The Commentator

It has been almost a quarter century now since my father, R. Michael Bernstein, z"l, was niftar on 23 Tevet 5741, and I am sure that my personal memories of the three decades before that date have been blurred and altered with the passage of time. So I write, not as an historian, a checker of names, dates and facts, but as a reminiscer, considering what I remember and what I have been told about my father, from the perspective of one who has spent the last twenty-five years teaching some of the same courses as he did at the same institution at which he taught, often to the sons (and daughters during my twenty years at SCW) of those whom he taught. If some of my chronology, or a fact here or there, is inaccurate, I beg the reader's indulgence.

I am fond of saying, only slightly tongue in cheek, that I have been at Yeshiva for about 75 years now, the same number as the anniversary which Yeshiva College is now observing (and that easily covers the three generations of my title). Although I have yet to reach my sixtieth birthday, my effective "Yeshiva memory" reaches back three quarters of a century. From the day that my father entered MTA as a junior in 1930 as a transfer from Seward Park High School on New York's Lower East Side, we haven't been away from Yeshiva except for the years that he spent in rabbonus or hinnukh in the early 1940s. Together we have taught at Yeshiva uninterruptedly since 1947; the fall semester of 1980, my father's first semester as Professor Emeritus, during which he was taken from us at an all too young age after a two-decade illness, was my first as full-time Assistant Professor at Yeshiva College and Stern College for Women.

Jewish education in the period between the two World Wars was so very different from what it has become today that it is hard to imagine. The flourishing Orthodoxy that we have all become accustomed to was not even on the radar screen; the Depression and acculturation, the need to be more "American," to become successful, and even just to earn a living, all took their toll on Orthodox observance in America. There were too many reasons to cast off the identifying marks of Jewish observance in order to integrate into American society. It is a byword today that the best defense of Jewish observance is Jewish education, but the opportunities for Jewish education in America were extremely limited at that time, and it was only the fortunate few who achieved it. After MTA, my father entered Yeshiva College in fall of the academic year in which YC graduated its first class; those early years of the College produced many of the rabbis and educators who do not get sufficient credit both for preserving Orthodox observance in America, and for enabling the heightened levels of education and observance which my students of today take for granted.

Even in the distinguished company of the YC alumni of those early years, my father stood out. One of his maspidim, his life-long friend R. Moshe Besdin, z"l, spoke of him as the yahid shebahavura, the most distinguished member of the circle of serious bnei Torah in the Yeshiva of those days. He majored in philosophy, not in and of itself unusual, but he took five years instead of four to complete his degree in order to spend more time on his talmud Torah. That was as unusual in those days as it would be today. I know that he must have interacted with more than one of the roshei yeshiva of those days, but the only one whose name I heard mentioned regularly, clearly his rebbe muvhaq, was R. Moshe Soloveitchik, z"l, whose name I bear.

Dr. Haym Soloveitchik of BRGS observed in a touching azkara for my father (printed in Chavrusa April 1983) that he was the only American-born talmid muvhaq of his grandfather (it is often forgotten that he was also the first American-born rosh yeshiva at YU). That factoid, in a sense, characterizes my father; he was born in New York to immigrant parents, and his mastery of English was complete, but he also spoke elegant Yiddish like a European. For many of his European-born classmates and colleagues, his knowledge of English was a valuable asset. When they would go off into the rabbinate to those many American communities which were starved for Yiddishkeit, my father would write several generic sermons for them - bar mitzva, funeral, wedding, and the like - in English, but in Hebrew characters. I had always wondered whether this story was a myth until my mother, tibbadel lehayyim, returned from a visit to Israel for his haqamat matzeva and told me that she had met the widow of one of those classmates who showed her the tattered remains of one of those sermons which her late husband had preserved. On the other hand, there is no surviving evidence of the loveletters which we were told that he ghostwrote for one of his classmates who was engaged in a long-distance relationship with a girl who expected her young man to be fluent in English.

He learned Torah classically, but was open to many of the paths to understanding Torah which then, as now, were not frequently walked by roshei yeshiva. My father was a seemingly paradoxical combination of a lamdan and a scholar, but the paradox was only superficial. For my father, his lomdus and his scholarship were simply different facets of his talmud Torah; there was no artificial distinction for him between his lernen and his jüdische Wissenschaft. Despite the fact that when he was trained in the 1930s there was an even greater fear of the "maskilish" than there is now, and academic scholarship often was seen inevitably to lead to defection from Orthodoxy to more liberal denominations, he did what he thought was right in this realm as in so many others. Not only did he see no conflict, but he found a harmony in the diverse elements of knowledge which he sought to master.

Yeshiva was his home, and my father's scholarship, like his Torah, was largely home-grown. He must have been one of the first students in the Graduate School (later to become the Bernard Revel Graduate School of Jewish Studies and his academic location for the last portion of his academic career). I still have his notebook from the years 1937-1939 with carefully taken notes from teachers like Dr. Samuel Belkin, later to become Yeshiva's second president, but a scholar of distinction before that, Dr. Pinkhos Churgin, Dr. Solomon Zeitlin, Dr. Joshua Finkel, zikhron kullam livrakha, in courses ranging from Talmud to Second Temple Judaism to Philo to Comparative Semitic Philology to Biblical Versions and Ancient Semitic Inscriptions. There are even a couple - alas, only a couple - of pages of notes from lectures from "Dr. Soloveitchik" (the Rav, z"l, of course) in Jewish Philosophy.

He left Yeshiva after receiving semikha in 1939, and served as rabbi in congregations in Lynn, Massachusetts and the Inwood neighborhood of Manhattan north of Washington Heights. It appears that teaching drew him more than the rabbinate, and he served briefly as the menahel of the Merkaz haTorah yeshiva in Montreal. But 1947, found him back "home" at Yeshiva, and he never really left again. He began giving shiurim in MTA and then progressed to the college level (as used to be the tradition), while at the same time teaching a full load in YC. He was doing what he loved to do, and for the next thirty-three years he left his mark on several divisions of YU, teaching in the high school, the college, the yeshiva and the graduate school.

Yeshiva now became and remained his home in a literal, not just a metaphorical, sense. He lived down the block, a part of a Yeshiva community which in the course of time scattered over the years to Forest Hills and Flatbush, Teaneck and Monsey, Five Towns and Riverdale, and has only recently been reinvigorated. He lived in the vicinity out of choice, because he felt that it was not right that a rebbe should "teach and run." Yeshiva was my home as I grew up, and my father's home was part of the Yeshiva.

His higher education, however, had not yet been completed. He somehow found the time, while carrying a teaching load which boggles my twenty-first century academician's mind, to complete his coursework and thesis for the D.H.L. degree at Revel. What is probably surprising to almost anyone who knew my father and his teaching career, is that his thesis was in neither Bible nor Semitic languages, the primary fields which he taught for the last two decades of his life, but in the area of Classical Jewish History/Talmud on Rabbi Yehoshua ben Hananiah. And after that, while teaching the load that he did and helping my mother raise me and my two siblings, he somehow found the time to attend classes at Columbia University to enhance his knowledge of Semitic languages further. The notion that the goal of study is the achievement of yet another degree or the publication of yet another article would have been beyond his comprehension. Knowledge had its own intrinsic value, with knowledge of Torah, of course, granted primacy, although not exclusivity. And we should not forget that his definition of Torah was far broader than many contemporary definitions would have it.

As a result of his maximalist approach to his academic training, the spectrum of subjects that my father taught ranged from Hebrew language, both elementary and advanced, to Bible and its interpretation, to Jewish history to Ramban to several dialects of Aramaic. In today's era of narrower and narrower academic specialization, he would have been a total anomaly, but even in his generation the range of his competence was astounding. He was a teacher, through and through, although without the sparkle and flash that often marks master teachers; his undramatic style was highly effective. He taught his children and grandchildren, and semikha students and graduate students. He taught my sister and the women who studied with him in BRGS in the same way that he taught my brother and me and the men in Yeshiva. In that regard, he was perhaps a little ahead of his time. If you wanted to study Torah, he would teach you, and you would learn.

Unfortunately, my father never published any books or scholarly essays. Around the time that I came back to Yeshiva, having abandoned the field of classical languages for a career in Jewish Studies, he said to me that he had had the luxury of being able to read and teach only, while I had the obligation to publish as well. He operated in different times and at a YU with different standards from the one to which I returned to teach. He loved to read primary texts of every sort in their original languages; I rarely saw him spending much time on secondary literature, although it is clearly to me that at an earlier stage of his career he had read both broadly and deeply. He wanted to solve the problem at hand, understand the passage which he was reading, no matter how difficult or complex. But the minutiae of scholarship, making sure that all the secondary sources had been checked and writing the footnotes, the dotting of the i's and crossing of the t's held no attraction for him. More than once I have "said over" my father's interpretation of some text to a biblical scholar who had never heard of him and who then asked me where it been published. They have always been amazed when I tell them that his scholarship was transmitted only orally.

Whereas I am certain that he would have significantly enhanced the body of knowledge in his chosen fields by publishing his scholarship, I wonder whether he would have had the same impact in other ways if he had had to submit to the parameters of the academic world which govern me and my colleagues today. His Torah was a "Torah shebe'al peh," and it survives, with or without shem omero (about which he was never overly concerned) in the teaching of his students and his students' students. I often thought how many of our current students at Yeshiva College have been touched by him from a distance through that shalshelet haqabbalah without their ever knowing who he was. A significant number of roshei yeshiva at YU over the years, maggidei shiur at MTA, mehannekhim all over the United States and in Eretz Yisrael, not to mention academic scholars of Jewish studies at prestigious universities, studied with him and now transmit his legacy to their talmidim.

When we learned together, and, of course when he taught in the Yeshiva, the focus was always on texts, biblical and rabbinic and medieval, some within the classic curriculum, and others ancillary to it. I don't know what his "derekh" was in giving shiur in gemara, since I never heard him give formal shiurim, but I know that when we learned together, especially during the summers, it was always gemara, Rashi, tosafot, Rosh and Ran, and occasional other rishonim. Mastery of the text was his goal, for himself, and for his students. Although he was a product of the "Brisker derekh," it was not what he taught to me, at any rate. And what he chose to study with me privately in my early teenage years, beyond the standard Humash and rishonim, Nakh and rishonim, gemara and rishonim, was interesting. We studied Iggeret Rav Sherira Gaon and Megillat Taanit, neither of them a staple of the beis medrash curriculum, not because he was preparing me for a career in Jewish Studies, for I think that that was actually far from his mind, but because he thought that an educated Jew should have studied the primary sources of Jewish history. The core of all Jewish knowledge, for him, was the text, not the sevara.

Although he did not give gemara shiurim in the Yeshiva after about 1955, when a "new" Semikha program was innovated with required classes in Humash and Ramban and in Jewish History which he taught, and although by the end of his life he was teaching only in BRGS and YC, my father was always a rosh yeshiva, both in his own self-image and in the view of others. His goal was to teach Torah and to enable others to study Torah; the fact that he occasionally did this by studying and teaching texts that were not part of the beis medrash canon somehow did not concern even our "right-most" roshei yeshiva. This was due, in part, to a more open atmosphere which pervaded Yeshiva in the 1950s through 1970s, but even more, I believe, to my father's religious persona. It was inconceivable to those who knew him that any intellectual activity in which he engaged could be tainted.

I still occasionally hear YU old-timers using the term yeshiva mann, a "yeshiva man," to translate an untranslatable term. That is what my father always was, whether he was out in rabbonus or back at YU teaching. His self-identification with, loyalty to and defense of YU to the outside world were remarkable; he could not imagine my going to college anywhere else, for after all, where else could I have been trained in all the areas I was expected to master? But within its four walls he could be a very harsh critic of his beloved institution. His standards, in learning, in teaching, in scholarship, and in ethics were very high, and those who fell short, and even his precious Yeshiva when it fell short, were subjected to trenchant and pointed criticism. Perhaps as a result, Yeshiva did not always treat him as well as it ought to have; it did not always keep its promises to him. Institutions cannot always afford to listen to their consciences. But he was "impervious," in the words of Haym Soloveitchik, to "the temptations of fame, power and finality." He took the high road, regardless of the personal or professional consequences.

When he was stricken with his long, lingering, illness in the early 1960s, we realized that it was fortuitous that my parents had never moved from the Yeshiva neighborhood. He went to classes first with a cane, then with a walker, and later in a wheelchair, and ultimately, as the debilitating disease progressed, he taught his classes at home across the street, from his wheelchair, and eventually from a hospital bed in his bedroom. I don't think that there was anyone who saw him during that period who was not moved by his fortitude in the face of illness. I know that he would have dismissed this remark with a wave of his hand, because, as the Rav said, he wasn't just an anav, he was nehba el hakelim. But his students in those years learned more from him than the subject matter of their courses, as he became a model of greatness in the face of suffering.. He had always davened with "the boys," as he affectionately called the YU student community, from the days that the minyan was in RIETS Hall (now Klein Hall), and later in its travels to Rubin Shul and then to the Morg. When his illness reached a stage that precluded his going to shul, there was always a shabbat minyan in his apartment. I often meet talmidei hayeshiva, including many who never studied formally with my father, who recall fondly that davening and kiddush (with cholent!), and the informal learning which followed them.

Although from a formal perspective, my father's influence on his talmidim, especially those who became rabbanim and mehannekhim began in the classroom, the impact which he had on a generation and a half of YU students went far beyond those four walls. From my childhood in the early 1950s and on, I remember students coming and going in our apartment, until the late hours of the night, seeking my father's (and mother's tibbadel lehayyim) advice and help, usually about matters far from the academic. He lived across the street from YU so that a student who needed his counsel regarding a job, a career, or a shidduch could find it. My parents' door was always open to the talmidei hayeshiva, and they took full advantage of that open-door policy. Many of those talmidim stayed in touch with my father long after they had left Yeshiva, continuing to ask for his advice and assistance. In later years, while he underwent the ravages of his lengthy illness, he appreciated the fact that many of them made a special effort to acknowledge gratefully all of the things that he had done for them; their visits and phone calls gave him strength and sippuq hanefesh. I think that I did not recognize the breadth and profundity of the impact which he had on his talmidim until I read what some of them wrote to us after his petirah (a small selection of those letters appears in a memorial in the 1982 Masmid).

Although I had learned with my father from about age six, we had never talked much about teaching, as opposed to learning. But from the time that I began teaching at Yeshiva, about three years before he was niftar, we had many conversations about what to teach and how to teach it. I only wish that we had had more. I remember that when I had to teach Introduction to Bible for the first time, we discussed the potential syllabus in detail, section by section, mar'eh maqom by mar'eh maqom, considering the value and potential significance to the student of each one. It was a sort of course that he had never taught, and I was teaching it to students who differed in significant ways from those whom he had taught for most of his academic career, but he tried to look at the issues from my perspective and at the goals which I had set for the course. I know that my students have benefited from the advice that he gave me.

My father's early study of Tenakh was not "literary" in the current usage of the term, but when I returned to Yeshiva to study, and then to teach, Bible, I would share with him regularly ideas about the literary approaches which were then becoming fashionable in biblical studies. Slowly at first, and then more enthusiastically, he began to think about Tenakh in this "new" way, and I remember very clearly his observing that these methodologies were among the things that Rashbam was alluding to when he talked about the peshatot hamithaddeshim bekhol yom, "the simple interpretations which are innovated daily" (commentary to Gen 37:2). He did not believe that hadash asur betalmud Torah, that novel approaches to the study of Torah were automatically forbidden, but that all of them were to be evaluated by rigorous standards. If they passed the test, they were admitted into the arsenal of the student of Torah. Rashbam's words, he felt, were meant to serve as an impetus to creativity in the study of Torah shebikhtav. Censorship of books, or of ideas, was anathema to him.

The dominant figure at YU during my father's teaching career was, of course, the Rav, and my father's relationship with him was legendary. He was a little older than the first generation of the Rav's talmidim, and about a half a generation younger than the Rav himself. They shared, however, a friendship whose nature I can only begin to imagine. Whence their closeness (and that was the Rav's word) stemmed, I don't know, but it was sealed in the 1940s, at a time, as the Rav said in his hesped for my father, that my father was willing to sacrifice his professional future and career in defense of the Rav at a time when others would not do so. I saw their interaction only when the Rav would visit my father at home, and retrospectively I would have liked to be a fly on the wall during those conversations. I also don't know what they talked about when they would take long walks down Broadway together as they did occasionally, sharing a little "down time" away from their talmidim. Their friendship, for I can find no other word to describe it, was manifest to all. I think that there were students who drew close to my father as a way of getting closer to the Rav, albeit indirectly, and there were others on whose behalf my father interceded with the Rav when they had incurred his displeasure.

We can see the relationship from the Rav's perspective in a small part of the hesped which he delivered at my father's levaya. Comparing him to the ziqnei hamiqra, he asserted that my father's place was with the generations of R. Saadia Gaon, R. Yonah ibn Jannah, Dunash ben Labrat and Radaq. Seeing the role of those rishonim as preservers of the unity of Torah shebikhtav and Torah shebe'al peh with their linguistic skills against the attacks of sectarians like the Karaites, the Rav characterized their mission as "a gigantic task." Coining the term "ish haiyyun" to describe my father because of his philological acumen and perspicacity, the Rav said "I consider him to some extent as a teacher of mine...he sensitized my mind...he opened up to me another world.... I became more sensitive ...to interpretations by Onqelos that I did not notice before I met Michael Bernstein.... In this regard he was my rebbe, he gave me something which I did not posess prior to my meeting him." Although the Rav focused in these remarks only on a single aspect of my father's talents, it was that feature which attracted him as the lamdan par excellence, as the maggid shiur par excellence, the ability to understand how derashot Hazal were often deeply embedded in the language of the biblical text. Calling my father both a gavra rabba and a gavra taqqifa, he asserted that he was "a great man in many ways." Could anyone have asked for higher praise? But would the Rav have dared say it in his presence when he was alive, knowing that it would have made that humble, unassuming talmid hakham and scholar very uncomfortable?

At my father's levaya, R. Macy Gordon, representing my father's many talmidim, said that more important than the subject matter that my father taught his students, he taught them "to think, to reason, and to question." I should add that one of the most important lessons which he taught me, both as a teacher and as a scholar, was the ability to say, particularly to a student's question in the classroom, "I don't know, I'll have to look it up." In the student and the ben Torah, in the lamdan and the scholar, intellectual curiosity, intellectual rigor and intellectual humility have to exist side by side as they did in him. Those are among the unforgettable lessons which enable and encourage us to carry on his mission a quarter of a century after he was taken from among us.


Rabbi Dr. Moshe J. Bernstein, YC '66, RIETS '69, is a Professor of Bible at Yeshiva College.