Yosef Eynenu va'Ani Ana Ani Ba: A Bostonian Memoir

Thirty-three years ago, this past summer, I entered the Rav's shiur for the first time, and my life was transformed. The place was not Furst Hall, but the Bais Medrash of the Maimonides School in Brookline. Every summer, for six weeks, the Rav would say shiur on a given Massekhta to a group of forty-fifty people. The shiur took place from Monday-Thursday and lasted from 2-3 hours, from 4 PM to 7 PM. It was intense, intensive, inspiring, awe-inspiring and often very daring. Most of the talmidim were from YU, a few were not.

I was in the latter group.

When I came to study with the Rav, something that I was privileged to do for almost ten years, I had never previously been in a formal yeshiva setting, although I had heard shiurim. I was pretty much a very intense auto-didact when it came to learning, though I had had the benefit of an extraordinary Hebrew education at Boston Hebrew Teacher's College, which helped tremendously, and the warm encouragement of teachers who were themselves close to the Rav, such as Rabbi Dr. Isaiah Wohlgemuth and Rabbi David Schapiro (whose suggestion it was that I attend the shiur). It was Rabbi Wohlgemuth who approached the Rav on my behalf, to ask permission to attend the shiur. The Rav, graciously (and he was always gracious), agreed. I found out later that he was intrigued by the prospect of an HTC graduate attending his class. It was only seven years later, on the morning before my wedding, that I discovered that, unbeknownst too me, he had kept abreast of my progress, both in Boston and later, when I came to RIETS. That was typical of him. He did things quietly, especially when it came to acts of hesed.

I shall never forget those first weeks in the shiur. I fell in love with the Rav, and with the Brisker derekh. At the same time, though he had mellowed considerably over the years (as Professor Haym Soloveitchik noted in his unforgettable eulogy of his father), we still very much feared him. I knew, of course, that the Rambam in Hilkhot Yesode ha-Torah, describes the dialectical tension between Love and Awe, Ahavah ve-Yir'ah, in our relationship to God. In the shiur, and later as I was privileged to develop a more personal relationship with him, I learned that in the rebbe-talmid relationship, the two co-existed simultaneously.

It's important for me to emphasize that I came to the Rav in the interest of growing in lehrnen. However, I was (and remain) a person who firmly believes in the value of the broadest education possible . At the time that I started in the shiur, as a university student majoring in history, I was already caught in the clutches of the Heraclitan struggle between, what I later learned were, 'Torah' and 'Hokhma.' Here, too, the Rav quickly became the preeminent influence upon my life. By personal example, and by direct instruction, I learned how Torah and Hokhma 'in the widest sense of the term' (as he, himself put it) were mutually fructifying, though the absolute autonomy of Halakhah was non-negotiable. It was the Rav who gave me the tools to struggle with, and negotiate, the intellectual, cultural and psychological challenges that Judaism faced (and faces) in an already then, Post-Modern world. In a very real sense, he became the rebbe of both my mind and my soul.

How did he do that? After all, in the years when I first reflected on these issues, he had published very little. In fact, 'Ish ha-Halakhah,' 'The Lonely Man of Faith,' and 'Confrontation' were pretty much it. To begin with, as Professor Yitzhak Twersky wrote, the Rav didn't need to preach the desirability of a general education. He just did it. One sees that from the footnotes of all of his writings, right up to his retirement.

There was, however, more. Every Motzai Shabbos, the Rav would give a shiur in Thought at Maimonides. Sometimes it was the parsha. On other occasions we studied Rambam. Before the various holidays we always concentrated on inyyana de-yoma. The Rav would hold forth, reading from his hand-written notes, and frequently departing there from. The room was almost always packed to the gills, even in the worst weather. Men and women, rabbis and professors, Harvard undergraduates and MIT graduate students, artists and poets, business people and professionals, came together to hear the Rav. I distinctly recall one woman who drove ninety minutes from New Hampshire in order to attend. I was often struck by the very dissonance of the shiur. After all, Boston is a college town. Saturday night is party night. Yet here were up to two hundred people who, week after week, come to learn from the Rav. On the other hand, here was a very busy man who, despite his taxing schedule, wanted to teach on Saturday night and often had to be constantly reminded that the hour was late, so that he could go home to rest.

The Rav's delivery, in an incredibly elegant but accessible English, riveted us to our chairs. I remember that he gave us a special treat when he would comment on world affairs, and local Jewish imbroglios. These were the years of Watergate, Vietnam, the Counter-culture, the Six Day War and the Yom Kippur War. We thirsted for insight into a world gone mad, and the Rav obliged. Sitting now in my home in Eretz Yisrael, I recall with special fondness his lyrical odes of love to Eretz Yisrael. I try to re-read my notes on Lekh Lekha every year. The shiur went on from 8:15 PM until close to midnight (and sometimes, later than that). Despite the long hours, we were always hungry for more.

It was in those lectures, that I was able to see the Rav 'do it.' In those shiurim, in front of people from his beloved community, he let himself go. Descartes mixed with Maimonides and Kirkegaard hovered over a discussion of the Akedah. What stunned me, from the first time I went, was the way that he seamlessly segued from one to the other. I had never seen before, and never seen since, such sovereign mastery of both Torah and General Culture. No one present had any doubt that the Rav's position was 'Mimeni Re'u ve-khen Ta'asu.'

Again, and this must be emphasized, while there is absolutely no doubt that the Rav never retreated from his intense engagement with Hokhma (and his ongoing involvement in the Maimonides curriculum is proof), his absolute priority was always Talmud Torah, in the more restricted sense. The former had absolutely no value without the latter. I remember that in the Spring of 1976, I was on the horns of a dilemma. I had been accepted to both Harvard Graduate School and directly into the Semikha program at RIETS . I wanted to go to learn, but the offer from Harvard could not be deferred. So, I called up the Rav and asked for an appointment.

We met at the Twersky home, which was a bit awkward since it was Professor Twersky who was pressuring me to choose Harvard. I laid out my quandary to the Rav. Without divulging the exact content of the conversation, and since he never told me to do anything, he made it very clear that graduate school was a better option, on one condition. That condition was that I must keep up with my learning, and preferably in his Sunday morning shiur at Maimonides.

It was, as they say, a 'no brainer.' The Sunday morning shiur for the Boston Hevrah Shas (that had brought him to Boston forty years previously) was an incredible experience. It was the embodiment of qol demamah daqah. In the years that I attended, there were never more than twenty people there. Five or six were elderly members of the Boston Orthodox community. The rest were local rabbis and students. Qualitatively, the shiur did not lag behind that which the Rav gave at RIETS (as I discovered when I came to Yeshiva in 1978). In a sense, it was better. Rabbi Mordy Feuerstein used to say that if you really want to learn the Rav's derekh, you should come to Boston, go to graduate school and prepare all week for the Sunday shiur. He was so right. The Rav was part maggid shiur and part tutor. Since he was on his home turf, and the crowd was small, you could ask questions easily and not stop until you (and he) were satisfied that you understood.

To return to my original point, from our conversation in March of 1976, I certainly understood that Talmud Torah comes first. However, I also understood that, in the absence of that, there is no reason not to maximize the breadth of one's knowledge. This approach is, in a sense, a profound and very difficult humra. However, as the Rav said so many times, a Jew is commanded to live heroically. The easy path is not his path. Dialectic struggle is the dominant characteristic of Jewish Life, as it is the leitmotif of the Rav's writings and the formal cast of Brisker lomdus.

Of one thing, however, I am sure. The transformative moment in the Maimonides Bes Medrash, when I first encountered Rav Soloveitchik, and the many other moments that came afterwards, changed my life, enriched it and continues to inspire it, every day.

Jeffrey Woolf R '82 is a Senior Lecturer in the Talmud Department at Bar Ilan University.