The Commentator

A little-known incident that may have changed the face of American Orthodox Jewry in the twentieth century was related by Rabbi Aharon Soloveichik. He said that when his father, Rabbi Moshe Soloveichik, was still a young man, recently married and without a rabbinical position, he received a letter from the board of the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary [RIETS], inviting him to become the rosh yeshiva there. Rav Moshe consulted with his father, Rav Hayyim, who told him not to accept the offer, asking him: "How will you be able to raise your children in America?" Rav Moshe therefore stayed in Russia, and took up rabbinic positions, first in Rosain, in 1909, then in Khaslavitch, and, finally, he became rosh yeshiva at the Tachkemoni Rabbinical Seminary in Warsaw. After being fired by Tachkemoni because he refused to give semikha to all but three of his students, Rav Moshe, by then the father of a large family, was in dire need of a position. This time, when he received an invitation from RIETS, he accepted it. He arrived on these shores in 1928, and the rest is history. One can only wonder what would have happened had Rav Moshe accepted the earlier invitation, and raised his children in the United States. Rather than engaging in such speculation, I would like to discuss the career of one of the signatories of that first invitation, and his ambivalent relationship with RIETS.

As Rav Aharon related the story, among the signatories of the first invitation to Rav Moshe was Rabbi Gavriel Zev Margolis, or Rav Velvele, as he was popularly known. Rav Velvele came to the United States in 1907 at the age of 59, after having previously served as rabbi of Grodno for twenty-seven years. He was the son-in-law of Rabbi Nachum of Grodno, who was the spiritual mentor of Rabbi Israel Meir HaKohen Kagan, popularly known as the Chafetz Chaim.

When Rabbi Moshe Zevulun Margolies, widely known as RaMaZ, decided to leave Boston in 1906 to take a rabbinic position in New York, the community there decided to bring in another prestigious European rabbi to replace him as spiritual leader of several congregations in Boston, and they invited Rav Velvele to come. He accepted the invitation and arrived in Boston in 1907, remaining there until 1911, at which time he was invited by Adas Yisroel on the Lower East Side of Manhattan to serve as their rabbi. The invitation from Adas Yisroel was, however, more than just the offering of the pulpit of their newly organized shul. Adas Yisroel, also known as United Hebrew Community of New York, traced its origins to 1901, when it began as a burial and free loan society, and quickly became involved in shechitah [ritual slaughter] supervision, as well.

After the death of Rabbi Jacob Joseph, the first ever and only chief rabbi of New York, in 1902, chaos and corruption in these slaughter houses increased. There was no centralized system in place, and this applied to Orthodox Jewish life in general, as well. Adas Yisroel hoped to bring in a prestigious, scholarly rabbi who would serve as chief rabbi of New York, and bring the various factions together to end the disorganized state of affairs that currently existed. Rav Velvele, then, was the man they chose for this task.

The grandiose scheme of Adas Yisroel was doomed to failure, partly because there was already another Orthodox organization in place, based in New York, the Agudath HaRabbanim of America, or the Union of Orthodox Rabbis, begun in 1902 directly after the death of Rabbi Jacob Joseph. Rav Velvele did not accept the authority of that group, considering himself to be of greater stature than any of its members, and he constantly accused them of being more interested in monetary gain than in the maintenance of halakhic standards in kashrut. Over the years, Rav Velvele challenged the Agudath HaRabbanim in many areas, particularly in regard to its standards of kashrut supervision. In one protracted conflict, in 1918, the Agudath HaRabbanim put him into cherem [excommunication] for opposing their support of a strike of kosher chicken slaughterers. Finally, in 1920, Rav Velvele started the Knesseth HaRabbanim HaOrtdoksim d'America v'Kanada, which was the first organization that posed any real kind of challenge to the Agudath HaRabbanim. The Agudath HaRabbanim, in its turn, continued to besmirch his reputation among the observant community on the Lower East Side, and even tried to have him thrown into jail through implicating him in the biggest sacramental wine scandal of the entire prohibition era. Rav Velvele, on his part, continued to accuse the Agudath HaRabbanim of being interested in monetary gain rather that in improving the halakhic standards in the community, and wrote that the very fact that it used the name "agudah," or union, in its name indicated that they were motivated by non-Jewish values. The infighting among the various rabbinic organizations in New York at that time, in fact, led Rabbi Shraga Feivel Mendlowitz to later write an article about the harmful effect these quarrels had on the community, and referred to four major organizations involved as the "arba avot nezikin."

One of Rav Velvele's chief adversaries, and also one of his chief targets, was RaMaZ Margolies, even though, in Rav Velvele's early years in New York, he did work together with RaMaZ in the area of kashrut supervision. A main area in which Rav Velvele took issue with RaMaZ was on Orthodox participation on the New York Kehillah, a city-wide amalgamation of the various different Jewish organizations in the city, presided over by its chairman Rabbi Dr. Judah L. Magnes, who later became the first president of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Rav Velvele refused to cooperate with a body that was run by a Reform rabbi, and sharply criticized RaMaZ and others for joining the Vaad HaRabbanim of the New York Kehillah.

Another area in which Rav Velvele originally cooperated with RaMaZ Margolies but later parted company with him was his relationship with RIETS. The invitation sent to Rabbi Moshe Soloveichik, in around 1908 or 1909, was signed by both Rabbi Velvele and RaMaZ. Both, apparently, served on the Board of RIETS at that time. Rav Velvele's shul was located on East Broadway, an early location of RIETS. In 1913, Rav Velvele delivered a shiur at RIETS on the Yahrzeit of Rabbi Yitzchak Elchanan Spektor. This shiur is included in volume two of Rav Velvele's work, Charuzei Margolis. In that shiur, he referred to the students at RIETS as "bachurim muflagim," extraordinary young men. Rav Velvele was also one of the speakers, in 1915, at the opening ceremony of the new location of RIETS on Montgomery Street.

The late Rabbi Jacob Friedman, an early musmakh of RIETS who learned in the yeshiva at that time, recalled that he used to visit Rav Velvele in his beit din as he decided questions of Jewish law that were presented to him. In 1921, RIETS again moved, this time to a facility at 301-303 East Broadway, just a few blocks from Rav Velvele and his shul, located at 201-203 East Broadway. However, as RIETS and Rav Velvele came closer geographically, they moved away further ideologically.

In 1919, Rav Velvele wrote that he disapprovingly learned, a year earlier, from Isaac Travis, father-in-law of Rabbi Dr. Bernard Revel (rosh yeshiva of RIETS), that he planned to create a rabbinical seminary uptown, with Dr. Revel as its head. The curriculum in that seminary, Travis told Rav Velvele, would include "haskalah ivrit," or Hebrew enlightenment, which Travis thought was necessary for American rabbis. Rav Velvele wrote, in that essay, that the proposed seminary reminded him of the Vilna Rabbinical Seminary, which was imposed on the Jewish community there by the Russian government, and produced highly unqualified rabbis. He suspected that the same would happen if Travis was successful in opening the seminary he spoke of. It is possible that Travis was referring to the Teacher's Institute of Mizrachi, which became part of Yeshiva in 1919. In a further essay, in 1924, Rav Velvele again wrote of a planned move uptown, but this time he wrote that Dr. Revel had launched a campaign to raise five-million dollars to create a rabbinical seminary uptown, where philosophy and other secular topics would be taught. Although he did not spell it out, Rav Velvele was referring to the planned creation of Yeshiva College, which, in December 1923, had launched a five-million dollar capital campaign towards the establishment of Yeshiva College.

Besides the danger that he saw in the study of some of the topics he mentioned, Rav Velvele felt that, in general, the time devoted to these studies would take away from time that should be devoted to Torah studies, so that the rabbis emerging from RIETS would not be qualified for their positions, thus replicating the situation that existed in the Vilna Rabbinical Seminary. Rav Velvele wrote, in fact, that the yeshiva was moving uptown in order to hide its activities from the Orthodox community of the Lower East Side, and that the rabbis it would produce did not warrant its continued association with the name of Rabbi Yitzchak Elchanan Spektor. In 1925, three years before Yeshiva College opened, Rav Velvele wrote a letter in which he criticized the Agudath HaRabbanim for its continued support of RIETS which had, he wrote, become a "semikha factory."

Rabbi Aharon Soloveichik once remarked that although, today, there are many "kana'im," or zealots, on the Orthodox Jewish scene in America, in those days, Rav Velvele was "the kanai." Ironically, a few days after Rav Velevele passed away on 10 Elul, 5695 (September 8, 1935), Rabbi Aharon Kotler made his first visit to the United States, to raise funds for his own yeshiva in Kletzk. Rabbi Aharon Kotler, too, like Rav Velvele, changed his attitude towards RIETS over time. Although he would later refuse to deliver a guest shiur in RIETS, and was known for his negative attitude toward Yeshiva University, on his first visit to America Rabbi Aharon Kotler delivered a guest shiur, attended by, among others, the Rosh HaYeshiva of RIETS, Rabbi Moshe Soloveichik, and his teenage son Aharon. Rabbi Aharon Soloveichik later recalled that the topic of the shiur was "shtarcha beyadcha mai bai," the legal status of a contract in a monetary dispute. Rabbi Aharon Soloveichik also recalled that his colleague Rabbi Chaim Zimmerman, a student of Rabbi Moshe Soloveichik at the time, continually interrupted the shiur, asking questions and taking issue with Rabbi Kotler's presentation. Viewed from the perspective of Rav Velvele's changing relationship with RIETS over the years, Rabbi Kotler's arrival on the New York scene at that time can perhaps be seen as a variation of the Talmudic dictum that a tzaddik does not leave this earth unless another tzaddik has come to take his place.

Rabbi Joshua Hoffman, BRGS '92, wrote his MA thesis, "The American Rabbinic Career of Rabbi Gavriel Zev Margolis," under Dr. Jeffrey S. Gurock at Yeshiva University's Bernard Revel Graduate School of Jewish Studies where he is currently working on a PhD. He is a musmakh of Rabbi Aharon Soloveitchik, zt"l, at the Brisk Rabbinical College in Chicago, whom he studied with for many years. Rabbi Hoffman publishes two weekly divrei torah, archived at www.TorahHeights.com and at www.MaimonidesHeritage.org.