Rabbi Prof. Aryeh A. Frimer is the Ethel and David Resnick Professor of Active Oxygen Chemistry at Bar Ilan University. He has lectured and published widely on various aspects of “Women and Halakha.”

Among his many articles, Rabbi Frimer is the author of “Women and Minyan,” Tradition, 23:4 (Summer 1988): 54-77, available online here; “Women’s ‘Megilla’ Reading,” in Ora Wiskind Elper, ed., Traditions and Celebrations for the Bat Mitzvah (Urim Publications: Jerusalem, 2003), 281-304, available online here (PDF); “Guarding the Treasure: A Review of Tamar Ross, Expanding the Palace of Torah: Orthodoxy and Feminism,” BDD – Journal of Torah and Scholarship 18 (April 2007): 67-106 (English), available online here (PDF); “Feminist Innovations in Orthodoxy Today: Is Everything in Halakha – Halakhic?” JOFA Journal 5:2 (Summer 2004/Tammuz 5764): 3-5, available here (PDF).

Over a three year period, from 5758-5760 (Fall 1997-Summer 2000), Rabbi Frimer delivered in-depth high-level shiurim on “Women and Halakha” to the Women of Rehovot at the Tiferet Moshe Synagogue – Rabbi Jacob Berman Community Center. The basic sourcebook for these lectures was R. Elyakim Getsel Ellinson, haIsha ve-haMitsvot – Vol. I: Bein Isha leYotsra, and this series of classes were regularly recorded as MP3 files, and the source materials, handouts and lecture notes were converted into PDF files and these files are now available here.

Aryeh A. Frimer and Dov I. Frimer are the co-authors of “Women’s Prayer Services – Theory and Practice,” Tradition 32:2 (Winter 1998): 5-118, available online here (PDF); and of the forthcoming “Women, Kri’at haTorah and Aliyyot.”

This is his first contribution to the Seforim blog.

‘And How Can One Behold a Sefer Torah in Distress?’

On the Relationship between Rabbi Chaim Heller and Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik

by Aviad Hacohen and Menachem Butler

This article, published on the occasion of the anniversaries of the passing of Rabbi Chaim Heller (14 Nisan 5720) and Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik (18 Nisan 5753), may their memories be a blessing, reexamines their relationship through a newly published body of correspondence, situating their bond within the intellectual and material conditions of mid-twentieth-century American Orthodoxy.^[1] The letters document both a relationship of unusual personal and scholarly closeness and the economic precarity and institutional instability that affected even leading Torah scholars of the period.

One such document, written by R. Soloveitchik in 1942 at a moment of acute crisis, reads as follows:

“Your esteemed honor has surely heard that our friend, the great and mighty gaon, luminary of the Diaspora and its glory, the crown of Israel’s splendor, our teacher and master Rabbi Chaim Heller, may he live long, has fallen gravely and dangerously ill. To our joy, and to the joy of all who fear God, our prayers have been accepted, and the Healer of all flesh has sent recovery and healing to the great one of our generation. Yet he remains weak and requires exceptional care. I therefore request of your esteemed honor, as a friend of the aforementioned gaon, to exert yourself on his behalf in every possible way. The supervision of the illness has entailed great expense, and even now the outlay is considerable while there is no income – and how can one behold a Sefer Torah in distress? I am confident that your esteemed honor will do all that is necessary, secure a fitting sum, and deliver it to the gaon R. H. Heller, may he live long, or to the fund ‘For R. H.’ I thank him in advance for his efforts. Your admirer and one who honors you.”^[2]

In this letter, Soloveitchik addressed his friend Rabbi Simon (Abraham Yeshayahu) Dolgin,^[3] then rabbi of Congregation Beth Jacob in the Beverly Hills neighborhood of Los Angeles, where he would serve for more than three decades and build one of the most significant Orthodox communities on the American West Coast. Upon receiving the appeal, Dolgin promptly sent a contribution; it appears, however, that its amount did not meet Soloveitchik’s expectations.

In a subsequent letter of appeal sent to Rabbi Dolgin approximately one month later [=14 July 1942], R. Soloveitchik again wrote:

“I received your letter together with the check. To my great regret I cannot deliver it to our friend, the great gaon, the mighty shepherd, may he live long, for the sum is not commensurate with the honor and majesty of a gaon of Israel, a luminary of the Diaspora, who dispersed his wealth to the poor and destitute, and whose home was open wide to all who were embittered and broken in spirit. Woe unto us, that the rabbi of Israel stands in need of aid and assistance. I request of your esteemed honor – who, as I have heard, is among the friends of the aforementioned gaon – to do all that lies within your power and to send a proper and worthy sum.”

The letters published here for the first time provide a rare window into the distinctive relationship, a bond of unusual personal and intellectual intimacy, and the enduring ties that prevailed for decades between two of the leading Torah scholars in the United States in the twentieth century. At the same time, they illuminate the manifold hardships, including acute financial privation, humiliation, and disappointment, that rabbis of that period were compelled to endure as they sought even minimal means of livelihood with which to sustain their households. This fate did not spare even one of the foremost sages of the generation, R. Chaim Heller, who, in order to support his family, was compelled to piece together sporadic and temporary sources of income until he eventually attained, albeit only in relative terms, a measure of stability and a settled position that afforded him and his family a degree of economic security.^[4]

Beyond their intrinsic interest, these letters are of particular importance by virtue of the period in which they were written. They date to the years of the Second World War, from which very little of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik’s correspondence has survived.

Already in these early letters, the literary Hebrew of R. Joseph B. Soloveitchik and his distinctive stylistic register stand out prominently.^[5] They attest both to the profound bond between the two scholars and to R. Soloveitchik’s sustained concern for the welfare of his colleague and intimate friend, R. Chaim Heller. Their connection began years earlier in Berlin.

R. Chaim Heller (1879-1960) was among the leading Torah scholars of the early twentieth century. Alongside his greatness in Torah, he was deeply engaged in the scholarly study of Talmudic literature and biblical translation.^[6] His work was characterized by a distinctive methodological orientation that sought to challenge the prevailing assumptions of modern biblical criticism through philological rigor grounded in the resources of the rabbinic tradition. In his introduction to On the Jerusalem Targum to the Torah (New York, 1921), R. Heller sharply criticized what he termed the “mechanical method” of comparing ancient translations in order to posit divergent textual recensions. Against this approach, he argued that the multitude of so-called “variants” in translations such as the Peshitta, the Septuagint, and the Samaritan Pentateuch do not reflect alternative Hebrew originals, but rather systematic exegetical practices. In his view, the translators did not render the biblical text literally, but interpreted and expanded it in light of traditions preserved in Hazal. This thesis enabled him simultaneously to undermine the conclusions of contemporary critics and to reaffirm the centrality and antiquity of the Oral Torah as an interpretive matrix for Scripture.^[7]

This distinctive synthesis of traditional learning and critical scholarship was already prefigured in the formative trajectory of his early life. Born in Białystok and raised in Warsaw, he was already in his youth known as “the prodigy of Warsaw.” From the age of ten he ceased studying with melammedim; he never attended a yeshiva and acquired his entire Talmudic learning independently, as an autodidact. He married the daughter of a wealthy member of the Łódź community, and in the home of his uncle in Warsaw encountered the leading sages of the generation, engaging them in rigorous dialectical discussion. Among them were R. Yosef Dov Soloveitchik, author of Beit ha-Levi; R. Isaac Elchanan Spektor of Kovno; and the Netziv of Volozhin. During these years he also formed especially close ties with R. Chaim Soloveitchik, his relative by marriage R. Eliyahu Feinstein of Pruzhany, and R. Eliyahu Chaim Meisel of Łódź. In later years, he received a doctoral degree from the University of Würzburg.

Following the death of Rabbi Malkiel Tzvi Tannenbaum, the community of Łomża was left without a rabbi, and its leaders resolved to appoint Rabbi Heller, already known as a sharp and penetrating scholar and a man of broad learning who held a doctoral degree. By that time he had published studies on the Septuagint and on Maimonides, which drew the respect of both rabbinic and academic circles. Yet after only a few months he resigned his post. Various explanations have been offered for his departure: some point to his reluctance to devote extensive time to communal responsibilities, which he regarded as bittul Torah, while R. Joseph B. Soloveitchik recounted that Rabbi Heller himself expressed concern that members of the congregation might pressure him to act against his convictions.

R. Heller soon left for Berlin, where, in 1922 he established the Beit Midrash ha-Elyon, an advanced institution for rabbinic training that drew a small but serious circle of students. Berlin at the time was a meeting ground of worlds, traditional learning and modern scholarship, and Heller moved between them with unusual authority. In R. Heller’s case, this was not merely a sociological juxtaposition but a fully integrated intellectual stance, in which Wissenschaft methods were appropriated and redirected in defense of the integrity of the Masoretic text and the authority of the Oral Torah.^[8] It was there that the young R. Soloveitchik spent several formative years. He was not formally enrolled in the institution, but he attended Heller’s lectures and was deeply influenced by them. What impressed him was not only R. Heller’s mastery of Torah and scholarship, but the range of his mind – the sense that he inhabited both disciplines fully, without strain or concession.

In 1929, R. Chaim Heller was appointed as a Visiting Professor of Bible at RIETS,^[9] and “for close to ten years Heller taught in New York while occasionally traveling to Berlin and elsewhere before settling in the United States.” More than a decade later, his name was even floated by Rabbi Dr. Leo Jung as a potential successor as Rosh Yeshiva of RIETS following the death of R. Moshe Soloveichik in 1941.^[10] A contemporaneous portrait of Heller’s intellectual profile appears in a 1930 article by R. Yerahmiel Elimelekh (Max J.) Wohlgelernter in the ha-Pardes journal, in which R. Heller is presented not merely as a scholar of unusual range, but as a figure who entered directly into confrontation with modern biblical criticism on its own terms, armed with philological expertise yet grounded in the authority of the rabbinic tradition. Against what R. Wohlgelernter characterizes as the “mechanical” methods of contemporary critics, R. Heller is depicted as demonstrating that the multiplicity of textual variants in ancient translations reflects interpretive practice rather than divergent textual recensions, thereby reasserting the integrity of the Masoretic text and the centrality of the Oral Torah as its interpretive matrix.^[11]

In 1937, several years after the rise of the Nazis to power and the intensification of anti-democratic measures directed especially against the Jews, R. Chaim Heller emigrated to the United States and settled in New York. That same year, R. Moshe Feinstein likewise arrived in New York. During this period, R. Heller renewed his connection with R. Joseph B. Soloveitchik, who had come to the United States some five years earlier at the urging of his father, R. Moshe, then Rosh Yeshiva of the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary. In Boston, R. Joseph B. Soloveitchik led his community with distinction and, alongside his teaching, increasingly assumed a position of broader intellectual and religious leadership, establishing himself as a central figure for a growing circle of students and adherents.^[12]

Despite this recognition of his intellectual stature, the conditions that Heller encountered upon his arrival in the United States were markedly different. Like many rabbis who fled Germany on the eve of the Second World War and arrived in the United States as refugees,^[13] R. Chaim Heller entered a professional landscape that was structurally inhospitable. The lingering effects of the Great Depression continued to constrain both the rabbinic and academic labor markets.^[14] Congregational positions, even in smaller and more remote communities, were typically occupied by long-established incumbents, while the few available posts offered only modest remuneration. Universities, for their part, were in a period of contraction, with limited hiring and little institutional appetite for figures whose scholarly profile did not align neatly with existing departmental frameworks. For a scholar of Heller’s unusually wide and interdisciplinary range, no obvious institutional niche presented itself.

In response, Heller adopted a peripatetic mode of intellectual livelihood. Lacking a stable appointment, he supported himself through public lectures, assembling an income that remained precarious and contingent. This required sustained mobility, persistence, and a readiness to engage even relatively small audiences. At one stage, this itinerant circuit took him as far as Los Angeles, a journey that, under the conditions of the time, entailed considerable logistical and physical demands, where he delivered a series of lectures in his areas of expertise. It was likely in the course of this visit that he first encountered Rabbi Dolgin.

The notice of R. Chaim Heller’s arrival in Los Angeles appeared in the Los Angeles Times, March 22, 1940.

It may be assumed that, in the wake of this visit, the relationship between the two was further strengthened. Expression of this is found in three letters written during those years by R. Chaim Heller to R. Dolgin, which are published here for the first time.

The first letter is dated 4 Nisan 5700 [= 12 April 1940], a short time, approximately three weeks, after R. Chaim Heller’s arrival in Los Angeles. It reads as follows:

“To the honorable Rabbi Abraham Isaiah Dolgin, may he live long: Your esteemed letter has reached me. Although Magnin^[15] caused considerable damage, it seems to me that his words made no impression upon ploni, notwithstanding the saying, ‘When a word cannot enter in its entirety, it enters in part.’^[16]

I have a conjecture as to whose soul spoke through Magnin, and whose finger was involved in undermining the matter there, but why should we speak of what has passed.

Since Your Honor requested of me “to forgive him for his errors,” I hereby note that, indeed, your entire letter was written well; however, two errors slipped from your pen: first, that you wrote also “concerning the matters of his נשיאתו (nesi’ato, ‘his presidency/bearing’) to Chicago,” whereas it should read נסיעתו (nesi‘ato, ‘his travel’); and second, that you wrote שגיאותי ושגיעותי (shegiyotai, ‘my errors’), and such a latter form does not exist.

I have drawn his attention to this out of my great affection for him,^[17] and your honor should take care to be precise in his writing. You also wrote to me that Mr. Sh. desires to discuss matters with Rabbi B. [Bernard Revel^[18]]; however, your honor knows that the latter has recently opposed me with full force, though I do not know the cause of his reversal,^[19] and I am uncertain whether your honor acted wisely in writing to him, for he and those associated with him may think that I prompted your honor to do so. I have been brief in all this, and I conclude with blessings of peace and all good to your honor, according to your will and the will of one who esteems and cherishes you, and who inquires after your welfare.

Chaim Heller”

In the margin of the letter, his wife added a brief greeting of her own: “I too inquire after his welfare. Miriam Heller.”

The second letter was written approximately two months later, on the eve of the festival of Shavuot, in which R. Chaim Heller gives expression to his frustration that promises made to him, apparently concerning the provision of a stable source of livelihood, had not been fulfilled. It reads as follows:

3 Sivan [5700] [9 June 1940]

To the honorable Rabbi Abraham Isaiah Dolgin, may God preserve and sustain him,

Your esteemed letter reached me with delay, as is the way of ordinary post, and I shall respond to all your inquiries: regarding the matter of the years [?], up to this day there is nothing whatsoever, and I had indeed waited and hoped for this, and accordingly set aside and abandoned other undertakings which I now lack greatly – very greatly.

I very much wished to meet with […], but in truth it was difficult for me to request this.

Concerning the attitude toward the war,^[20] it is certainly an obligation and a commandment, and I have much to elaborate on this matter. Books addressing this subject are not presently known to me, for I am entirely without books in my home; with God’s help, I shall set my mind to seeking them out.

I shall be brief this time. With blessings for long life, a joyous festival, and days of gladness always, in accordance with your will and the will of one who esteems and honors you, who inquires after your welfare and goodness.

Chaim Heller

[p.s.] My wife and daughters inquire after your welfare, and bless you with every good, selah.

The third letter was written approximately a year later, on the eve of Passover 5701. At that time, reports in the press in the Land of Israel^[21] indicated that R. Heller was about to receive a teaching appointment at Yeshiva University alongside his colleague R. Joseph B. Soloveitchik. Having grown accustomed to disappointment, R. Heller feared that this announcement amounted to no more than a “trial balloon” lacking any concrete foundation. This apprehension, together with his distress at both the substance and the tone of the report, found expression in a letter he addressed to R. Dolgin:

“12 Nisan 5701 [9 April 1941]

To the honorable Rabbi Abraham Isaiah Dolgin, may God preserve and sustain him,

After a long period of silence while confined to bed, I received your letter. Concerning the report that you read: to this day I have no connection whatsoever with the yeshiva.^[22] I have not spoken even a word – however slight^[23] – with any person, and I was selected entirely without my knowledge; indeed, I am far removed from accepting an appointment in such a manner. I immediately considered issuing a denial in the very newspaper that published the report, but many worthy individuals dissuaded me, on the grounds that matters might yet develop otherwise, and that the counsel of the Lord shall prevail.”

In this connection, he related to his friend his deliberations regarding an additional source of livelihood – delivering lectures to vacationers in the Catskill Mountains during the summer months:

“You surely recall that two years ago I was approached to deliver lectures, for remuneration, before rabbis and scholars, etc., during the summer season (be-idna de-qayta), in the vacation period; and now this matter has again been raised, and I am prepared to lecture for six weeks in one of the pleasant locales to which people travel.

The lectures would be held three times a week and would encompass a comprehensive and wide-ranging treatment of biblical scholarship and the Talmuds, such that ‘the ear would not be sated with hearing’.^[24] Over this period, the listener would gain far more than he would in a year or two at any college or seminary in the world. However, I require a highly energetic organizer who will undertake to arrange this enterprise properly. May your honor be blessed with all good and prosperity, and may you celebrate the Festival of Unleavened Bread with joy and delight.”

After several years in the United States, during which he lacked a stable source of livelihood, R. Chaim Heller secured a position on the teaching staff of Yeshiva University and served alongside his colleague R. Samuel Belkin, R. Joseph B. Soloveitchik, and R. Moshe Shatzkes on the RIETS Ordination Board.^[25]

Yet, as emerges from a letter cited below, his salary conditions remained far from favorable. Efforts were made to improve them and, over time, met with a measure of success. The literary oeuvre of R. Chaim Heller is vast in scope. Yet, as R. Joseph B. Soloveitchik would later describe in his eulogy, what was published only represents only a minute fraction, “mere remnants of remnants,” of the breadth of his orally transmitted Torah. It should also be borne in mind that the overwhelming majority of his writings were composed prior to his arrival in the United States.

Among his works in the field of biblical scholarship, particular note should be taken of his studies on the textual tradition of the Bible and its various translations: his work on the Jerusalem Targum to the Torah (New York, 5681 [1921]); on the Samaritan Pentateuch (Berlin, 5684 [1924]); on the Septuagint in the Concordance Heikhal ha-Qodesh, with appended notes, commentaries, and investigations in biblical studies (New York, 5704 [1944]); and on the Peshitta, the Syriac translation of the Bible (transcribed into Hebrew script, with notes, glosses, and commentaries by Chaim Heller: Genesis, Berlin, 5687 [1927]; Exodus, Berlin, 5689 [1929]). He prepared a revised edition of the Peshitta to Exodus for publication but did not succeed in completing its printing prior to his death. Among his halakhic works, his annotated edition of Maimonides’ Sefer ha-Mitzvot (first edition, Piotrków, 5674 [1914]) is well known. A subsequent edition of this work was published by Mossad HaRav Kook in Jerusalem (5706 [1946]) – and has since appeared in numerous further editions – and for this work he was awarded the Rav Kook Prize in 5707 [1947]. His writings also include Hiqrei Halakhot, analytical investigations of legal rulings and issues in the section Hoshen Mishpat (vol. I, Berlin, 5684 [1924]; vol. II, Piotrków, 5692 [1932]); as well as studies on various topics in Maimonides and the halakhic decisors concerning the laws of lending and borrowing and their ancillary matters (Chicago, 5706 [1946]). In addition, he published, in jubilee and memorial volumes, several qontrasim that functioned as a kind of Masoret ha-Shas for the Jerusalem Talmud.^[26]

Even after R. Chaim Heller had joined the faculty of Yeshiva University, R. Joseph B. Soloveitchik continued to seek ways to assist him, inter alia by working to secure an increase in his salary. Expression of this may be found in a brief letter that he wrote to R. Chaim Heller on 23 Sivan 5713 (5 June 1953), which is likewise published here for the first time:

Erev Shabbat, 22 Sivan 5713 [5 June 1953]

To my honored friend, the true gaon, luminary of the Diaspora, crown of Israel and its glory, pillar of halakhah and instruction, may he live long,

Greetings and blessings!

I departed New York on Thursday morning and arrived in Boston utterly exhausted. On the preceding Wednesday I met with Rabbi Rosenberg at a certain inn, and we resolved to add two thousand dollars annually^[27] to your honor’s salary. It seems to me that next month you will receive a check in accordance with the new scale. We trust in God that the matter will be brought to a good conclusion and that no obstacle will arise in connection with it. Naturally, the matter must remain in absolute confidence, and no one need be informed of it.

I conclude with abundant blessing and faithful affection,

Joseph Dov HaLevi Soloveitchik^[28]

This quiet intervention on Heller’s behalf was not an isolated act, but part of a sustained pattern of concern. In this connection, it is instructive to recall R. Aharon Lichtenstein’s characterization of R. Joseph B. Soloveitchik, in his eulogy. Reflecting on his father-in-law’s own self-understanding, he writes:

“The personal self-conception that characterized the Rav, of blessed memory, with respect to his own functioning was bound up with educational–pedagogical activity, and this across multiple spheres. He would often remark that when he arrived in the World of Truth, and were he to be asked to specify by virtue of what he merited a share in the World to Come, he would indicate three points: (a) that he studied Torah with his children; (b) that he founded the Maimonides School in Boston; (c) that he was concerned, over an extended period, for the honor and welfare of a certain talmid hakham.”^[29]

This final point refers to R. Soloveitchik’s sustained and well-documented efforts on behalf of R. Chaim Heller. The depth of this personal concern was not confined to the private sphere, but found parallel expression in a sustained intellectual and institutional collaboration between the two. A further expression of their bond and cooperation is found in their joint letter of response to Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion, who in 1958 approached them, among other “Sages of Israel,” to solicit their opinion on the question “Who is a Jew?” Although the inquiry was addressed to each of them separately, the two resolved to compose a joint reply. Thus they wrote, inter alia:

“We are indeed perplexed that the State of Israel now seeks to hew down our traditional branches and thereby smear the ancient glory of Israel which has long been sanctified through the spilt blood and sufferings of preceding generations. It is only because of these roots that we preserve our uniqueness as a holy people and that we are inextricably bound to the Holy Land. … Will the present State of Israel be built up by (maintaining a threat of) destruction to its very sanctity?”^[30]

The same bond found further expression in another brief letter issued by R. Joseph B. Soloveitchik some two years later, likewise published here for the first time. The occasion for its dispatch was the forthcoming wedding of R. Joseph B. Soloveitchik’s daughter, Tova, to Rabbi Dr. Aharon Lichtenstein, his most distinguished student.

In September 1959, a small notice appeared in the “Announcements” column of The Commentator, the student newspaper of Yeshiva University, reporting the engagement of Dr. Aharon Lichtenstein, a member of the class of 1953, to Tova Soloveitchik. It appeared alongside advertisements for driving instruction and for Barton’s confectionery (under OU supervision).^[31]

Approximately a month and a half later, in November 1959, the parents of the couple sent a formal invitation to family members and acquaintances. The Hebrew text was ornate, replete with distinctive idioms, and clearly bore the imprint of R. Joseph B. Soloveitchik’s unique stylistic signature:

“To our friends in all their places of residence – may your peace flourish without end! We hereby inform you that Tova shall be betrothed and married to Aharon, with the grace of God, on the evening preceding the fourth day of the week, on the twenty-second day of the month of Kislev, in the year five thousand seven hundred and twenty from Creation, according to the reckoning we follow here in Boston, the city situated at the approaches of the sea. Pray assemble at six o’clock on that evening in the Dorothy Quincy Hall, in the John Hancock Building (355 Stuart Street), for the celebration of bride and groom, for the festive meal, and for the joy of a commandment. Rejoice with us in the joy of our offspring’s wedding day and in the gladness of our hearts. Joseph Dov HaLevi and Tonya Soloveitchik; Yechiel and Bluma Lichtenstein.”

By contrast, the English version was brief, formulated in a more formal and utilitarian manner. The period during which the invitations were sent was one of particular intensity in the Soloveitchik household. At that time, R. Soloveitchik received an informal invitation to put forward his candidacy for the position of Chief Rabbi of Israel^[32]; concurrently, he was engaged in intensive preparation for the major eulogy for his uncle, the Griz, R. Yitzhak Ze’ev Soloveitchik, later known as the discourse “Mah Dodekh mi-Dod.”^[33]

On account of the mention of his name as a candidate for the office of Chief Rabbi, an extensive journalistic interview with R. Soloveitchik was conducted in Yedioth Ahronoth.^[34] The interviewer, Elie Wiesel (later a Nobel laureate), reported that, following the Rav’s annual Teshuvah Derashah several months earlier, the Israeli consul general in New York had sent a telegram to Jerusalem declaring: “Here is the best candidate to replace Rabbi Herzog.”^[35] Wiesel asked R. Soloveitchik whether he would agree to assume the position if it were offered to him. R. Soloveitchik replied that no such offer had yet been made, but added in principle: “One does not decline an invitation that comes from the Land of Israel… When I receive it, if indeed it is sent, I shall consider it with utmost seriousness. I shall ask myself whether I am worthy of so exalted an office.” When Wiesel further inquired whether it was true that his uncle, R. Yitzhak Ze’ev Soloveitchik, had instructed him not to accept the position, R. Soloveitchik dismissed the report: “It is difficult to believe such rumors. In our family there is a tradition not to compose wills… perhaps because we fear death and its reality.”^[36]

In the course of the interview, R. Soloveitchik spoke with evident pride of the religious and spiritual revival among youth and young adults in America, yet added that talk of their immigration to the Land of Israel was, at most, “a beautiful dream.” He attributed the gap between the intensification of Jewish and religious consciousness and the reluctance to immigrate, inter alia, to Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion, who, in his view, failed to appreciate the potential inherent in religion to draw youth to Israel and to demand sacrifice on its behalf. “In my view,” said the Rav, “Ben-Gurion is a religious Jew, though it is possible that he himself does not know this.” These remarks, whose precise formulation was itself questioned in contemporaneous discussion, elicited sharp criticism from several prominent figures within American Jewry. Among them was Moshe Meisels, editor of ha-Doar, who, in a pointed “open letter,” challenged both the claim that Israel had lost its ‘messianic’ hold on the Jewish imagination and the attribution of this development to deficiencies in the religious posture of the Israeli state.^[37] Questioning the very premise of R. Soloveitchik’s formulation, Meisels asked rhetorically whether it could truly be maintained that “the concept of Israel has lost its messianic content,” and whether the responsibility for such a development could plausibly be laid at the feet of the state. The Rav sought to respond, but was exceedingly occupied with the final polishing of the eulogy for his uncle, R. Yitzhak Ze’ev Soloveitchik, which he was to deliver within a matter of days.^[38]

Indeed, as the Yiddish adage has it, a mentsh trakht un Got lakht – man plans, and God laughs. Only a few days after the wedding invitations for his daughter and R. Aharon Lichtenstein had been dispatched, R. Joseph B. Soloveitchik was diagnosed with colon cancer and was required to travel urgently to Boston to undergo life-saving surgery. R. Soloveitchik informed his family, including the bride and groom, on the night that he delivered the eulogy for his uncle. On the following day, he departed for Boston. The couple, of course, immediately announced the postponement of the wedding, and all prayed for the Rav’s recovery.

R. Soloveitchik himself, only fifty-seven years old at the time, confided to those close to him: “I suddenly ceased to be immortal; I became a mortal being.” In the nights preceding the operation, he undertook a profound reckoning of his life. In later years, he described something of his experience during those turbulent days:

“My existential awareness was an absolute one. Non-being did not enter into it. I would not sustain my gaze upon nihility. Whenever I started to think of death, my thoughts were dashed back and they returned to their ordinary objective, to life. When I looked upon my grandson, I always tried to think of him as if he were my contemporary. I believed that we would always do things and play together. Then sickness initiated me into the secret of non-being. I suddenly ceased to be immortal; I became a mortal being.

The night preceding my operation I prayed to God and beseeched him to spare me. I did not ask for too much. All I wanted was that he should make it possible for me to attend my daughter’s wedding, which was postponed on account of my illness – a very modest wish in comparison with my insane claims to life prior to my sickness. The fantastic flights of human foolishness and egocentrism were distant from me that night.

However, this ‘fall’ from the heights of an illusory immortality into the valley of finitude was the greatest achievement of the long hours of anxiety and uncertainty. Fundamentally, this change was not an act of falling but one of rising toward a new existential awareness which embraces both man’s tragedy and his glory, in all its ambivalence and paradoxality. I stopped perceiving myself in categories of eternity. When I recite my prayers, I ask God to grant me life in very modest terms.”^[39]

Further testimony to R. Soloveitchik’s state of mind during this period is found in a letter he sent to R. Reuven Katz, Chief Rabbi of Petah Tikvah. At its outset, the Rav explains that he had fallen gravely ill and been confined to bed, describing the experience in stark terms:

“Dark days, filled with anxiety, suffering, and silent loneliness, passed over me. My world was suddenly overturned. Yet the merit of my forefathers stood by me in the hour of wrath, and the Holy One, blessed be He, in His abundant mercy redeemed my soul in peace and did not allow me to die… Even now, as I begin to recover, I have not yet shaken off the physical weakness and the psychological dread that overcame me during those bitter and difficult hours of illness and suffering.”^[40]

He then turns to the question of the Chief Rabbinate, noting both the changed circumstances and his own unsuitability for the role:

“However, the recent developments concerning the Chief Rabbinate… have cast a new light upon the situation, and I doubt whether I would be able to engage in Torah study with peace of mind… There is compelling reason to assume that I would become entangled in all the convolutions of politics, a matter that is neither to my spirit nor to my desire… Therefore I am compelled to acknowledge that, under the present circumstances, I am not fit for this office. I am a teacher, and I have in my world nothing but the four cubits of halakhah. I do not wish to depart from them, even were I to be offered an entire kingdom.”

These remarks make clear that R. Soloveitchik’s refusal to consider candidacy for the position of Chief Rabbi was shaped both by the lingering effects of illness and by a principled resistance to political entanglement, together with a self-conception rooted in the life of Torah within “the four cubits of halakhah.”^[41]

As a result of his illness, R. Soloveitchik remained in Boston for approximately three months, during which he gradually recovered. In the course of this period, he merited to bring his daughter Tova and his son-in-law, R. Aharon Lichtenstein, under the wedding canopy. In consultation with the family, it was decided to postpone the wedding by only one month following the operation, and it was ultimately held on 26 Tevet 5720 (26 January 1960).^[42]

A week before the rescheduled wedding, still confined to his bed and not yet recovered from surgery, R. Soloveitchik insisted on writing to his close friend R. Chaim Heller. The letter, published here for the first time, was not written in his own hand. The script shows that he dictated it, most likely to his wife, and, in his weakened state, managed only to sign his name.

“To my honored friend, the gaon of Israel and its glory, luminary of the Diaspora and pillar of halakhah and instruction, may he live long; greetings and blessings! Although the physicians have forbidden me to engage in writing on account of my extreme weakness, I cannot refrain from writing this letter in order once again to extend a heartfelt invitation to your esteemed honor, to your esteemed wife, and to your distinguished daughter, may they live, to participate in the wedding of Tova and Aharon. Their presence on the day of our heart’s rejoicing will lend joy and splendor to the celebration. With great affection, Joseph Dov HaLevi Soloveitchik.”

His wife, Dr. Tonya Soloveitchik, appended a moving appeal of her own in Yiddish:^[43]

January 19, 1960

To the honorable and true gaon, R. Chaim Heller, to his esteemed wife, the rebbetzin, and to their refined daughter, may they live – greetings and blessings!

We had hoped that we would have the opportunity to visit you once more and to invite you personally to the wedding of our Tova. To our regret, however, my husband’s illness has altered our plans, and we have no possibility of coming to New York to do so.

What we are unable to do orally, we must now do in writing: we warmly invite you all to the wedding! Your presence will greatly enhance our joy.

I also wish once again to thank you for the friendship you have shown during my husband’s illness. Your good wishes and blessings gave us strength at a critical time.

With regards and respect,

Tonya Soloveitchik

In the end, R. Chaim Heller did not attend the wedding, apparently due to his frail health and the difficulty of traveling from New York to Boston. Within a few months, on the Fourteenth of Nisan 5720 (10 April 1960), the Eve of Passover, he returned his soul to his Creator.^[44] Although the constraints of time and the approaching festival precluded extended eulogies, R. Joseph B. Soloveitchik flew from Boston to New York to attend the funeral, delivered brief words of farewell, recited kaddish at the funeral,^[45] and returned to Boston before the onset of Passover. The rabbinic journal ha-Pardes would later note that “his close friend and trusted associate, Rabbi Joseph Dov Soloveitchik of Boston, eulogized him in moving words.”^[46] Although these remarks were long thought to have been lost, a partial and mediated record preserved in the Yiddish press makes it possible to recover something of their content:

“A visit to Rabbi Chaim Heller was in the nature of a pilgrimage… When I would arrive at the elevator of the building at 210 West 99th Street… I would experience a sensation as though a curtain had descended, separating between the sacred and the profane. The Temple comprised three divisions: the Holy of Holies, the Sanctuary, and the Courtyard. Rabbi Chaim embodied all three. He conducted himself within the Holy of Holies… his occupation was solely with Torah… The entirety of the Torah lay before him as an open book… Yet he also partook of the character of the Courtyard, engaged with the community of Israel as a whole… From him radiated both the light of immense knowledge and the simplicity of humanity.”^[47]

Even in this compressed form, the structure of the eulogy is already fully present: Heller is cast simultaneously as a figure of absolute immersion in Torah, of intellectual breadth, and of human accessibility, an integration that would find fuller expression in Soloveitchik’s later memorial address. Several weeks later, he returned to the task in a more formal setting, delivering a powerful and deeply moving eulogy at a memorial gathering at Yeshiva University.

As is well known, and in keeping with the characteristic reserve of the Lithuanian Torah greats, R. Joseph B. Soloveitchik was generally sparing in his expressions of affection, esteem, and praise for fellow scholars, and rarely employed language of overt admiration. In the case of R. Chaim Heller, however, he departed from this pattern and bestowed upon him an exceptional and uncommon measure of appreciation, the like of which he appears to have granted to few, if any, other Torah scholars.

This finds expression in the great and moving eulogy that R. Soloveitchik delivered for R. Chaim Heller nine weeks after his passing, at a public gathering at Yeshiva University on June 13, 1960, which also included eulogies by the institution’s president, Dr. Samuel Belkin. R. Soloveitchik’s eulogy was published the following year on the occasion of the first yahrzeit under the title “Rabbi Chaim Heller: The ‘Shmuel ha-Katan’ of Our Generation,” and opened with the following words:

“Who was this man who departed from us in silence and with gracious humility? What was his stature, and what were his deeds? Who was R. Chaim, who held no public office and had no need for conventional titles – whose entire greatness was encapsulated in two simple words: ‘R. Chaim,’ greater than ‘Rabban’ was his name? Some years ago… when the president of this institution, Rabbi Samuel Belkin, introduced R. Chaim… he employed the following formulation: ‘R. Chaim belongs to that small company of men of virtue for whom we pray each day in the Amidah: for the righteous, for the pious, for the elders of Your people the House of Israel, and for the remnant of their scribes. R. Chaim,’ the rabbi continued, ‘is of the remnant of Israel’s scribes.’ In this utterance he encapsulated all that was singular and wondrous in the man. At the time, I was seated on the platform beside R. Chaim, and as I beheld him – entirely withdrawn, enclosed and self-contained, as though scorched by the gaze of the audience fixed upon him – his lips murmuring, ‘What does he want of me?,’ and the pained embarrassment of a solitary individual, thrust against his will into a bustling and clamorous crowd, spread across his face…”^[48]

R. Chaim Heller and R. Joseph B. Soloveitchik in New York, in the vicinity of Yeshiva University.

Notes

1. 1. A shorter, and non-annotated, version of this article appeared in Hebrew as Aviad Hacohen and Menachem Butler, “‘A Sefer Torah in Distress’,” Makor Rishon, Pesach Supplement, no. 1495 (1 April 2026): 10-11, 16 (Hebrew), available here.We are grateful to our friend Aaron R. Katz and to the Dolgin family for granting us access to letters sent by Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik and Rabbi Chaim Heller to the family patriarch, Rabbi Simon (Abraham Isaiah) Dolgin, of blessed memory. We thank Shulamith Z. Berger of the Yeshiva University Archives for providing photographs of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik and Rabbi Chaim Heller. We are also grateful to Rabbi Moshe Dembitzer, author of several landmark biographical studies of Rabbi Chaim Heller, for sharing with us a forthcoming, as yet unpublished essay on Rabbi Soloveitchik’s graveside eulogy for Rabbi Heller. ↑
   2. The letter bears no date; however, the postmark on the envelope indicates that it was sent from Boston to Los Angeles on June 9, 1942. ↑
   3. On Rabbi Simon (Abraham Isaiah) Dolgin (1915-2004) and his extensive activities, see Jubilee Volume Minḥah Le-Ish: Presented to HaRav Simon A. Dolgin on the Occasion of His 75th Birthday, ed. Itamar Warhaftig (Jerusalem: Ariel, 1990). Ordained at the Hebrew Theological College in Skokie, Illinois, Dolgin assumed the rabbinate of Congregation Beth Jacob (later in Beverly Hills) in 1938 and served there for approximately thirty-two years, during which he transformed it into a prominent Orthodox community and developed a broad educational infrastructure, including the Harkham Hillel Hebrew Academy. In 1971 he immigrated to Israel, where he served as rabbi of the Ramat Eshkol neighborhood and later as Director-General of the Ministry of Religious Affairs. On his correspondence with David Ben-Gurion, see On the Character of the State of Israel: Correspondence between Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion and Rabbi Simon (Abraham Isaiah) Dolgin, ed. Yitzhak Goldshlag (Jerusalem, 1973; Hebrew). ↑
   4. By way of comparison with the present, this phenomenon still finds occasional resonance in the lives of rabbis today. ↑
   5. On this point, see the remark of Rabbi Aharon Lichtenstein, at the conclusion of his discussion of “The Rav as Eulogist” (forthcoming):“It is difficult for me to conclude without saying a word about the literary dimension of these eulogies. For all my admiration of the Rav’s Torah greatness, and of the content of these eulogies – which is, of course, primary – it is hard not to be left in astonishment at his literary and linguistic ability. We are speaking of a person who was not educated in the Hebrew language, and whose knowledge in this area was drawn from reading Haskalah literature. Let us recall: the Rav did not live in a Hebrew-speaking environment, nor did he speak Hebrew fluently. Yet the richness of his language is truly astounding. Were one to read these texts for this purpose alone, I have no doubt that he would be amply rewarded.” ↑
   6. On the most recent biography and intellectual profile of R. Chaim Heller, see the now substantial body of recent scholarship, which has significantly advanced our understanding of his life and work, see Moshe Dembitzer, “The Letters of Rav Chaim Heller,” Hitzei Giborim, vol. 9 (2016): 923-952 (Hebrew), which assembles and analyzes a wide corpus of correspondence and reconstructs key aspects of his personal and scholarly networks; Uriel Banner, “Towards a Profile of Rabbi Chaim Heller,” Asif, vol. 8 (2023): 720-766 (Hebrew), offering a synthetic biographical portrait grounded in both contemporary testimony and archival material; and Moshe Dembitzer, “‘To Show My People a New Type’: The Academic Chapter in the Life of Rabbi Chaim Heller,” Mekhilta, vol. 5 (February 2024): 365-382 (Hebrew), which reconstructs in detail his academic formation and intellectual program, particularly his engagement with philology and the Wissenschaft des Judentums milieu. ↑
   7. For earlier biographical and bibliographical information on Heller, see Jacob I. Dienstag, “Ein ha-Mitzvot: Bio-Bibliographical Lexicon of the Scholarship on Maimonides’ Sefer ha-Mitzvot,” Talpiyot, vol. 9, no. 3-4 [=Rabbi Chaim Heller Memorial Volume] (September 1970): 663-759, esp. 697-702 [#20] (Hebrew), available here, which underscores both his expertise in biblical translation and linguistics and his programmatic effort to defend the integrity of the Masoretic text. For a critical assessment of R. Heller’s methodology, see Marc B. Shapiro, Between the Yeshiva World and Modern Orthodoxy: The Life and Works of Rabbi Jehiel Jacob Weinberg, 1884-1966 (Oxford: Littman Library, 1999), 169-171, who characterizes R. Heller’s work as driven by a dogmatic commitment to the integrity of the Masoretic text and questions the scholarly validity of his attempts to account for all textual variants within that framework. On the polemical reception of Heller’s work among contemporaries, especially R. Yehiel Jacob Weinberg and Paul Kahle, see ibid. On the reception of Heller’s halakhic method within the American-yeshiva world, see Mordechai Gifter, “Halakhic Studies in [Rav Chaim Heller’s] ‘Le-Hikrei Halakhot’,” Talpiyot, vol. 9, no. 3-4 [=Rabbi Chaim Heller Memorial Volume] (September 1970): 913-921 (Hebrew). Rabbi Mordechai Gifter, at the time Rosh Yeshiva of the Telshe Yeshiva in Cleveland and a former student of R. Chaim Heller at Yeshiva College/RIETS in the early 1930s (prior to his subsequent entry to the world of Telshe in Lithuania), presents the work as a sustained program of conceptual halakhic analysis, marked by rigorous coordination of the Rishonim. In contrast to the reading of both Professor Jacob I. Dienstag and Professor Marc B. Shapiro, it is in Rabbi Mordechai Gifter’s reading of R. Chaim Heller that there is a reflection of the work’s reception within advanced yeshiva circles as an instance of high-level lomdus rather than as an idiosyncratic or marginal enterprise. ↑
   8. See Moshe Dembitzer, “‘To Show My People a New Type’: The Academic Chapter in the Life of Rabbi Chaim Heller,” Mekhilta, vol. 5 (February 2024): 365-382 (Hebrew). ↑
   9. “To Join Yeshiva Faculty: Dr. Chaim Heller of Berlin Will Be Professor of Bible,” The New York Times (18 September 1929): 24. ↑
   10. Jeffrey S. Gurock, The Men and Women of Yeshiva: Higher Education, Orthodoxy, and American Judaism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), 130-131, 275n21. See also “Rabbi Chaim Heller, Yeshiva U. Professor, Dead at 81,” Yeshiva University News (5 April 1960), 6-7; and Gilbert Klaperman, The Story of Yeshiva University: The First Jewish University in America (New York and London: Macmillan, 1969), 152 ↑
   11. See Yerahmiel Elimelekh (Max J.) Wohlgelernter, “Rabbi Chaim Heller: Prince of the Torah and Ruler over the Treasures of Knowledge,” ha-Pardes, vol. 4, no. 2 (May 1930): 26-30 (Hebrew); and for a later popular portrayal in the American context, see Aaron Rosmarin, “Reb Chaim Heller – One in Generations,” The Jewish Criterion, vol. 20, no. 104 (15 September 1944): 175-178. Special thanks to Shimon Steinmetz for pointing us to this article by Dr. Aaron Rosmarin. ↑
   12. See Seth Farber, “Reproach, Recognition and Respect: Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik and Orthodoxy’s Mid-Century Attitude Toward Non-Orthodox Denominations,” American Jewish History, vol. 89, no. 2 (June 2001): 193-214; Seth Farber, “Immigrant Orthodoxy’s Last Stand: The Rise of Rabbi Soloveitchik to Rosh Yeshiva,” in Immanuel Etkes, ed., Yeshivot u-Batei Midrashot: Mordechai Breuer Jubilee Volume (Jerusalem: Shazar, 2006), 417-430 (Hebrew); Seth Farber, “Immigrant Orthodoxy’s Last Stand: The Appointment of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik as Rosh Yeshivah at RIETS and the Coming-of-Age of American Orthodoxy,” in Bentsi Cohen, ed., As a Perennial Spring: A Festschrift Honoring Rabbi Dr. Norman Lamm (New York, 2013), 173-187; and earlier in Seth Farber, An American Orthodox Dreamer: Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik and Boston’s Maimonides School (Hanover, NH: Brandeis University Press, 2004). ↑
   13. See, for example, Michael A. Meyer, “The Refugee Scholars Project of the Hebrew Union College,” in Bertram W. Korn, ed., A Bicentennial Festschrift for Jacob Rader Marcus (Waltham, MA: American Jewish Historical Society, 1976), 359-375; Michoel Zylberman, “Yeshiva’s Response to World War II and Revel’s Rescue of European Refugees,” The Commentator, vol. 69, no. 4 (16 November 2004): 22-23; and most recently, Cornelia Wilhelm, The Last Generation of the German Rabbinate: German Refugee Rabbis in the United States, 1933-2010 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2024). ↑
   14. On the difficulties faced by immigrant rabbis in securing stable positions in the United States during the interwar and Depression years, including the need to obtain congregational contracts as a condition of entry and the scarcity of viable pulpits, see Jonathan D. Sarna and Zev Eleff, “The Immigration Clause that Transformed Orthodox Judaism in the United States,” American Jewish History, vol. 99, no. 3 (July 2017): 357-376. ↑
   15. Rabbi Edgar F. Magnin (1890-1984) was a prominent American Reform rabbi who served for decades as the spiritual leader of Wilshire Boulevard Temple in Los Angeles, one of the most influential Reform congregations in the United States. ↑
   16. Bereshit Rabbah 56:4; that is, a statement containing lashon hara – if it does not enter in its entirety [into the heart of its recipient], at least part of it enters. ↑
   17. “Out of the abundance of my affection for him”; a common idiom found in the sources of Mishpat Ivri. ↑
   18. Yeshiva’s founding president Rabbi Bernard Revel passed away a few months later, on December 2, 1940, in the prime of his life, at the age of fifty-five (!). For a biography from more than a half-century ago, see Aaron Rakeffet-Rothkoff, Bernard Revel: Builder of American Jewish Orthodoxy (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1972). See also Sidney B. Hoenig, “Rabbinics and Research: The Scholarship of Dr. Bernard Revel,” in Leon D. Stitskin, ed., Studies in Judaica in Honor of Dr. Samuel Belkin as Scholar and Educator (New York: Yeshiva University Press, 1972), 401-467; Harvey Horowitz and William M. Kramer, “Stamp of Approval: Oklahoma Oilman and Rosh Ha-Yeshiva Bernard Revel,” Western States Jewish History, vol. 18, no. 3 (April 1986): 256-261; Jeffrey S. Gurock, “An Orthodox Conspiracy Theory: The Travis Family, Bernard Revel, and the Jewish Theological Seminary,” Modern Judaism, vol. 19, no. 3 (October 1999): 241-253; and Moses Mescheloff, “As I Knew Him: Memories of Rabbi Dr. Bernard Revel,” in Menachem Butler and Zev Nagel, eds., My Yeshiva College: 75 Years of Memories (New York: Yashar Book, 2006), 76-80; and William L. Lee, “President Bernard Revel’s Triple Program: Inventing Jewish and Semitic Studies for the Original 1928-1929 Yeshiva College Curriculum,” in Hayyim Angel and Yitzchak Blau, eds., Rav Shalom Banayikh: Essays Presented to Rabbi Shalom Carmy by Friends and Students in Celebration of Forty Years of Teaching (Jersey City, NJ: Ktav Publishing House, 2012), 201-224. ↑
   19. This remark (dated 12 April 1940) may plausibly be connected to the negotiations then underway between Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik and Dr. Bernard Revel concerning the proposed affiliation of Heikhal Rabbeinu Haym ha-Levi, the Boston graduate-level yeshiva founded by Rabbi Soloveitchik in 1939, with RIETS and Yeshiva College. Following a period of negotiation, a formal memorandum of agreement was drafted in May 1940, envisioning the Heikhal as a New England branch of the New York institution, with coordinated academic governance and shared institutional interests. In this context, R. Chaim Heller’s reference to Dr. Revel’s sudden opposition might reflect tensions surrounding these negotiations and suggests that Heller was attempting to advocate on Rabbi Soloveitchik’s behalf before Dr. Revel. See Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, Community, Covenant, and Commitment: Selected Letters and Communications, ed. Nathaniel Helfgot (Jersey City: Ktav Publishing House, 2005), 168-169 (no. 7, “Memorandum of Agreement Between RIETS, Yeshiva College and the Graduate-Level Yeshiva in Boston Opened by Rabbi Soloveitchik”); and Samuel Pardes, “Observations on Sukkot in Boston on the Occasion of Ha-Pardes’ Jubilee,” ha-Pardes, vol. 14, no. 8 (November 1940): 27-29 (Hebrew), who describes the rapid consolidation of Orthodox communal life in Boston under Soloveitchik’s leadership, including the central role of the Heikhal, thereby providing contemporaneous evidence for the institutional significance of the Boston enterprise. See also Menachem Genack, “Rabbi Nota Greenblatt, zt”l,” Jewish Action, vol. 83, no. 2 (Winter 2022): 67-68, who notes that during the six months in which Rabbi Greenblatt studied at Heikhal Rabbeinu Haym ha-Levi, Rabbi Soloveitchik “sat opposite the sole portrait in the room – that of ‘the Zeide, Reb Chaim’.” Although the proposed affiliation with RIETS and Yeshiva College ultimately did not materialize, Rabbi Soloveitchik’s Boston enterprise continued to consolidate locally.As Maimonides School historian Seth Farber notes, on December 31, 1940, the Maimonides Educational Institute merged with Yeshivat Torat Israel and Heikhal Rabbeinu Haym ha-Levi, forming a unified institution soon relocated to a centrally situated campus serving the Orthodox communities of Dorchester, Roxbury, and Mattapan. In 1962, reflecting shifting demographic patterns in Greater Boston, the Maimonides School relocated to Brookline under the leadership of Rabbi Soloveitchik and his wife, Dr. Tonya Soloveitchik, chair of the School Committee. See Seth Farber, An American Orthodox Dreamer: Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik and Boston’s Maimonides School (Hanover, NH: Brandeis University Press, 2004), 56. See also Seth Farber, “Reproach, Recognition and Respect: Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik and Orthodoxy’s Mid-Century Attitude Toward Non-Orthodox Denominations,” American Jewish History, vol. 89, no. 2 (June 2001): 193-214; Seth Farber, “Immigrant Orthodoxy’s Last Stand: The Rise of Rabbi Soloveitchik to Rosh Yeshiva,” in Immanuel Etkes, ed., Yeshivot u-Batei Midrashot: Mordechai Breuer Jubilee Volume (Jerusalem: Shazar, 2006), 417-430 (Hebrew); Seth Farber, “Immigrant Orthodoxy’s Last Stand: The Appointment of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik as Rosh Yeshivah at RIETS and the Coming-of-Age of American Orthodoxy,” in Bentsi Cohen, ed., As a Perennial Spring: A Festschrift Honoring Rabbi Dr. Norman Lamm (New York, 2013), 173-187; and Tovah Lichtenstein, “Mrs. Soloveitchik: A Biographical Sketch,” Tradition: A Journal of Orthodox Jewish Thought, vol. 55, no. 2 (Spring 2023): 95-112. ↑
   20. The letter was written in the midst of the Second World War. ↑
   21. “Leading Torah Sages Appointed Heads of Yeshivat Rabbeinu Yitzchak Elchanan in New York: Rabbis Dr. Chaim Heller, Rabbi Yitzhak Rubinstein of Vilna, and Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik,” ha-Tsofeh (4 April 1941): 1 (Hebrew). ↑
   22. This is a reference to the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary. ↑
   23. An expression from Kabbalistic and Hasidic literature, in its fuller form: “ata qalila de-leit beih meshasha,” meaning a slight utterance devoid of substance. ↑
   24. See Ecclesiastes 1:8. ↑
   25. This photo appears in Aaron Rakeffet-Rothkoff, The Rav: The World of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, vol. 2 (Jersey City, NJ: Ktav Publishing House, 1999), 216. ↑
   26. At the time, a rumor circulated that these booklets were composed as part of a commentary on the entire Jerusalem Talmud; if such a work existed, it has not come down to us. ↑
   27. $2,000 in June 1953 is equivalent to approximately $24,386.94 in present-day value, adjusted for inflation based on the U.S. Consumer Price Index. ↑
   28. This letter was made available to us, through the courtesy of the family of R. Chaim Heller, in August 2012. ↑
   29. See Aharon Lichtenstein, “Eulogy for Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik,” Mesorah Journal, vol. 9 (1994): 8-33, esp. 24 (Hebrew). ↑
   30. The letter was printed in English translation in Joseph B. Soloveitchik and Chaim Heller, Jewish Identity: Who Is A Jew?, ed. Baruch Litvin and Sidney B. Hoenig (New York: Feldheim, 1965), 116-117, and reprinted in a slightly different translation in Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, Community, Covenant, and Commitment: Selected Letters and Communications, ed. Nathaniel Helfgot (Jersey City: Ktav Publishing House, 2005), 168-169 (#27. “On the ‘Who is a Jew?’ Question [a]”). ↑
   31. The Commentator, vol. 50, no. 1 (24 September 1959): 4. See also Jesse Sodden, “A Jewish Ideal Realized on the American Scene (Interview with Stephen Klein),” The Jewish Forum, vol. 34, no. 6 (June 1951): 105-108; and Morris Freedman, “Orthodox Sweets for Heterodox New York: The Story of Barton’s,” Commentary Magazine, vol. 13, no. 5 (May 1952): 472-480. ↑
   32. On this episode, see Jeffrey Saks, “Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik and the Israeli Chief Rabbinate: Biographical Notes (1959–1960),” Bekhol Derakheha DeAhu (BaDaD), no. 17 (September 2006): 45-67. For a detailed account of an earlier, unsuccessful candidacy and its broader implications, see Aviad Hacohen, “‘You May View the Land from a Distance, but You Shall Not Enter It’: Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik’s Candidacy for the Tel Aviv Chief Rabbinate and the Riddle of His Subsequent Refraining from Visiting Israel,” in Dov Schwartz, ed., Religious Zionism: History, Thought, Society, vol. 9 (Ramat Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press, 2023), 153-222 (Hebrew). ↑
   33. See Gerald J. Blidstein, “Rabbi Dr. Soloveitchik Eulogizes Famed Uncle, The Brisker Rav,” The Commentator, vol. 50, no. 5 (17 December 1959): 1,3. The eulogy was later published as Joseph B. Soloveitchik, “Mah Dodekh mi-Dod,” ha-Doar, vol. 43, no. 39 (27 September 1963): 752-759 (Hebrew), and reprinted in Joseph B. Soloveitchik, Besod Hayahid Vehayahad, ed. Pinchas Peli (Jerusalem: Orot, 1976), 191-253 (Hebrew). ↑
   34. Elie Wiesel, “‘The Immigration of Jewish Youth from the United States Is in the Nature of a Beautiful Dream’…: said Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, who has been mentioned as a candidate for the position of Chief Rabbi of Israel, in a conversation,” Yedioth Ahronoth Sabbath Supplement (13 November 1959): 7 (Hebrew). ↑
   35. See Jeffrey Saks, “Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik and the Israeli Chief Rabbinate: Biographical Notes (1959-1960),” Bekhol Derakheha DeAhu (BaDaD), no. 17 (September 2006): 45-67, esp. 50. ↑
   36. Elie Wiesel, “‘The Immigration of Jewish Youth from the United States Is in the Nature of a Beautiful Dream’…: said Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, who has been mentioned as a candidate for the position of Chief Rabbi of Israel, in a conversation,” Yedioth Ahronoth Sabbath Supplement (13 November 1959): 7 (Hebrew). ↑
   37. See Moshe Meisels, “The State of Israel and the Land of Israel: A Sort of Open Letter to Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik,” ha-Doar, vol. 40, no. 5 (4 December 1959): 71 (Hebrew). ↑
   38. Gerald J. Blidstein, “Rabbi Dr. Soloveitchik Eulogizes Famed Uncle, The Brisker Rav,” The Commentator, vol. 50, no. 5 (17 December 1959): 1,3. ↑
   39. These reflections were published only decades later, in Joseph B. Soloveitchik, Out of the Whirlwind: Essays on Mourning, Suffering and the Human Condition, eds. David Shatz, Joel B. Wolowelsky, and Reuven Ziegler (Hoboken, N.J: Ktav, 2003), 131-132. On this, see Dov Schwartz, “Finitude and Suffering: ‘Out of the Whirlwind’,” in From Phenomenology to Existentialism: The Philosophy of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, vol. 2 (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 227-289. ↑
   40. Published in full in Marc B. Shapiro, “Letters from the Rav,” Hakirah: The Flatbush Journal of Jewish Law and Thought, vol. 32 (2022): 135-168, at 165-166 (Hebrew). An abridged version appeared in “Rabbi Dr. Joseph B. Soloveitchik Refuses to Stand for the Office of Chief Rabbi of Israel [Letters to MK Haim-Moshe Shapira and Rabbi Reuven Katz],” ha-Doar, vo. 40, no. 19 (11 March 1960): 330 (Hebrew), and a partial English translation is found in Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, Community, Covenant, and Commitment: Selected Letters and Communications, ed. Nathaniel Helfgot (Jersey City: Ktav, 2005), 173-176 (no. 29, “Declining the Offer to Submit His Candidacy for the Position of Chief Rabbi of the State of Israel [a]”). ↑
   41. See also Menashe Unger, “What Disappointed Rabbi Soloveitchik in the Chief Rabbinate?” Tog-Morgen Journal (11 March 1960): 5 (Yiddish); Menashe Unger, “Rabbi Soloveitchik Reflects upon the Great Responsibilities of the Rabbinate,” Tog-Morgen Journal (14 March 1960): 5 (Yiddish); and Menashe Unger, “Conversation with Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, ‘The Rabbinate and that of the State Are Two Separate Domains’,” ha-Tsofeh Literary Supplement (18 March 1960): 3-4 (Hebrew). An edited translation appears in Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, Community, Covenant, and Commitment: Selected Letters and Communications, ed. Nathaniel Helfgot (Jersey City: Ktav Publishing House, 2005), 179-185 (no. 31, “On the Chief Rabbinate of Israel [c]”); ↑
   42. For the literary gift from Rabbi Jehiel Jacob Weinberg to the newlyweds, see Shaul Seidler-Feller, “‘Amru Lo HaKadosh Barukh Hu … Yodea Ani Kavanato shel Aharon Heikh Hayetah Le-Tovah’: On a Short Wedding Wish to the Lichtensteins from the Pen of Rabbi Jehiel Jacob Weinberg,” The Seforim Blog (18 June 2015), available here. ↑
   43. Our thanks are extended to Dr. Vicki Shifris and Dr. Nathan Shifris for their assistance in translating the letter. ↑
   44. R. Chaim Heller passed away at the Hospital for Joint Diseases in Manhattan (now NYU Langone Orthopedic Hospital). See “Rabbi Chaim Heller, Yeshiva U. Professor, Dead at 81,” Yeshiva University News (5 April 1960): 6-7. ↑
   45. See Aharon Benzion Shurin, “The Gaon Rabbi Chaim Heller Who Passed Away on the Eve of Passover,” Forverts (15 April 1960): 6 (Yiddish); and the testimony regarding the recitation of Kaddish attributed to Aharon Benzion Shurin’s brother, Rabbi Israel Shurin, in Hershel Schachter, Mi-Peninei ha-Rav (Jerusalem: Flatbush Beth Hamedrosh, 2005), 266 (Hebrew). ↑
   46. Samuel Pardes, “The Gaon Rabbi Chaim Heller,” ha-Pardes, vol. 34, no. 8 (May 1960): 40 (Hebrew). ↑
   47. We thank Rabbi Moshe Dembitzer for sharing an unpublished forthcoming essay on Rabbi Soloveitchik’s eulogy at Rabbi Heller’s graveside. The present English translation is based on a Hebrew rendering of the text in a forthcoming study by Moshe Dembitzer, “Words of Farewell at the Bier of Rabbi Chaim Heller,” and has been checked against the Yiddish original published by Hillel Seidman, “Rabbi Chaim Heller: His Genius in Torah and in Hokhmat Yisrael,” Tog-Morgen Journal (20 April 1960): 5 (Yiddish). See also Hillel Seidman, “The Combatant for the True Meaning of the Torah: After the Passing of Rabbi Chaim Heller,” ha-Doar, vol. 40, no. 23 (29 April 1960): 443 (Hebrew); and Hillel Seidman, “The Gaon Rabbi Chaim Heller: In His Halakhic Rulings and His Practices,” ha-Doar, vol. 40, no. 24 (6 May 1960): 460-461 (Hebrew). ↑
   48. Joseph B. Soloveitchik, “Rabbi Chaim Heller: The ‘Shmuel ha-Katan’ of Our Generation,” ha-Doar, vol. 41, no. 23 (21 April 1961): 400-405 (Hebrew), reprinted in Ohr ha-Mizrach, vol. 9. 1-2 (September 1961): 1-11 (Hebrew); and then republished under a new title in Joseph B. Soloveitchik, “Rabbi Chaim Heller,” Panim El Panim, no. 514-515 (2 April 1969): 20-25 (Hebrew); and Joseph B. Soloveitchik, “Profile of Rabbi Chaim Heller (On the Tenth Anniversary of his Passing — Eve of Passover, 5720),” Shana be-Shana (1970): 197-221 (Hebrew). It was later reprinted under the title “Peletat Sofreihem” (lit. “The Surviving Remnant of Their Scribes”) in Joseph B. Soloveitchik, Besod Hayahid Vehayahad, ed. Pinchas Peli (Jerusalem: Orot, 1976), 254-294 (Hebrew); and Joseph B. Soloveitchik, Divrei Hagut ve-Ha’arakha, ed. Moshe Krone (Jerusalem: World Zionist Organization, 1982), 137-162 (Hebrew). A translation of this essay appears in Joseph B. Soloveitchik, “A Eulogy for R. Hayyim Heller” (trans. Shalom Carmy),” in Joseph Epstein, ed., Shiurei ha-Rav: A Conspectus of the Public Lectures of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik (Hoboken, NJ: Ktav Publishing House, 1974), 46-65. ↑

    

Hirschian Humanism After the Holocaust:
An Analysis of the Approach of Rabbi Shimon Schwab
By Rabbi Shmuel Lesher

Rabbi Shmuel Lesher is a Machon Beren Kollel fellow at RIETS / Yeshiva University. Prior to completing his rabbinic ordination at RIETS, Rabbi Lesher studied at the Mirrer Yeshiva in Jerusalem and Yeshiva of Greater Washington in Silver Spring, Maryland. Rabbi Lesher lives in Washington Heights, with his wife Leora and their three children.

This is his first contribution to the Seforim Blog.

In 1959, Rabbi Shimon Schwab[1] made a unique contribution to the way his community and others commemorate the Holocaust. Shortly after he joined the rabbinate of K’hal Adath Jeshurun in Washington Heights, Manhattan, R. Schwab was asked by R. Joseph Breuer[2] to compose a special Tisha B’av kinnah for their kehillah. Although it was originally written for the KAJ community, many other congregations have adopted the custom of reciting it on Tisha B’av.[3] To be sure, there have been others who authored kinnot to commemorate the Holocaust.[4] However, it appears that, especially in America, R. Schwab’s kinnah is perhaps one of the first written by a rabbinic figure to gain widespread popularity.

In addition to his innovative Holocaust kinnah, the events of the Holocaust played a significant role in how R. Schwab interpreted and perpetuated the Torah Im Derekh Eretz philosophy to which he was heir. According to R. Schwab, Torah Im Derekh Eretz was seen by R. Samson Raphael Hirsch as the ideal model. However, openness to secular culture has historically been the minority opinion among gedolei yisrael.[5]

R. Schwab reached this conclusion after re-evaluating his position multiple times throughout his life. In a speech he delivered in 1990,[6] he recalled how the events of Kristallnacht (Nov 9, 1938 – Nov 10, 1938), and later the Holocaust, shook his belief in Torah Im Derekh Eretz to the core. How could R. Hirsch have believed the humanism of Germany would lead to an uplifted and righteous society when the same humanistic society ended up committed genocide without much protest from the “enlightened students of Schiller and Goethe?”[7] R. Hirsch must not have seen German humanistic Bildung[8] as anything more than a time-bound compromise in order to save his community from assimilation.[9] R. Schwab was referring to an essay he wrote in 1934 entitled Heimkehr ins Judentum (Homecoming To Judaism).[10] Here R. Schwab claimed R. Hirsch only intended Torah Im Derekh Eretz as a temporary allowance. This book was the first substantial rejection of Torah Im Derekh Eretz written by someone who grew up in the Hirschian community.[11]

An English version of this essay, prepared by K’hal Adath Jeshurun translator Gertrude Hirschler, appeared in 1978.[12]

Around the same time he published Heimkehr ins Judentum, R. Schwab wrote to a number of Eastern European Torah leaders asking them about the permissibility of incorporating secular studies into a yeshiva curriculum.[13] Dr. Marc B. Shapiro notes that this was yet another sign of the waning popularity of Torah Im Derekh Eretz at the time, even in Germany itself.[14] Apparently, R. Schwab, who had studied in Lithuanian yeshivot, was not convinced of the permissibility of what had been established as normative practice in his own country. Dr. Shapiro’s analysis is correct. However, consider R. Schwab’s query in light of his unequivocal rejection of Torah Im Derekh Eretz in his Heimkehr ins Judentum. Based on the dates of his letters and the responses of his interlocutors, it appears that even as he published Heimkehr ins Judentum, R. Schwab felt the viability of Torah Im Derekh Eretz was still an open question — or at least one still worthy of inquiry.[15]

Later in his life, after re-assessing R. Hirsch writings, R. Schwab came to believe that his earlier view was incorrect. In this later re-evaluation, R. Schwab felt that Hirsch did, in fact, wholeheartedly believe in the significance of humanism for society. After this realization, in 1966, R. Schwab wrote an essay entitled, “Elu ViElu: These and Those,” which showed the validity and necessity of both the “Torah Only” approach of many gedolei yisrael and the Hirschian “Torah Im Derekh Eretz” approach. R. Schwab wrote this 47-page pamphlet in the form of a series of dialogues intended as the “echoes of endless discussions amongst our searching youth.”[16]

On the 48^th anniversary of Kristallnacht, in 1986, R. Schwab echoed his previous concern, expressing that in a post-Holocaust world, although he accepted R. Hirsch’s Torah Im Derekh Erech application to science, medicine, and history, he could no longer believe in the power of culture and secular humanism.[17] Although R. Hirsch celebrated Schiller, and all the values of ethics and humanism he represented, this vision was “broken by the shattering of windows and the screaming of frightened children in the night.”[18] “We do not extend Torah Im Derekh Eretz to include philosophy, ethics, morality or humanism…No longer are we going to seek out Schiller to teach us about humanity. It no longer interests us.”[19] He therefore discouraged the study of these disciplines, stating unequivocally:

“The age of Humanism was a passing episode in the annals of history…The lessons of Kristallnacht – don’t believe there is Torah among the goyim (gentiles). Let us not make the same mistake as our ancestors, to believe there is any other ethical culture for us beside the Torah.”[20]

However, as forceful as this statement was, it is unclear if this was in fact R. Schwab’s final position. In his last comments on the matter in 1990, he argued for Torah Im Derekh Eretz as an ideal model.[21] Although he did caution about the dangers of the arts and literature influencing our moral compass, he did not vouch for a complete break with those disciplines.[22] As indicated by the title of his essay, R. Schwab believed, “Elu ViElu divrei Elokim hayim” – These and those are the words of the Living God.[23] Both the “Torah Only” approach of the majority of gedolei yisrael, and the “Torah Im Derekh Eretz” approach are of equal validity and importance for the Jewish community.[24] However, as the Holocaust demonstrated, we should be cautious when approaching secular humanism. Ultimately, there is no other true ethical code that produces an uplifted and righteous society other than the Torah. Although commitment to both disciplines – Torah and humanism – was seen by R. Hirsch as the ultimate goal, it appears that the same cannot be said for R. Schwab.[25]

Although R. Schwab apparently regained some of his conviction in Hirschian humanism, the Holocaust challenge has been posed to the Hirschian position and to religious humanism in general. How can one believe the study of the humanities can guarantee humaneness? R. Aharon Lichtenstein marshals the words of the literary critic George Steiner:

“We now know that a man can read Goethe or Rilke in the evening, that he can play Bach and Schubert, and go to his day’s work in Auschwitz. To say he has read them without understanding or that his ear is gross, is cant. In what way does this knowledge bear on literature and society, on the hope, grown almost axiomatic from the time of Plato to that of Mathew Arnold, that culture is a humanizing force, that the energies of the spirit are transverse to those of conduct?”[26]

R. Lichtenstein notes this is a “terrifying question for believers in the self-sufficiency of secular humanism, [and] a formidable one for advocates of religious humanism.”[27] In response to this challenge, R. Lichtenstein argues as long as the ultimate source of morality is the Torah and our humanism is fettered in religious conviction, religious life can gain much from the study of the humanities.[28]

We cannot know how R. Hirsch himself would respond to this challenge, however, one can certainly hear echoes of Hirschian thought in R. Lichtenstein’s defense of religious humanism.[29] According to the Hirschian authority Dayan Isidor Grunfeld, R. Hirsch argued for a religious humanism anchored by divine revelation. In fact, Grunfeld loosely translated Torah Im Derekh Eretz, the slogan most commonly associated with R. Hirsch, as “God-rooted religious humanism.”[30]

In this view, an irreligious or secular humanism is bound not to elevate man, but rather to debase him. Religious humanism, on the other hand, embraces the intrinsic dignity of man because he was created in the image of God.[31] For R. Hirsch, this principle is fundamental to his view of all of mankind joined in one universal “brotherhood.”[32] By ceasing to regard man as being of a higher and divine origin, secular humanism, paradoxically results in the diminishing of man’s value.[33]

In fact, R. Hirsch in his commentary on the Torah, argues for the intrinsic value of Torah Im Derekh Eretz, or culture, even in the face of the potential negative impact of secular culture:

“Culture starts the work of educating the generations of mankind and the Torah completes it; for the Torah is the most finished education of Man…culture in the service of morality is the first stage of Man’s return to God. For us Jews, Derekh Eretz and Torah are one. The most perfect gentleman and the most perfect Jew, to the Jewish teaching, are identical. But in the general development of mankind culture comes earlier…

But of course, where culture and civilisation are used in the service of sensuality and degeneration only gets all the greater. But still such misuse of culture does not do away with the intrinsic value and blessing of Derekh Eretz.”[34]

Although what can be called “low culture” or “degenerative humanism” corrupts Torah ideals, this does not negate the intrinsic value of “good and true culture.” Indeed, according to R. Hirsch, “Jews rejoice whenever or wherever culture elevates people to a perception of true values and to nurture goodness.”[35]

Perhaps the Hirschian response to the Holocaust challenge is that if we do not believe we are the ultimate arbiters of truth and morality, fundamentally, our value system remains sacrosanct even when it is not recognized by society, namely, even in Nazi Germany. The utter failing of a secular humanistic society does not undermine the value of a God-fettered humanism. Even after the horrors of the Holocaust, Hirschian humanism remains intact. In the words of Jacob Breuer, Torah Im Derekh Eretz is indeed a “Timeless Torah.”[36]

Notes:

Thank you to Dan Rabinowitz and the editors at the Seforim Blog for their assistance. Thank you to my father-in law R. Hanan Balk and Yehuda Geberer who shared some important sources with me. I am indebted to my rebbe and mentor R. Netanel Wiederblank in general, and in particular for his advice and insight into this topic.

[1] R. Schwab served as a rabbinic leader K’hal Adath Jeshurun from his arrival in 1958 until his passing in 1995. For biographical details on R. Schwab, see R. Moses L. Schwab, “Rav Simon Schwab: A Biography,” in Moreshet Tzvi – The Living Hirschian Legacy: Essays on ‘Torah im Derech Eretz’ and the Contemporary Hirschian Kehilla (New York: K’hal Adath Jeshurun, 1988), 45-51. For other essays in this volume, see the Table of Contents:

See also R. Moshe L. Schwab, “Biography of Rav Shimon Schwab,” in Rav Schwab on Prayer (Brooklyn: ArtScroll Mesorah, 2001), ix-xx available here; R. Eliyahu Meir Klugman, “The Ish Ha’Emes: The Man of Impeccable Integrity, Rabbi Shimon Schwab,” The Jewish Observer, vol. 28, no. 5 (Summer 1995): 11-22, available here.
[2] Rabbi Dr. Joseph Breuer, the grandson of R. Samson Raphael Hirsch, was the founding Rav of K’hal Adath Jeshurun in Washington Heights, Manhattan. For biographical details on R. Breuer, see David Kranzler and R. Dovid Landesman, Rav Breuer: His Life and His Legacy (New York: Feldheim, 1998) and Dr. Ernst J. Bodenheimer and R. Nosson Scherman, “Rav Dr. Joseph Breuer zt”l, One Year After His Passing,” The Jewish Observer, vol. 15, no. 6 (May 1981): 3-10, available here.
[3] See R. Avrohom Chaim Feuer and R. Avie Gold, eds., Tefillah L’Moshe: The Complete Tisha B’av Service (Brooklyn: Artscroll Mesorah, 1992), 392-394, who cite the background story to the kinnah from R. Schwab himself. Also see Moshe Schwab, “A Biography of Rav Shimon Schwab,” Rav Schwab on Prayer, xix, who also references the story. For the text of R. Schwab’s Holocaust Kinnah, see here, courtesy of ArtScroll/Mesorah.
[4] For other kinnot composed for the Holocaust, see Mordechai Meir, “Zakhor Na Ha-Bikhiot Bi-Tahom HaGoyot: Kinnot L’zekher HaShoah,” Akadamot, vol. 9 (2000): 77-99 (Hebrew), available here; and Jacob J. Schacter, “Holocaust Commemoration and Tish’a be-Av: The Debate Over ‘Yom ha-Sho’a’,” Tradition: A Journal of Orthodox Jewish Thought, vol. 41, no. 2 (Summer 2008): 164-197, available here, especially 194-195n36-41 for sources on R. Joseph B. Soloveitchik’s position. See also Jacob J. Schacter, “The Rav and the Tisha B’Av Kinot,” in Zev Eleff, ed., Mentor of Generations: Reflections on Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik (Jersey City: Ktav, 2008), 303-314, available here, and earlier in Jacob J. Schacter, “Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik zt”l on the Tisha B’Av Kinos,” Jewish Action, vol. 54, no. 4 (Summer 1994): 11-12, available here.

[5] Anonymous, “A Letter Regarding ‘the Frankfurt Approach’,” ha-Ma’ayan, vol. 6, no. 4 (1966): 4-7 (Hebrew)

A translation of this anonymous essay appears in Shnayer Z. Leiman, “From the Pages of Tradition – R. Shimon Schwab: A Letter Regarding the “Frankfurt’ Approach,” Tradition: A Journal of Orthodox Jewish Thought, vol. 31, no. 3 (Spring 1997): 71-77, available here. Dr. Leiman writes in 77n4 that members of ha-Ma’ayan’s editorial board confirmed his suspicion that the Anonymous author was R. Shimon Schwab.
[6] R. Shimon Schwab, “Torah Im Derech Eretz – A Second View,” in Selected Speeches: A Collection of Addresses and Essays on Hashkafah, Contemporary Issues and Jewish History (New York: C.I.S. Publishers, 1991), 236-252, the transcript of an address delivered at K’hal Adath Jeshurun on February 19, 1990.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Referring to the German tradition of self-formation through acculturation and education attributed to Wilhelm Von Humboldt (1791-1810).
[9] R. Shimon Schwab, “Torah Im Derech Eretz – A Second View,” in Selected Speeches: A Collection of Addresses and Essays on Hashkafah, Contemporary Issues and Jewish History (New York: C.I.S. Publishers, 1991), 239.
[10] R. Shimon Schwab, Heimkehr ins Judentum (Homecoming To Judaism) (Frankfurt: Hermon-Verlag, 1934; German).
[11] Marc B. Shapiro, Between The Yeshiva World and Modern Orthodoxy: The Life and Works of Jehiel Jacob Weinberg 1884-1966 (Portland: Littman Library, 1999), 152. Dr. Shapiro notes that one of the first articles written by the great Jewish historian Jacob Katz was a review of Heimkehr ins Judentum. See Jacob Katz, “Umkher oder Rückkehr – Review of ‘Heimkehr ins Judentum’, by Simon Schwab,” Nahalat Tsevi, vol. 5 (1935): 89-96, available here; and Jacob Katz, With My Own Eyes: The Autobiography of an Historian, trans. Ziporah Brody (Hanover, NH: New England Universities Press, 1995), 96.
[12] R. Shimon Schwab, Heimkehr ins Judentum (Homecoming to Judaism), trans. Gertrude Hirschler (New York, 1978).
[13] See Marc B. Shapiro, Between The Yeshiva World and Modern Orthodoxy: The Life and Works of Jehiel Jacob Weinberg 1884-1966 (Portland: Littman Library, 1999), 152, who notes that a copy of the original letter exists in the Joseph Rozin Archive, Yeshiva University. The four Eastern European rabbis who are known to have responded in writing are R. Elhanan Wasserman, R. Barukh Ber Leibowitz, R. Avraham Yitzhak Bloch, and R. Yosef Rozen. Their replies are printed in Yehuda (Leo) Levi, Shaarei Talmud Torah (Jerusalem: Feldheim, 1981), 296-312 (Hebrew) and R. Bloch’s response was first published in Proceedings of the Association of Orthodox Jewish Scientists, vol. 1 (New York: AOJS, 1966), 107-112, available here. For more on the background of R. Schwab’s letter and the responses he received, see Jacob J. Schacter, “Torah u-Madda Revisited: The Editor’s Introduction,” The Torah u-Madda Journal, vol. 1 (1989): 1-22, available here, especially 15n1-2; Yehuda (Leo) Levi, “Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch-Myth and Fact,” Tradition: A Journal of Orthodox Jewish Thought, vol. 31, no. 3 (Spring 1997): 5-22, esp. 11, available here, and Marc B. Shapiro, “Torah im Derekh Erez in the Shadow of Hitler,” The Torah u-Madda Journal, vol. 14 (2006-2007): 84-96, esp. 85-86,95 available here.
[14] See Marc B. Shapiro, Between The Yeshiva World and Modern Orthodoxy: The Life and Works of Jehiel Jacob Weinberg 1884-1966 (Portland: Littman Library, 1999), 152.
[15] There seems to be some discrepancies among those who record the story. Marc B. Shapiro dates the letter to 1933, whereas Jacob J. Schacter says it was 1934. Most surprising, is R. Dr. Norman Lamm’s assertion that the question was posed from America. See R. Norman Lamm, Torah Umadda: The Encounter of Religious Learning and Worldly Knowledge in the Jewish Tradition (Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson, 1990), 39. Either way, contrary to what Dr. Levi writes that R. Schwab was still a student in a Lithuanian yeshiva when he posed the question, R. Schwab had already left the Mir Yeshiva by 1931. By September of 1933 he had already accepted a rabbinic position in Ichenhausen, Bavaria. See Moshe L. Schwab, “Biography of Rav Shimon Schwab,” Rav Schwab on Prayer, x-xi. It appears more likely that R. Schwab sent his letters as he started making arrangements to open a yeshiva in Bavaria. This is, in fact, how I heard the story from R. Dovid Landesman, R. Breuer’s biographer. See his R. Dovid Landesman, There Are No Basketball Courts In Heaven (McKeesport, PA: Jewish Educational Workshop, 2010), 142-143. Nevertheless, there is reason to believe that Dr. Levi’s record of the story should be the most accurate. In addition to publishing the four responses to R. Schwab, Dr. Levi writes in his Torah Study: A Survey of Classic Sources on Timely Issues (New York: Feldheim, 2002), 363n13, available here, that R. Schwab himself shared R. Yosef Rozen’s response with him personally. It is unlikely that Dr. Levi would not have gotten the context of the letters accurately from R. Schwab. Perhaps one can suggest in Dr. Levi’s defense, that R. Schwab may have posed the question at least twice. Once when he was a yeshiva student in Lithuania and then again in writing later when opening a yeshiva in Bavaria.
[16] It was published by Philipp Feldheim, Inc., and included a brief preface by R. Dr. Joseph Breuer. See also the related essay by R. Joseph Breuer, “Torah im Derech Eretz: A Hora’at Sha’ah?” Mitteilungen, vol. 26 (August – September 1965): 1-2 (German), and then translated into Hebrew as R. Joseph Breuer, “Torah ‘im Derekh Erez. —Hora’at Sha’ah?” ha-Ma’ayan, vol. 6, no. 4 (1966): 1-3 (Hebrew). See also Shnayer Z. Leiman, “Rabbinic Responses to Modernity,” Judaic Studies, no. 5 (Fall 2007): 1-122, available here, especially pp. 57-96 on R. Samson Raphael Hirsch, and esp. 84-85n122 on this article by R. Breuer. It is beyond the scope of this essay to explore this article by R. Schwab.
[17] R. Shimon Schwab, “Kristallnacht: A Historical Perspective,” in Selected Writings: A Collection of Addresses and Essays on Hashkafah, Jewish History and Contemporary Issues (New York: C.I.S, 1988), 81-87. See also R. Shimon Schwab, “Fifty Year After Kristallnacht,” in Selected Speeches: A Collection of Addresses and Essays on Hashkafah, Contemporary Issues and Jewish History (New York: C.I.S. Publishers, 1991), 30-36, the transcript of an address delivered at K’hal Adath Jeshurun on October 30, 1988.
[18] R. Shimon Schwab, “Kristallnacht: A Historical Perspective,” in Selected Writings: A Collection of Addresses and Essays on Hashkafah, Jewish History and Contemporary Issues (New York: C.I.S, 1988), 84-86.

For further on R. Samson Raphael Hirsch and Friedrich von Schiller, see the annotated translation of R. Samson Raphael Hirsch’s address delivered at “the Celebration of the Israelitischen Religionsgesellschaft’s School in Frankfurt am Main on November 9, 1859 on the Eve of the Schiller Festival,” which was first translated to English in Marc B. Shapiro, “Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch and Friedrich von Schiller,” Torah u-Madda Journal, vol. 15 (2008-2009): 172-187, available here. Several years later, in 2012, the official publication committee of R. Samson Raphael Hirsch’s writings for the Hirschian community published an English translation of R. Samson Raphael Hirsch, “Address Delivered on the Eve of the Schiller Centenary,” in The Collected Writings of Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, vol. 9: Timeless Hashkafah (New York: Rabbi Dr. Joseph Breuer Foundation, 2012), 137-152, with the translation having been decades earlier by Gertrude Hirschler.
[19] R. Shimon Schwab, “Kristallnacht: A Historical Perspective,” in Selected Writings: A Collection of Addresses and Essays on Hashkafah, Jewish History and Contemporary Issues (New York: C.I.S, 1988), 86.
[20] Ibid. Also see Rav Schwab on Prayer, 54 where R. Schwab noted on November 10th, 1990, on the anniversary of Kristallnacht, that “this nation [Germany] of poets and thinkers’ was, at its core, really nothing but a horde of highly organized wild animals. All their developments in medicine, science, art, music, and philosophy did not make them one iota more human.”
[21] R. Shimon Schwab, “Torah Im Derech Eretz – A Second View,” in Selected Speeches: A Collection of Addresses and Essays on Hashkafah, Contemporary Issues and Jewish History (New York: C.I.S. Publishers, 1991), 236-252. In fact, in his Ma’ayan Beit Ha-Shoevah (Brooklyn: ArtScroll Mesorah, 1994), Parshat Yitro, 194 (Hebrew) he takes a more humanistic approach to explain the very same Midrash he mentioned as the lesson of Kristallnacht – “If a person tells you there is Torah among the nations of the world, do not believe him. However, if a person tells you there is wisdom among the gentiles, believe him (Eicha Rabba 2:13).
[22] R. Shimon Schwab, “Torah Im Derech Eretz – A Second View,” in Selected Speeches: A Collection of Addresses and Essays on Hashkafah, Contemporary Issues and Jewish History (New York: C.I.S. Publishers, 1991), 246.
[23] A reference to Eruvin 13b.
[24] R. Shimon Schwab, These and Those (New York: Feldheim, 1966), 40-42.
[25] For more on the development of R. Schwab’s position vis a vis Torah Im Derekh Eretz as well as his criticisms of Modern Orthodoxy and Torah u-Madda, see Zev Eleff, “American Orthodoxy’s Lukewarm Embrace of the Hirschian Legacy, 1850-1939,” Tradition: A Journal of Orthodox Jewish Thought, vol. 45, no. 3 (Fall 2012): 35-53, available here; and Zev Eleff, “Between Bennett and Amsterdam Avenues: The Complex American Legacy of Samson Raphael Hirsch, 1939-2013,” Tradition: A Journal of Orthodox Jewish Thought, vol. 46, no. 4 (Winter 2013): 8-27, esp. 20-26, available here.
[26] George Steiner, Language and Silence: Essays, 1958-1966 (London: Faber and Faber, 1967), 15-16.
[27] R. Aharon Lichtenstein, “Torah and General Culture: Confluence and Conflict,” in Jacob J. Schacter, ed., Judaism’s Encounter with Other Cultures – Rejection or Integration? (Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson, Inc, 1997), 217-292, quote at 316.
[28] Ibid., 317.
[29] Ionically, R. Lichtenstein was critical of R. Hirsch’s humanism. He wrote that, “it is precisely the sense of accommodation and concession – at times, even apologetics – that is persistent, if not pervasive. The humanism is genuine and genuinely Jewish; and yet at many points, the sense that we are dealing with an element that has been engrafted is inescapable.” See R. Aharon Lichtenstein, “Legitimization of Modernity: Classical and Contemporary,” in Moshe Z. Sokol, ed., Engaging Modernity: Rabbinic Leaders and the Challenge of the Twentieth Century (Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson, Inc., 1997), 3-33, quote at 30. See also R. Aharon Lichtenstein, “‘Mah Enosh’: Reflections on the Relation between Judaism and Humanism,” Torah u-Madda Journal, vol. 14 (2005-2006): 1-61, available here, where although he does not quote R. Samson Raphael Hirsch, he does quote from his son in Dr. Mendel Hirsch, Humanism and Judaism, trans. J. Gilbert (London: Beddo Press, 1928), at 51n2. See also Mendel Hirsch, “Humanism and Judaism,” in Jacob Breuer, ed., Fundamentals of Judaism: Selections from the works of Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch and outstanding Torah-true thinkers (New York: The Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch Society, 1949), 167-179, available here. This critique predates R. Lichtenstein. See Gershom Scholem, “Politik der Mystik, Zu Isaac Breuer’s ‘Neuen Kusari’,” Jüdische Rundschau, vol. 39, no. 57 (17 July 1934): 1-2 (German), available here and cited in Mordechai Breuer, The Torah Im Derekh Eretz of R. S.R. Hirsch (New York: Feldheim, 1970), 61n117, available here.
[30] Dayan Isidor Grunfeld, Introduction to Horeb (London: Soncino, 1962), xciii.
[31] See R. Akiva’s statement in Avot (3:14), “Beloved is man for he was created in the image [of God].”
[32] R. Samson Raphael Hirsch, The Pentateuch, trans. Isaac Levy (London: L. Honig & Sons, 1959), Genesis 5:1.
[33] Dayan Isidor Grunfeld, Judaism Eternal, vol. 1: S.R. Hirsch – The Man and His Mission (London: Soncino, 1956), xx.
[34] R. Samson Raphael Hirsch, The Pentateuch, Genesis 3:11.
[35] Ibid.
[36] See the title of Jacob Breuer, ed., Timeless Torah: An Anthology of the Writings of Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch (New York: The Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch Society, 1957).

Zerachya Licht, “חז״ל ופולמס חנוכה,” and Marc Shapiro, “The Hanukkah Miracle,” discuss the 19th-century controversy regarding the polyglot, Chaim Zelig Slonimsky, and the connection, or lack thereof, the miracle of the candles burning for eight days. Licht discusses Slonimsky in more depth in a two-part post, “Chaim Zelig Slonimsky and the Diskin Family,” part 1 and part 2.   Marc also discusses a potential Maccabean Psalm in his article here.

Mitchell First traces the history and spelling of two terms associated with Chanukah,  “The Identity and Meaning of the Chashmonai,” “The Meaning of the Name Maccabee,” for an earlier post by Dan Rabinowitz, on the latter term, see here.  First recently published his latest book, Words for the Wise: Sixty-Two Insights on Hebrew, Holidays, History and Liturgy.

A recurring theme of articles in the secular and Jewish presses is whether playing dreidel has any sources and if it is even fun. For example, Howard Jacobson, who won the 2010 Man Booker prize in a New York Times editorial, isn’t a fan. “How many years did I feign excitement when this nothing of a toy was produced? The dreidel would appear, and the whole family would fall into some horrible imitation of shtetl simplicity, spinning the dreidel and pretending to care which character was uppermost when it landed. Who did we think we were – the Polish equivalent of the Flintstones?” Marc Tracy, in Tablet Magazine, expressed his sentiment in his post, “The Unbearable Dumbness of Dreidel.” Although this year, two articles in Tablet, “Adapt, Adopt, Subvert, Survive” and “The Miracle of the Dreidel,” argue for the contemporary relevance of the custom.  For our discussion, see “Chanukah Customs and Sources.” For another discussion regarding dreidel and other Chanukah customs, see “The Customs Associated with Joy and their More Obscure Sources.” Another form of Chanukah gameplay, cards, is dealt with in “The Custom of Playing Cards on Chanukah.” The post highlights an important, often overlooked, source for Jewish customs, the memoir of Pauline Wengeroff, Rememberings: The World of a Russian-Jewish Women in the Nineteenth-Century.

Eliezer Brodt tackles the missing tractate for Chanukah in “The Chanukah Omission,” and with an update in his recent talk, available here.  (And a discussion of the other lesser known tractate that implicates Chanukah and an example of censorship.)The Seforimblog, in 2006, published his first post, “A Forgotten Work on Chanukah, חנוכת הבית,” discusses an obscure Chanukah-related work, Chanukas ha-Bayis, cited by Magen Avraham. Subsequently, Eliezer wrote dozens of articles for the Seforimblog and his Ph.D. dissertation on the Magen Avraham. The serious deficiencies of another work on Chanukah, Mitzva Ner Ish u-Beyoto, are highlighted in a review by Akiva Shamesh.  Shamesh deals with the “famous” question of Bet Yosef, why there are eight and not seven nights of Chanukah, in another book review, “Yemi Shemonah.“

Finally, the subject of Greek Wisdom is apprised in Eliyahu Krakowski’s article, “How much Greek in ‘Greek Wisdom.'”

This year, as many, Chanukah coincides with Christmas. For our original bibliography on the topic of the Jewish response to Christmas, otherwise referred to as Nitel, see here. That post should be updated to include Rebecca Scharbach, “The Ghost in the Privy: On the Origins of Nittel Nacht and Modes of Cultural Exchange,” Jewish Studies Quarterly 20 (2013), pp. 340-373. Marc Shapiro’s lecture on the topic is available on YouTube. And for an interesting Christmas card by Edmund Wilson, see Elliot Horowitz’s post, “Edmund Wilson, Hebrew, Christma, and the Talmud.” Horowitz’s other posts include one on Bugs Bunny, Isaiah Berlin on Meir Berlin (Bar-Ilan) and Saul Lieberman, non-Jewish reactions to the synagogue, a discussion of the historical application of Amalek, and regarding reading Biblical books to children.

Lag B’Omer through the eyes of a Litvak in 1925[*]
By Shimon Szimonowitz

Dov Mayani (1903-1952)

A Static and Evolving Chag

Lag B’Omer has infiltrated Jewish culture as a bona fide holiday. While the day is celebrated throughout the Jewish world, it tends to take on added significance in Eretz Yisrael. This age-old disparity has seen a little easement, probably as a result of enhanced communication between the Promised Land and the rest of the world, but the difference is still obvious.

R. Chaim Elazar Shapira of Munkács[1] (1868-1937) states, as a point of fact, “It has been the custom for hundreds of years in the holy land, especially in Meron, to make se’udos accompanied by dancing and music on Lag B’Omer. He goes on to state that conversely, in Chutz L’Aretz, although Chasidim do make Se’udos, “to also have music and dancing as in Meron would be very bizarre[2] since it is not practiced in our lands.”[3] There is no question that a lot has changed since the publication of that Teshuva in 1922.[4]

The purpose of this article is to travel back in time and view Lag B’Omer through the eyes of a Lithuanian Yeshivah student studying in the Chevron Yeshivah in 1925. By comparing his attitude to the festivities to the ones prevalent currently, we can bear witness to the evolution that Lag B’Omer has undergone outside of Eretz Yisrael in the last hundred years. At the same time, it will underscore how little it has changed in Eretz Yisrael.

On his first Lag B’Omer in Eretz Yisrael,[5] in May of 1925, Dov Mayani (1903-1952)[6] penned a letter[7] to his close friend Ari Wohlgemuth[8] who was in Europe at the time.[9] In exquisite prose,[10] Mayani vividly describes the Lag B’Omer celebration in Eretz Yisrael. One can sense surprise and even a measure of bewilderment which Mayani in turn thought he would provoke in his friend back home as well.

Dr. Joseph Wohlgemuth – Ari’s father

On one hand, we see from this letter that very little has changed in almost a century regarding how Lag B’Omer is celebrated in Eretz Yisrael. On the other hand, we see how much has changed in the rest of the world. Today we are accustomed to the festivities in Meron and we see similar events taking place all over, even outside of Eretz Yisrael. What was entirely novel to a Lithuanian Yeshiva student and his German counterpart in 1925 has now become the norm in many circles.

The letter includes many other interesting and valuable tidbits of information regarding the Chevron Yeshiva,[11] but for the purpose of this article we will focus only on the portion concerning Lag B’Omer.

Presented below is a translation of said excerpt of the letter.

The letter

B’Ezras HaShem, Chevron Ir HaKodesh Tibaneh V’Sikonen, Tuesday- Behar Bechukosai

Chavivi!

[Following several handwritten pages concerning various important matters, Mayani continues…] Now I will write to you about our life [in Chevron] … Let me now go over to lighter matters.[12] Today is Lag B’Omer. Today is the day that the entire Yeshiva was desperately[13] waiting for, since they are now able to remove the mask[14] of hair which was covering their faces. You should know that here [in Eretz Yisrael] there are more stringent customs. Starting from Pesach, no man may raise a hand to touch his beard.[15] [The beard] grows and increases until it matures; the hair sprouts and there is no respite from it.[16]  Picture for yourself, that even mine [=my beard] got big and wide, and I already have an idea what I will look like in the future.

Dov Mayani with his friend Yitzchak Hutner in 1928

Rabbi Dov Mayani in his later years

And now on to the topic of the fires… You should know that here there is a custom of lighting a bonfire on Lag B’Omer. And what do they do? They light a bonfire and all the people of the moshav gather next to it and they sing and dance. The source of the custom seems to be in Kabala but it used to have a different character.[17]

Lag B’Omer is the Hilula [lit. a celebration] of Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai, the anniversary of his death. It is brought in the Zohar that his disciples would come to his grave and light candles in his memory and they would spend the day as a quasi-holiday.[18] The Mekubalim in the days of the holy Ari z”l [R. Yitzchak Luria (1534-1572)] renewed the custom and through the influence of Chasidim and their entire sect[19] it was adopted by the entire nation. It is self-understood what kind of form it has already taken on by now…

On the day [of Lag B’Omer] they gather from the entire land [Eretz Yisrael], mostly from the Chasidim, Sefardim, and the Bucharim, at the grave of Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai in Meron, near Tzefas, and they make a big fire and they light candles and oil; all that they can get their hands on.[20] They throw all kinds of clothes into the fire, expensive items, and notes with requests on them.[21] This custom, although opposed by many of the Gedolim, still remained strong, and the masses believe in it and in its powers[22] It used to be a Yom Tov of Chasidim and Anshei Ma’aseh, but now it has the character described above, and it is certainly not appropriate to be excited about it.

From all corners of the Land, they come with their sick children, and with the young ones which are to get a haircut for the first time[23] and the hair is then thrown into the fire etc. They break out in dances and circles.[24] In short, these festivities are celebrated with magnificence and splendor.[25]

Lighting of smaller fires is also done throughout the land. In Chevron the townspeople made a fire last night and they invited the entire Yeshiva. The Hanhala [management] of the Yeshiva itself with the Rav [Rabbi Moshe Mordechai Epstein (1866-1933)] at its helm didn’t respond to the invitation at all, and declared that it totally doesn’t recognize it [= the festivities]. But many of the Yeshiva students came to see, and I[26] too was among the onlookers.

They went climbed up on to the roof after Ma’ariv and lit a large bonfire at the center and sang a Chasidic song. The students of the Yeshiva joined in spontaneously and many of them danced around the fire. It was an amazing sight, albeit a bit wild and lacking Jewish flavor. In didn’t find favor in my eyes at all, but it was interesting to watch.

Mainly it was a Chag for their children[27] who went around with fireworks[28] in their hands and with beaming and shining faces.

Analysis

[1] “…here there are more stringent customs…”

Mayani comments that in Eretz Yisroel there are more stringent customs regarding shaving during Sefirah. In HaHar Hatov (p. 49) it is suggested in a footnote that it can be deduced from this comment that in Berlin [whence Wohlgemuth hailed] they were lax regarding the customs of the Sefirah days.

I believe this to be in error. It seems that Mayani was referring to the difference in custom between Lithuania and Eretz Yisroel. In Lithuania, religious Jews refrained from shaving only from Rosh Chodesh Iyar until Lag B’Omer [18 days] and then again from Lag B’Omer until the Sh’loshes Yemei Hagbala [13 days], thus never allowing the beard to grow too long. See Aruch HaShulchan (493:6) where he confirms this to be the custom in Lithuania”.[29] In Eretz Yisrael, the Yeshiva students felt compelled to conform to the local custom which was to observe Sefirah from Pesach until Lag B’Omer. Since they couldn’t shave from Erev Pesach, it forced them to grow their beard for twice as long as they had been accustomed to in Europe.

Regarding laxity with Sefirah, R. Eliezer Brodt pointed me in the direction of a letter dated May 10, 1938, in which Ernst Guggenheim, a French Yeshiva student who traveled to study in the Yeshiva in Mir, reports “everyone has a dirty beard, but in other yeshivot, like the one in Brisk, for example, the whole Yeshiva, with the Rosh Yeshiva in the lead, shaves during this period” (Letters from Mir: A Torah World in the Shadow of the Shoah pp. 127-128). Guggenheim writes again about his beard on May 29^th (ibid p. 137) “I wear a quite gorgeous beard at this moment, six-week-old and cleaned on Lag B’Omer. It’s not simply a piece around the chin, but a collar à la Hirshler before he trimmed it. Moreover, soon I will make it disappear even though it is already popular at the Yeshiva.” See Nefesh HaRav p. 191.

[2] “Lag B’Omer is the Hilula of Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai, the anniversary of his death”

Lag B’Omer is not mentioned anywhere in the Mishnah or Talmud. An early reference to it can be found in the name of R. Zerachya HaLevi of Gerona (c. 1125-1186). Accordingly, R. Zerachya was in possession of an old Sephardic manuscript of the Talmud which alludes to the fact that Rabbi Akiva’s disciples ceased to die on that date.[30] R. Menachem HaMeiri (1249 – 1306) is probably one of the earliest sources to explicitly mention the day of Lag B’Omer. [31] Despite that fact that these Provencal sages[32] do mention this day as the end of the mourning period, they do not mention it as a reason to celebrate it in any shape or form.

There is also very little in the classical Poskim regarding the origins of Lag B’Omer. R. Moshe Isserls (1520-1572), based on Maharil, simply states that one must ‘celebrate a bit’[33] on Lag B’Omer.[34] The Vilna Gaon (1720-1797) indicates that the reason for celebration is the fact that the disciples of Rabbi Akiva ceased to die on that day.[35] This would also appear to be the reason given by the Maharil. The problem is, as pointed out by R. Aryeh Leibish Balchubar (1801-1881), that the reason they stopped dying is because there were none left. Why would this be a reason to celebrate?[36]

R. Avraham Gombiner (c. 1635-1682) relates in the name of R. Chaim Vital (1542-1620), that someone once said Nachem [a prayer with an expression of mourning] on Lag B’Omer and was punished.[37] It would seem that this event was unrelated to Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai or his place of burial. R. Aaron Alfandari (c. 1700–1774) questions this omission and points out that the reason why the man was punished is only because he said Nachem on the Hilula of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai and not because it was Lag B’Omer… if it was because of Lag B’Omer”.[38] R. Menachem Mendel Auerbach (1620-1689) prefaces the abovementioned story by saying that it is the custom in Eretz Yisrael to visit the graves of Rabbi Shimon and his son Rabbi Elazar on Lag B’Omer. He identifies the anonymous man mentioned by R. Gombiner as a Rabbi Avrohom HaLevi, and adds that R. Yitzchak Luria delivered a message from Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai to R. Avrohom HaLevi, that the latter is going to be severely punished for saying Nachem on the day of “my happiness”.[39]

Regarding R. Alfandari’s argument that Lag B’Omer was not the reason for R. Avrohom Halevi’s punishment, but rather due to the Hilula of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, R. Chaim Yosef Dovid Azulai (Chida, 1724-1806) suggests that Lag B’Omer and Hilula of Rabbi Shimon are one and the same. In other words, the source of celebration on Lag B’Omer was the fact that it was the Hilula of Rabbi Shimon. Still, R. Alfandari viewed these as mutually exclusive. In any event R. Azulai also concedes that the opposition to saying Nachem was confined to the place of Rabbi Shimon’s burial. Interestingly enough, R. Azulai ends his remarks by praising R. Gombiner’s ambiguous wording since it leads to what he sees as a positive conclusion, that one should celebrate on Lag B’Omer regardless of whether he is at the gravesite of Rabbi Shimon or not. He merely points out that the intensity of the celebration is greater near the gravesite.

Although we now know that Lag B’Omer is the Hilula of Rabbi Shimon, we are still left in the dark regarding the exact reason for celebration. The most popular explanation is the one which Mayani mentions here, that it was the anniversary of Rabbi Shimon’s death. R. Azulai mentions this possibility, but elsewhere in his writings he questions it. R. Dovid Avitan in his notes on the Birkei Yosef, argues that R. Azulai’s conclusion was that it was not the anniversary of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai’s death. This is corroborated by a more reliable manuscript of R. Shmuel Vital’s (1598 – 1677) writings. Instead R. Azulai suggests that perhaps Lag B’Omer was the day that Rabbi Shimon began studying Torah at the feet of Rabbi Akiva.

Lag B’Omer has confounded many halachic authorities throughout the generations.[40] For a more comprehensive treatment of this subject, the reader is referred to R. Eliezer Brodt’s Seforim Blog article: http://seforim.blogspot.co.il/2011/05/printing-mistake-and-mysterious-origins. and for a great lecture on the subject, Professor Shnayer Leiman’s the strange history of Lag B’Omer is strongly recommended.

[3] “…at the grave of Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai in Meron, near Tzefas…”

It is safe to say that nowadays the name Meron garners instant recognition among most religious Jews. Yet in 1925 this was apparently not the case. Mayani felt compelled to identify Meron as being situated “near Tzefas.” The Chasam Sofer, in his teshuva about the Lag B’Omer festivities, writes that “they gather from all over in the holy city of Tzefas to celebrate the Hilula of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai”.[41] Throughout the entire Teshuva he fails to mention Meron by name. While it is true that in those days they would gather from all over the Land and converge in Tzefas and then go on to Meron, as recorded by Rabbi Menachem Mendel of Kaminetz (1800-1873) in his Koros Ha’itim, it is still noteworthy that the Chasam Sofer does not mention the name of the town. When discussing the custom of gathering in Meron on Lag B’Omer, R. Aryeh Leibish Balchubar also feels a need to add that this takes place in the village Meron “which is near Tzefas”.[42]

[4] “They throw all kinds of clothes into the fire, expensive items… opposed by many of the Gedolim…”

The custom of throwing expensive clothes into the fire in honor of Rabbi Shimon is well documented. One of the earliest descriptions available is found in a letter written by a student of R. Chaim Ben-Attar (1696-1743) in which he writes that R. Chaim went to Meron the day after Purim of 1742 and “lit many clothes” in honor of the Tanna.[43] R. Menachem Mendel of Kaminetz (1800-1873) is an early eyewitness who describes how this was practiced on Lag B’Omer itself. He relates that they would sell the honor of igniting the fire for a large sum of money and the one who bought it would take a large scarf in good wearing condition, light it, and throw it into a bowl of oil. Additional historical accounts of burning clothes are compiled in the introduction to the 2011 edition of R. Shmuel Heller’s Kevod Malachim.

This custom merited the ire of R. Yosef Shaul Nathanson (1808–1875). In a Teshuva concerning an event that took place in 1842, R. Nathanson writes that he has a lot to say about the custom of burning clothing in honor of Rabbi Shimon on Lag B’Omer. He maintains that “they are transgressing the prohibition against wasting[44]  and are engaging in superstitious practices[45] which are forbidden”. He adds that this custom was obviously not practiced in the days of the Ari z”l and he is certain that R. Yosef Karo would not have allowed it. R. Nathanson ends off by saying that he guarantees that if they were to take all that money [wasted on the burning of clothes] and use it to support the poor of Eretz Yisrael, Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai would derive much more pleasure from it.[46] These very sentiments are also expressed by the Sephardic Rishon L’Tzion, R. Rafael Yosef Chazan (c.1741 – 1820).[47]

In 1874 the Chief Rabbi of Tzefas, R. Shmuel Heller (1803-1884), authored a pamphlet named Kevod Malachim, in which he vehemently defended this practice and thereby encouraged its continuation despite of the abovementioned opposition. For a more comprehensive treatment of this fascinating subject, the reader is referred to Prof. Daniel Sperber’s Minhagei Yisroel vol. 8 pp. 72-83.

It is also possible that Mayani was referring to the Teshuva of R. Moshe Sofer (1762–1839) in which he takes issue in general with the festivities in Meron. According to R. Moshe Sofer, turning a day on which no miracle occurred into a Chag, constitutes a transgression of the commandment against adding to the Torah.[48]  Allusion to the lighting of the fires is treated with similar disapproval.[49]

Kever of Rabbi Shmuel Heller

[5] “It used to be a Yom Tov of Chasidim and Anshei Ma’aseh…”

Mayani obviously did some research on Lag B’Omer. In a letter dated April 25, more than a week before Lag B’Omer, he writes:

Here in the Land, Lag B’Omer, the anniversary of the death of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai and many of his disciples, is a great Chag for the people of the Yishuv. Originally it was [intended] only for the Talmidim and people of a high caliber, but now ‘that there are scarcely any men of high caliber and there is an influx of big-mouths and strongmen’, it has lost it pure character. I heard from people in Jerusalem that very few of the very pious[50] visit the village of Meron on that day.[51]

This sentiment that Lag B’Omer used to be celebrated in a more spiritual manner in earlier times is found in some other sources as well. Among others, R. Nathanson (שואל ומשיב מהדורה חמישאה סימן לט) argues that in all probability back in the days of the Ari z”l, they would only learn by the graveside of Rabbi Shimon and recite prayers so that he should awaken the mercy of Heaven.

[6] “…sang a Chasidic song…”

From his letter one gets the sense that Mayani was a bit prejudiced against chasidim as was typical of a Lithuanian Misnaged. This happens to be far from the truth. On his farewell trip leaving Europe he stayed by a Chasid who was an Agudah leader and in addition to discussing with him Torah topics, Dov Mayani learned many Modzhitzer Nigunim during his stay. According to his daughter this encounter made a deep impression on Mayani’s musical style.[52] She also says that in general her father had an affinity toward Chasidus.[53]

Nevertheless, Mayani can be critical at times of what he called a “Chasid Shoteh”. In a letter describing his fellow passengers on the boat trip to Eretz Yisrael, Mayani describes a Belzer Chasid whose entire Judaism was encompassed in his sidelocks, his beard, his long gabardine, despised Lithuanians, and minimized interaction with any other kind of people (תמצא לו החברה חסיד בלזאי שוטה, אשר כל יהדותו בפאותיו וזקנו וקפוטתו תלויות, ושונא הליטווקים תכלית שנאה וממעט מכל שיח ושיג עם אנשים אחרים.). On the other hand, in that same letter, he describes a Chasid of Chabad in glowing terms, as someone he considers to be a Lamdan and an important man… (גם חסיד ליטאי, מחסידי חב”ד איש למדן וחשוב בעירתו אשר ירד מגדולתו ועשרו לרגל המלחמה ובעוד כוחו עמו עולה לארץ ללמד בה ולהאחז בה).

Later in his life he came even closer to Chasidus. His daughter Rivka states that despite his Lithuanian upbringing and education, her father possessed a Chasidic soul.[54] He especially appreciated the emphasis placed on music. In his later years, he became close to some Chasidic leaders such as R. Yisrael Alter (1895-1977) and R. Simcha Bunim Alter (1898-1992). He was even asked by the latter to deliver sermons in the Gerrer Yeshiva in Tel Aviv in 1941. He also forged a close relationship with R. Chaim Meir Hager of Viznitz (1887-1972) and Reb Arele Roth of Jerusalem (1894-1947), and even prayed with a Gartel given to him by R. Hager.[55]