2008 Woodie Awards
As I Knew Him: Memories of Rabbi Dr. Bernard Revel
Moses Mescheloff
Issue date: 3/8/05 Section: YUdaica
Seventy years ago, when I met the girl whom I had asked to be my rebbetzin - may Hashem bless her with long life - it was important to me to introduce her to Dr. Bernard Revel and get his blessing. He was my rebbe, role model and a very significant part of my life.
In 1906, at the age of 21, a young Dov (Bernard) Revel arrived in America. He was the brilliant son of the rabbi of Prenn, a neighboring town of Kovno, the great center of Lithuanian Jewish learning. Young Dov had a photographic mind and had proven to be a prodigious scholar of the Talmud and its commentaries. In the United States, at Dropsie College, he earned his PhD and became known as Rabbi Dr. Bernard Revel. The fame of his scholarship spread and became known among Jewish leaders as a scholar of note.
That same year, 1906, my parents arrived in the "Goldeneh Medineh," as America was then known, with a young son and a daughter who was still a babe in arms. Foreseeing the expulsion of the Jewish community and feeling the endemic anti-Semitism of Russia, my father left a comfortable lumber trade in Minsk. My father, with a yeshiva education, descendent of scholarly forebears, immigrated to the United States with his young family. Here he first found a job at and then became the hardworking owner of a grocery and then a delicatessen store. I, their third child, was born in America in 1909, at a time when my parents lived in Manhattan. Although I was sent to public school through junior high, my parents made sure that I had the finest and most knowledgeable Hebrew teachers they could find, to give me private "Hebrew lessons" up to the study of the Talmud.
My third teacher, a knowledgeable young man, said that I was ready for entrance to a yeshiva. Much younger than the other boys, who had recently come from Europe, and were all 16 to 20 years of age, I passed a rigorous examination by Rabbi Yehuda Weil, one of the roshei yeshiva at Yeshivat Rabbeinu Yitzchak Elchanan. In 1922, I began my studies with rebbe after rebbe until I reached the class of the R. Shlomo Polachek, renowned as the Maichater Iluy.
While I was growing up, Dr. Revel married and moved to Tulsa, Oklahoma, where his in-laws asked him to run their prosperous business in industrial oil. In 1915, Mr. Harry Fischel, acting on behalf of the Board of Directors, asked Dr. Revel to come back East and take over as rosh yeshiva of the short-lived Rabbinical College of America, the result of a merger between Yeshivat Eitz Chaim and Yeshivat Rabbeinu Yitzchak Elchanan. Mr. Fischel wanted a learned and forward thinking educator to lead the yeshiva on the path of becoming a college. The shidduch was made and Yeshiva College (which, in 1945, turned into Yeshiva University) was born in 1928.
For many of the ten years that I spent as a student at Yeshivat Rabbeinu Yitzchak Elchanan, Dr. Revel was my teacher, friend, and mentor. He was a fatherly figure who took an interest in every phase of the life of each of his talmidim. He met with our parents. He spoke to us in a concerned, friendly fashion, and he was interested in our interests. He was there to encourage and inspire us. He knew of my interest in books and in my project of researching the book stores and building a student library. He chose me to be the recipient of the golden medal for "Hasmadah," rewarded to the most studious student at the Yeshiva.
From the beginning, Dr. Revel had an agenda for the Yeshiva. It was to eventually make of it an institution of higher learning for Orthodox rabbis, Talmidei Chachamim, as well as lay people born and educated in America. These would become religious leaders and speak to the American Jew in a way he could understand. He wanted to continue the tradition of learning brought from Europe by students and teachers. He wanted to halt the pattern of Jewish students attending classes in the Conservative or Reform Jewish Academies where the true Jewish traditions, learning and values were being by-passed.
In the yeshiva high school, which I entered in 1922 at the age of thirteen, I loved my studies and was very involved in the student government. I innovated a book store and continued to thrive in Torah; I was an American boy with a wonderful Yeshiva background. I was bi-lingual. Yiddish was my "mama lashon" and had no problem learning with my brilliant European rebbeim. With Dr. Revel's encouragement I attended the City College of NY as a night student. The subways were my "Study Hall." I graduated college Magna Cum Laude, Phi Beta Kappa. No one was more proud than Dr. Revel of his student's accomplishments.
When Dr. Revel asked for a small class of distinguished students that he would teach himself, though I continued to be younger than my classmates, I was included. Dr. Revel's class was always fascinating. He had a remarkable ability to find material from many different sources and integrate it into the question at hand. He was a brilliant scholar and posek, and a class with him was a real privilege. Though he stuttered badly, his students agonized with him and tried even harder not to miss a word and to follow the sequence of his logic.
As his "American" student, Dr. Revel often sent me to represent the Yeshiva in the developing Jewish communities. He felt that the modern Americans would relate to me and what I had to tell them. He brought many visiting European Rabbis to the yeshiva to speak to the students; Dr. Revel felt there was so much that we could learn from these European gedolim. Years later, in my congregation in Miami Beach, Florida, inspired by Dr. Revel, I continued this tradition and invited many famous European rabbis who came to lecture and raise funds for their yeshivot to speak from the pulpit. It was important for the American Jews to feel some of that influence.
R. Herbert S. Goldstein was one of my professors of homiletics when I studied for my semikha at RIETS. Among one of his pointers was "Always be well prepared, but when you delivered what you had to say - sit down. Don't waste more time!" His classes were voluntary, and I attended them religiously every Friday morning. He taught us pulpit posture and not only what to say but how to say it. He stressed the importance of making eye contact with the audience. "Keep your hands out of your pockets and above the waistline," he would frequently say.
My other homiletics professor was R. Joseph Lookstein, one of the great orators of his time. He taught us the majesty of the sweep of the hands and the importance of the use of the appropriate word. He was the installing officer and guest speaker at my installation in my Chicago congregation on January 9th, l955. Those who were there still remember the excitement that he generated.
In Miami Beach I had the opportunity to get to know these highly regarded and dedicated men, in a more personal way. R. Goldstein and his wife were frequent winter visitors. R. Goldstein, on these vacations, would work on behalf of the establishment of Machon Harry Fischel in Jerusalem. When he co-opted me to help him in raising funds from among the wealthy tourists, I had no way of knowing that one day my grandson would be a student there.
When, in l936, Dr. Bernard Revel was deeply involved in his efforts to make Yeshiva College a full fledged University, he desperately needed funding and contacted the famous Dr. Albert Einstein to lend his support. Dr. Revel also spoke to my father-in-law, Rabbi Dr. Lazar Schonfeld, a musmakh of the Pressburger Yeshiva, and then the rabbi of a large congregation in the Bronx, with many recently immigrated Hungarian speaking members. There were among them relatives of some of the movie greats who were, even in those days of depression, able to support such an important enterprise. R. Schonfeld spoke both German and Hungarian and was an acquaintance of Albert Einstein. The "shidduch" was made. Dr. Einstein wrote a beautiful letter, in German, to my father-in-law, in which he speaks of the importance of Jewish education and the need for Yeshiva, where the ancient Jewish beliefs, wisdom and traditions are taught, in tandem with modern, scientific knowledge, where Jewish youth can learn without harassment and persecution. The letter was an introduction to and re-enforcement of Rabbi Schonfeld's mission.
Upon my father-in-law's death, the Einstein letter was willed to us and for many years was kept in its original envelope in our safety deposit box. Upon the urging of my brother-in-law, Frank Schonfeld, YC '39, we presented it to the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, where it is now part of the extensive archive of Albert Einstein papers. A copy also went to The Yeshiva University Archives, where it is made available to scholars who wish to study the thinking of the greatest scientist of the twentieth century about the importance of religion and faith. The "Einstein letter" is also part of the history of that great and modest man, Dr. Bernard Revel, of blessed memory.
Dr Bernard Revel achieved his goal of Yeshiva College with the help of so many dedicated people. However, could anyone have envisioned the astonishing growth that Yeshiva experienced?
Among the signatories on my semikha from RIETS are Dr. Bernard Revel and R. Moshe Soloveichik. Our son Efraim's semikha is signed by R. Joseph Baer Soloveitchik from RIETS. Our son, David, received semikha from R. Aaron Soloveichik, then dean of Chicago's Hebrew Theological College. Each of them has advanced degrees. Efraim has his PhD from Hebrew University of Jerusalem, having made aliyah after graduation from Yeshiva. David has also made aliyah after earning his PhD from Northwestern University; in Israel he earned another PhD at Bar Ilan University. Our daughter, Renah, graduated from Stern College for Women as a member of the first graduating class and continues her connection to her alma mater. My own DHL was conferred on me by the graduate school of Hebrew Theological College of Chicago. I served my congregation - now emeritus - for fifty years.
As I think back to my formative years at the Yeshiva, I remember with affection and great respect the outstanding scholars and teachers, men of great wisdom, who influenced my life. Dr. Bernard Revel was primary among them. When, in March of 2005, my rebbetzin Magda and I will celebrate our seventieth wedding anniversary, we will think back to the day when we received the blessing of that brilliant and good friend, Dr. Bernard Revel, and the lasting influence he had on our lives. Of our three children, two are graduates of Yeshiva University. Indeed, Dr. Revel brought about a miraculous transformation in the landscape of American Orthodoxy. His memory will continue to be a blessing in the annals of American Jewish history.
Rabbi Dr. Moses Mescheloff, RIETS '32, served with distinction as rabbi in Congregation Machzike Hadas, in Scranton, Pennsylvania (1932-1936); Congregation Sons of Israel, in North Adams, Massachusetts (1936-1937); Congregation Beth Jacob, in Miami Beach, Florida (1937-1954); and from 1955 at Congregation KINS of West Rogers Park, in Chicago, Illinois, (emeritus since 1982) where he has spent his most recent 50 years as an active scholar and communal leader.
In 1906, at the age of 21, a young Dov (Bernard) Revel arrived in America. He was the brilliant son of the rabbi of Prenn, a neighboring town of Kovno, the great center of Lithuanian Jewish learning. Young Dov had a photographic mind and had proven to be a prodigious scholar of the Talmud and its commentaries. In the United States, at Dropsie College, he earned his PhD and became known as Rabbi Dr. Bernard Revel. The fame of his scholarship spread and became known among Jewish leaders as a scholar of note.
That same year, 1906, my parents arrived in the "Goldeneh Medineh," as America was then known, with a young son and a daughter who was still a babe in arms. Foreseeing the expulsion of the Jewish community and feeling the endemic anti-Semitism of Russia, my father left a comfortable lumber trade in Minsk. My father, with a yeshiva education, descendent of scholarly forebears, immigrated to the United States with his young family. Here he first found a job at and then became the hardworking owner of a grocery and then a delicatessen store. I, their third child, was born in America in 1909, at a time when my parents lived in Manhattan. Although I was sent to public school through junior high, my parents made sure that I had the finest and most knowledgeable Hebrew teachers they could find, to give me private "Hebrew lessons" up to the study of the Talmud.
My third teacher, a knowledgeable young man, said that I was ready for entrance to a yeshiva. Much younger than the other boys, who had recently come from Europe, and were all 16 to 20 years of age, I passed a rigorous examination by Rabbi Yehuda Weil, one of the roshei yeshiva at Yeshivat Rabbeinu Yitzchak Elchanan. In 1922, I began my studies with rebbe after rebbe until I reached the class of the R. Shlomo Polachek, renowned as the Maichater Iluy.
While I was growing up, Dr. Revel married and moved to Tulsa, Oklahoma, where his in-laws asked him to run their prosperous business in industrial oil. In 1915, Mr. Harry Fischel, acting on behalf of the Board of Directors, asked Dr. Revel to come back East and take over as rosh yeshiva of the short-lived Rabbinical College of America, the result of a merger between Yeshivat Eitz Chaim and Yeshivat Rabbeinu Yitzchak Elchanan. Mr. Fischel wanted a learned and forward thinking educator to lead the yeshiva on the path of becoming a college. The shidduch was made and Yeshiva College (which, in 1945, turned into Yeshiva University) was born in 1928.
For many of the ten years that I spent as a student at Yeshivat Rabbeinu Yitzchak Elchanan, Dr. Revel was my teacher, friend, and mentor. He was a fatherly figure who took an interest in every phase of the life of each of his talmidim. He met with our parents. He spoke to us in a concerned, friendly fashion, and he was interested in our interests. He was there to encourage and inspire us. He knew of my interest in books and in my project of researching the book stores and building a student library. He chose me to be the recipient of the golden medal for "Hasmadah," rewarded to the most studious student at the Yeshiva.
From the beginning, Dr. Revel had an agenda for the Yeshiva. It was to eventually make of it an institution of higher learning for Orthodox rabbis, Talmidei Chachamim, as well as lay people born and educated in America. These would become religious leaders and speak to the American Jew in a way he could understand. He wanted to continue the tradition of learning brought from Europe by students and teachers. He wanted to halt the pattern of Jewish students attending classes in the Conservative or Reform Jewish Academies where the true Jewish traditions, learning and values were being by-passed.
In the yeshiva high school, which I entered in 1922 at the age of thirteen, I loved my studies and was very involved in the student government. I innovated a book store and continued to thrive in Torah; I was an American boy with a wonderful Yeshiva background. I was bi-lingual. Yiddish was my "mama lashon" and had no problem learning with my brilliant European rebbeim. With Dr. Revel's encouragement I attended the City College of NY as a night student. The subways were my "Study Hall." I graduated college Magna Cum Laude, Phi Beta Kappa. No one was more proud than Dr. Revel of his student's accomplishments.
When Dr. Revel asked for a small class of distinguished students that he would teach himself, though I continued to be younger than my classmates, I was included. Dr. Revel's class was always fascinating. He had a remarkable ability to find material from many different sources and integrate it into the question at hand. He was a brilliant scholar and posek, and a class with him was a real privilege. Though he stuttered badly, his students agonized with him and tried even harder not to miss a word and to follow the sequence of his logic.
As his "American" student, Dr. Revel often sent me to represent the Yeshiva in the developing Jewish communities. He felt that the modern Americans would relate to me and what I had to tell them. He brought many visiting European Rabbis to the yeshiva to speak to the students; Dr. Revel felt there was so much that we could learn from these European gedolim. Years later, in my congregation in Miami Beach, Florida, inspired by Dr. Revel, I continued this tradition and invited many famous European rabbis who came to lecture and raise funds for their yeshivot to speak from the pulpit. It was important for the American Jews to feel some of that influence.
R. Herbert S. Goldstein was one of my professors of homiletics when I studied for my semikha at RIETS. Among one of his pointers was "Always be well prepared, but when you delivered what you had to say - sit down. Don't waste more time!" His classes were voluntary, and I attended them religiously every Friday morning. He taught us pulpit posture and not only what to say but how to say it. He stressed the importance of making eye contact with the audience. "Keep your hands out of your pockets and above the waistline," he would frequently say.
My other homiletics professor was R. Joseph Lookstein, one of the great orators of his time. He taught us the majesty of the sweep of the hands and the importance of the use of the appropriate word. He was the installing officer and guest speaker at my installation in my Chicago congregation on January 9th, l955. Those who were there still remember the excitement that he generated.
In Miami Beach I had the opportunity to get to know these highly regarded and dedicated men, in a more personal way. R. Goldstein and his wife were frequent winter visitors. R. Goldstein, on these vacations, would work on behalf of the establishment of Machon Harry Fischel in Jerusalem. When he co-opted me to help him in raising funds from among the wealthy tourists, I had no way of knowing that one day my grandson would be a student there.
When, in l936, Dr. Bernard Revel was deeply involved in his efforts to make Yeshiva College a full fledged University, he desperately needed funding and contacted the famous Dr. Albert Einstein to lend his support. Dr. Revel also spoke to my father-in-law, Rabbi Dr. Lazar Schonfeld, a musmakh of the Pressburger Yeshiva, and then the rabbi of a large congregation in the Bronx, with many recently immigrated Hungarian speaking members. There were among them relatives of some of the movie greats who were, even in those days of depression, able to support such an important enterprise. R. Schonfeld spoke both German and Hungarian and was an acquaintance of Albert Einstein. The "shidduch" was made. Dr. Einstein wrote a beautiful letter, in German, to my father-in-law, in which he speaks of the importance of Jewish education and the need for Yeshiva, where the ancient Jewish beliefs, wisdom and traditions are taught, in tandem with modern, scientific knowledge, where Jewish youth can learn without harassment and persecution. The letter was an introduction to and re-enforcement of Rabbi Schonfeld's mission.
Upon my father-in-law's death, the Einstein letter was willed to us and for many years was kept in its original envelope in our safety deposit box. Upon the urging of my brother-in-law, Frank Schonfeld, YC '39, we presented it to the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, where it is now part of the extensive archive of Albert Einstein papers. A copy also went to The Yeshiva University Archives, where it is made available to scholars who wish to study the thinking of the greatest scientist of the twentieth century about the importance of religion and faith. The "Einstein letter" is also part of the history of that great and modest man, Dr. Bernard Revel, of blessed memory.
Dr Bernard Revel achieved his goal of Yeshiva College with the help of so many dedicated people. However, could anyone have envisioned the astonishing growth that Yeshiva experienced?
Among the signatories on my semikha from RIETS are Dr. Bernard Revel and R. Moshe Soloveichik. Our son Efraim's semikha is signed by R. Joseph Baer Soloveitchik from RIETS. Our son, David, received semikha from R. Aaron Soloveichik, then dean of Chicago's Hebrew Theological College. Each of them has advanced degrees. Efraim has his PhD from Hebrew University of Jerusalem, having made aliyah after graduation from Yeshiva. David has also made aliyah after earning his PhD from Northwestern University; in Israel he earned another PhD at Bar Ilan University. Our daughter, Renah, graduated from Stern College for Women as a member of the first graduating class and continues her connection to her alma mater. My own DHL was conferred on me by the graduate school of Hebrew Theological College of Chicago. I served my congregation - now emeritus - for fifty years.
As I think back to my formative years at the Yeshiva, I remember with affection and great respect the outstanding scholars and teachers, men of great wisdom, who influenced my life. Dr. Bernard Revel was primary among them. When, in March of 2005, my rebbetzin Magda and I will celebrate our seventieth wedding anniversary, we will think back to the day when we received the blessing of that brilliant and good friend, Dr. Bernard Revel, and the lasting influence he had on our lives. Of our three children, two are graduates of Yeshiva University. Indeed, Dr. Revel brought about a miraculous transformation in the landscape of American Orthodoxy. His memory will continue to be a blessing in the annals of American Jewish history.
Rabbi Dr. Moses Mescheloff, RIETS '32, served with distinction as rabbi in Congregation Machzike Hadas, in Scranton, Pennsylvania (1932-1936); Congregation Sons of Israel, in North Adams, Massachusetts (1936-1937); Congregation Beth Jacob, in Miami Beach, Florida (1937-1954); and from 1955 at Congregation KINS of West Rogers Park, in Chicago, Illinois, (emeritus since 1982) where he has spent his most recent 50 years as an active scholar and communal leader.