... - I contemplated: "This is the crux of the matter!..." [Literally: "Here the dog is buried!" Rabbi Gershon Eliezer Schaffel pointed out to me that the Alter from Kelm zt"l discusses this subject in Chochma u'Mussar vol. 2. chapter 8.]

The following day - Reb Avrohom [Rabbi Avrohom Grodzhenski zt"l hy"d, Menahel Ruchani in Slabodka]. came to me and began to "check my pulse." I saw in him all the characteristics of an expert physician. He did not want to surprise the patient under examination, so he came "from the side of the left ear," and began by discussing simple things. He succeeded. Only a few minutes later, I already stood before him like a priest before the altar, and I was sacrificing my heart upon it...

... Several bochurim stood around us. They did not understand the process that was appearing within their daled amos, that Avrohom Elya was standing and revealing his heart before Reb Avrohom... because we were talking in "the third person," i.e., [I would say:] "Some say thus," and he would respond: "And some say thus, and the second opinion is correct - the first one, meaning: yours, is distorted..." ...

The next day (Wednesday in the week of Ki Savo), I harvested the fruit of my heart's revelation. Several times the Rav alluded to the themes I had expressed before Reb Avrohom. The mail had already achieved its purpose. My heart's meditations had already reached the proper address, following the simple route: From my mouth to Reb Avrohom, from his mouth to the Rav, and from him back to me.

"You complain," the Rav remarked to me, "about our abstract words, about the disputes that float in the air, [you say] that they barely touch upon practice, that they lead to inactivity and quibbling, and that they cast a fog over the eyes so we can no longer see anything simply and satisfactorily," thus the Rav reported my criticisms to me. He did not deny them, but rather battled me on my own terms: "Nu, on the contrary," he stood and asserted, "turn as you say to matters of substance, check and analyze your deeds and your self. Don't become involved in abstraction, for why, indeed, do you need it?"

I stand and hear the simple, yet profound, words: "The primary part [ikkar] of Torah is the Torah of Middos. At the core of middos [that we must fight] are delusion [dimayon] and falsehood [shav], no more. Jealousy, lust and pride - these are fancy terms for concepts that seem to possess substance, but in reality do not. The only reality worth pursuing is the intellect [seichel]. The intellect alone can recognize the true essence of every entity. Only intellect, therefore, can accurately judge how man should conduct himself vis a vis any entity [for more on the Alter's perspective on intellect, see Reb Yaakov p. 48]. A drive born of the middos, however, will only lead to mistakes. A drive is constantly and always mistaken. There is no hope to be saved from a drive's mistake. One who but opens his eyes widely will realize the degradation of that mistake. Then his heart will no longer pursue it..."

[This Slabodker perspective, is developed in one of the Alter's shmuessen that Reb Avrohom Elya transcribed (ibid., p. 233). In that shmuess, the Alter said: "All of creation, except for the intellectual reality that man attains within himself, is insignificant! Concede the truth: All of creation is but the knock that a person in a foyer [prozdor] knocks upon the door of a banquet hall [traklin] so that the door may be opened for him to enter. Does that knock possess any independent value? Does the person who has already entered the hall even recall that he once knocked on the door?!... The essence of reality is, therefore, only the goodness a person toils to pursue and then finds. Everything else is but a fleeting shadow..." The rest of the shmuess resembles the one Reb Avrohom Elya recorded here. After negating the ambitions and aspirations of the overwhelming majority of mankind, that are but pale shadows of the purpose the Torah has set forth for humanity, the Alter concludes: "If so much light may be found in the shadow of a reflection of a reflection, how great is the light concealed [or haganuz] in the concealed light itself!"]

"If anyone wants to disagree, let him come and do so, let him come and prove otherwise!" the Rav calls out to us. He lifts his head, and he looks into our eyes with a gaze that caresses with love and pinches with the strength of perception. You feel him drawing out the complaints and criticisms that you have against his words. His gazes draw all that you think about him. The mail will soon bring these matters to the right address, via the simple route: From your heart to his heart, from his heart to his mouth, from his mouth to your ear, and from your ear once more to your heart, to uproot and to plant, to destroy and to build... Another moment of silence quickly passes. Again he speaks, with strength and hidden love:

"I understand your difficulty... I know what you must be thinking right now. You are amazed that all those matters that stand at the heights of the world, all those ambitions, aspirations and desires for which endless rivers of blood have been spilled for generation upon generation in countless countries, all those middos that prevail among the living... You are amazed: How can we regard these matters, in our four amos, as irreparable broken potsherds, as shadows of no substance? I understand you. I am as amazed as you are, but amazement does not lead to blindness! Truth is truth, even if others disagree! And I, in my understanding (if not in my actions), do not see in any of these desires anything more than fruitless delusion!!" This last statement was expressed with such wonderful strength that it seemed to cut the air to shreds...

Erev Shabbos - immediately after I finished breakfast, I rushed to the Rav's house. After a whole day of unhappy desolation I was hungry for a thoughtful word. I yearned to hear. I cannot explain, even to myself, the meaning of these longings, what they are and from whence they come - but I feel that they emanate from my heart, and are often intense...

The Rav's words that I heard that day were boldly expressed and clearly spoken. It seemed as if they were primarily intended to lift my dark mood. The Rav based his talk upon these words of Chazal: " Blessed is He from whose food we have eaten, and in [u'be'tuvo] whose goodness we live.' Anyone who says from his goodness' [u'me'tuvo] and not in his goodness' - is a boor" (Berachos 50a). Hashem's entire bounty of goodness is compressed into a small loaf of bread. Anyone who sees in the loaf just a part of His goodness is an ignorant, uneducated boor. Just as we know that there is none like our G-d, the Creator of the Heavens and the Earth and all the Olamos, so we must also know that there is none like our G-d the Creator of a small loaf of bread; both are acts of G-d. Were it not for the Creator, no creature could make such a thing. We must therefore recognize Hashem's entire bounty of goodness in this loaf...

"The Gemara then asks: "Does it not say, and from Your blessing may the house of your servant be blessed' etc.?" The Gemara answers: "A request is different." Rashi explains: When a person makes a request, he asks like a poor beggar standing in the doorway that dares not lift his head to make a large request. If so, how much should he request? If all Hashem's goodness is compressed into one kezayis - what then should a person request for his sustenance? Should he ask for less than a kezayis? Of course not! Rather, man is indeed forced to request for himself all of the Creator of the world's goodness, yet at the same time he makes his request he must feel the great weight of his prayer. [He must be aware of] what he is asking for himself..."
[This Slabodker perspective, mentioned briefly here, is perhaps best expressed in another one of the Alter's shmuessen that Reb Avrohom Elya transcribed (ibid., p. 221). In that shmuess, the Alter discusses Chazal's statement (Bereishis Rabba 10:6-7) that every blade of grass is controlled by a malach that causes it to grow. Man casually walks upon thousands of blades of grass, not considering the great wisdom and transcendent purpose of the thousands of malachim upon which he treads. How uplifted a person should become when he realizes how many malachim were created to serve him! His heart should fill with both the glory of this kedusha and emotions of gratitude for this gift. How can one not be ashamed to enter the sanctuary of kedusha that is this world with soiled shoes and dirty clothes? How is he not embarrassed to be engrossed in frivolities while at the same time making use of the malachim created to facilitate man's destiny? The entire world - from its most general principles to its finest details - serves as a reminder at each step we take to be cognizant of G-d, and, bechol derachecha da'eihu, "In all your paths you shall know Him."

All these many great malachim were created to enable man to develop his spirituality. Man is the "Rebbe", and all the spiritual forces are "talmidim" created to serve him. How terrible it is, when a Rebbe sins in front of his students! Yet at the very moment that the malach of the blade of grass serves the man who treads upon him, the man who is supposed to make use of all the vast spiritual potential underfoot, that great Rebbe involves himself in frivolities and corrupt behavior. This Rebbe suddenly becomes an animal in the eyes of his student, the malach.]

A loaf of bread also contains the great wisdom and transcendent purpose of the thousands of malachim that comprise it. The goodness of Hashem manifest in the bread is another aspect of the great weight involved even in a mundane loaf of bread. The entire creation demands serious consideration, and demands of man that he use its great potential for the right purposes and lishem Shomayim.

The Rav continued on. He began to worry: "What shall we do in our tefillos this coming Rosh haShana?! How can we open our mouths?..." As I stood and listened, my heart felt how authentic his outlooks were. My thoughts followed in the footsteps of his ideas. At that moment, I imagined that I was already belonged entirely to him, that I was completely directed toward all those great and lofty ideals of the Rav's Torah, and that soon I would become... a true Ba'al Mussar...

That Shabbos (Parashas Ki Savo) passed over me quickly, without the emotions I had expected would flow from my longing for the Rav's table, at which I sat for Shalosh Se'udos... I passed Sunday of this week (Nitzavim) in a similar fashion, until evening. That evening another mighty wave came, and again shook my soul...

I came into the yeshiva at the beginning of mussar-seder. In order not to distinguish myself from the tzibbur, I took a sefer from the shelf, and I sat at my place to look into it. As I glanced at it, I immediately saw that it was the sefer "Reishis Chochma". A desire to learn it and immerse myself in one of its sections suddenly filled my heart. All my life I have so intensely loved this holy sefer, this boundless encyclopedia of all the depths of kedusha in the heart; of all the inner heights of tahara; of the thousands upon thousands of Chazals that sparkle in the light of their Torah that penetrates the heart [the next phrase here: "u'bochen kelayos" cannot be translated!]; and of thousands of the Rishonim z"l's comments, each of whose words casts a new light on Torah horizons broader than the ocean... There came to my hand a page from the Sha'ar haKedusha, where he discusses the truth in the heart. "The essence of the matter - is the intent of the heart. Hashem is close to all who call unto Him, to all that call unto Him in truth. The call to us is that our hearts not focus on matters of falsehood. One should worship neither man, nor glory, nor anything else that is in reality just sputtering wind." The pure sefer with its small letters spoke more of this to me. My heart pursued its words. My soul was aroused by the sound of the statements aflame with fervor [eish dos] that my lips pronounced. My spirit blissfully concluded: I shall indeed return from now on. I shall improve my pathways in the future. From this moment I will redirect my thoughts, and purify them for the sake of truth. All of my conduct will be kissed by the directives of the Torah in Hilchos Dei'os and Ma'asim... I thought a great deal along those lines at that hour, and I consoled myself that I would yet do complete teshuva. I forgot all else and remembered only teshuva! ... And I hid my face in the pages of that beloved sefer, like a child in the embrace of his beloved mother, like a child whose cries spilled forth on all that was, and all that chas veshalom was yet to be... In short: Why should I reflect at length on that hour? I can succinctly describe it to myself in two short words: "[I] learnt mussar!..." I then davened Ma'ariv with the tzibbur! With that great and impassioned tzibbur, whose constituents' heads shook as if in a storm, and whose whispered voices cascaded like waters gushing down a waterfall...

(B'Ikvos HaYirah, pp. 157-162)

Glossary:
Seuda Shlishis - third meal on Shabbos
Gedolei HaDor shlita - greatest sages of the generation
Avoda - lit. work; here, more like work on oneself
derech halimud - method of learning
Machashava - thought
Mussar - oh, help, how does one translate this concept, let alone this word? Read the last paragraph; that will explain it.
Lomdus - learning, as in intellectual study
talmid chochom - excellent Torah scholar
Yomim Nora'im - Rosh Hashana, Yom Kippur, and the days in between
Ba'alei Mussar - masters of mussar study
This Rabbi N. T. Finkel is not the same as his descendant of the same name, who was the subject of the previous post.
Ben Torah - "son of Torah"
yarei Shomayim, yiras Shomayim - one who is consistently aware of Heaven; awe of Heaven
shmuess - Mussar lecture
Chazal and the Rishonim - Sages of the Talmud and of the medieval era
middos - character traits
kezayis - a unit of measure (lit. "like an olive")
malach - lit. messenger, usu. translated angel - but if you are picturing frescoes of cherubs, you have the wrong idea
kedusha - sanctity
talmidim - students
lishem Shomayim - with proper intentions, lit. "for the sake of Heaven"
tefillos - meditations/prayers
Shalosh Se'udos - another name for the third meal of Shabbos (as the Swedes say, "A dear child has many names")
tzibbur - assembled congregation
tahara - purity
davened Ma'ariv - prayed the evening meditation/prayer

"... You already know well the great benefit to be acquired for one's entire life in one Elul day in Slabodka." (A letter from 5670 [1910], B'Ikvos HaYirah p. 195)

I {Rabbi Bechhofer} was once privileged to spend Seuda Shlishis with one of the Gedolei HaDor shlita in Yerushalayim. In the course of our conversation the gadol remarked: "In this generation, everyone honors Rabbi X and Rabbi Y, because they can relate wonders that these rabbis are supposed to have performed. In my youth, the person we respected most was the Alter from Slabodka. You could not relate a single wonder that the Alter had performed. We respected him because he was the wisest individual we had ever met, and he had a deep understanding of our personalities, and how to help us develop our unique potentials."

Rabbi Avrohom Eliyahu Kaplan was the Alter's most beloved student. There was a close personal relationship between the two. Reb Avrohom Elya often contemplated leaving Slabodka - and did leave from time to time, feeling the intensity of the Avoda there was sometimes overwhelming. In the final analysis, however, he writes (ibid., p. 194): "One Sinai have we in our generation - Slabodka is its name! Anyone who leaves Sinai cannot hope to find another. More correctly, anyone who leaves the mountain falls into the valley..." Even when he was away from Slabodka, his heart and soul remained there.

Although this is not the place to dwell on Reb Avrohom Elya's greatness, a few words of introduction are necessary. Rabbi Yaakov Kamenetsky zt"l once remarked that Reb Avrohom Elya possessed such remarkable powers that had he lived longer (he died at the age of 34), he would have restructured the entire derech halimud in the yeshivos with his proposed new commentary on Shas (Reb Yaakov p. 85). He was a wonderful synthesis of Telzer Machashava, Slabodker Mussar, Lithuanian Lomdus and German meticulousness. He was a gifted writer, poet and songwriter, and at the same time a talmid chochom and posek of the highest caliber.

When Reb Avrohom Elya became a Rosh Yeshiva in Berlin, he brought Mussar to Western Europe. His pleasant demeanor and refined personality were the foundations, and his discourses the framework that enabled his German students to develop and perfect their spiritual selves. His personal Avoda was exemplary: "One who has not heard him read the Pesach night Hallel in lofty ecstasy in the unique melody that he wrote yet in his youth - has not seen true Jewish life in our generation. One who has not seen him dance the Kotzker Rebbe's dance in the joy of Sukkos - has not seen true Jewish joy in our generation. He was alive and gave life." His talks: "ignited hearts with the lightning flashes of his ideas, heads were enwrapped in illumination, a purifying tremor enveloped all existence..." (ibid., p. 294).

It seems that talmidim in Slabodka were wont to keep diaries. The Alter himself kept a diary. The Alter kept the diary hidden. Clearly unbeknownst to the Alter, Rabbi Yechezkel Sarna zt"l discovered the diary in an attic. Interestingly, none other than Reb Avrohom Elya himself copied the diary word for word the day after Yom Kippur in 1914! It can be found in Rabbi Dov Katz's Tenu'as HaMussar (vol. 3, p. 220). Another Slabodker, Rabbi Yitzchok Hutner zt"l (whom the Alter had room with Reb Avrohom Elya when the latter, after he had already moved to Berlin, would return to Slabodka for Yomim Nora'im) kept a diary as well. That diary served as the basis for Rebbitizin Beruria David shetichye's inspiring biography of her father in the Sefer Zikaron l'Maran Ba'al HaPachad Yitzchok. Diaries and private notes were tools often employed by the Ba'alei Mussar. These soul searching, intense chronicles wrestle both with personal avoda and with great issues. They offer rich inspiration and profound insight.

The passage we will pursue here captures the essence of such journals. Like many Slabodker students, Reb Avrohom Elya saw noble qualities in the great European movements and zeitgeists of the day. In the post-Holocaust era it is difficult for us to see significant value in cultures and ideas that did nothing to impede the worst atrocities imaginable. In those yet innocent days, however, many prevalent "isms" still possessed a romantic, even transcendent appeal, that generated contemplation. Thus, for eample, Reb Avrohom Elya has a diary entry from 5671 (1911) in which he analyzes and rejects the great Russian writer Tolstoy's perspectives (p. 250). It is hard to imagine any contemporary yeshiva bochur feeling it necessary to address the views of a secular thinker. At the time, however, such ideologies roused fervor and passion. Slabodka's young idealists found their emotions stirred. They would ponder an ideology: "How should we respond to it? What claim does it make upon us? And should we concede somewhat to it, or deny it altogether?..." (p. 154). This passage affords us a glimpse of how the Alter - who encouraged his students to grapple with great issues in their quest of growth - dealt with his students' internal struggles.

The primary purpose of this free translation is to inspire and motivate. The secondary purpose is to whet the reader's appetite to pursue Reb Avrohom Elya's writings. These writings so eloquently express his Master's spirit and derech, that they will inevitably lead the reader to aspire to greater attainments in Avodas Hashem.

I should add that while this is not the place to dwell on the topic at length, it is high time that we attempted to revive the Mussar Movement. May Hashem grant that such essays serve as an impetus for us all to proceed in that direction!

Note: I am indebted to Rabbi Tzvi Kaplan for correcting several errors and to Rabbi Yisroel Leichtman for critiquing and editing my translation.