Rabbi Nison Gordon, a’h

By R’ Nison Gordon, z’l

Translated By P. Samuels

According to news reports, the snowstorm last Thursday night [January 1961] kept thousands of people from attending concerts and parties celebrating the inauguration of our new president.

Apparently, the same storm was too weak to overcome the will of 2,000 Jews who traveled all the way to Washington Heights to listen to a shiur given by a great rabbi about the mitzvah of tzitzis and about the blue “techeiles” thread which belongs on the tzitzis.

Around midnight, after the three-and-a-half-hour lecture, I heard, while on the way to the subway during the height of the storm, how a group of youths bragged about their daring to go to Washington Heights in such terrible weather.

A few rabbis sitting on the subway bench couldn’t stop talking in awe about the knowledge and Torah thought which spewed forth like from a fountain. A group of yeshiva students who came from Brooklyn took out the notes that they took during the shiur and compared their notes while riding the subway.

And on everyone’s faces, one could read the satisfaction, which proved that the difficult trip in such weather was worth the effort. They certainly got their money’s worth on this fare.

Rabbi Yosef Dov Soleveitchik’s yearly shiur in Yeshiva Rabbeinu Yitzchak Elchanan (the rabbinical seminary of Yeshiva University) to commemorate the yahrzeit of his father, z’l, became an event in Torah-learning intelligent society. Not only do his students and followers show up, but critics and detractors are also in the audience. They, too, won’t miss this shiur, which they enjoy and where they learn a lot.

Rabbi Soleveitchik’s style of delivering a shiur is as riveting as the subject matter. He says quite often that he considers himself a teacher. That’s why he refused the offer to become chief rabbi in Israel, because he did not see, in that position, any outlet for his teaching ambitions. Thus he is the first teacher I ever saw for whom the students run willingly into his classroom . . . and, when after three hours of talking he asked if perhaps it’s enough, his “schoolchildren” answered that they don’t want to go home yet.

This year’s shiur was especially moving, because last year he did not deliver a shiur due to illness. His own personal experience of being ill and then being cured served to illustrate so masterfully the lesson that Jews have to learn from the blue thread in the tzitzis. He gave many other examples, but the one of his own personal experience was most poignant and dramatic.

Rabbi Soleveitchik’s shiur is usually divided into two parts—halachah (Jewish law) and aggadah (narrative)—and the listening audience is probably also divided into these two categories. There are Torah scholars, a nice number of yeshiva students who represent most yeshivos in New York, and there are those who come because they like to hear a nice thought or a good interpretation of Chazal or of a pasuk. Both types of listeners are not disappointed, and this year they had the added bonus of hearing a deep pilpul (argumentative discussion)—in true hairsplitting Brisker style—about tzitzis, while getting a glimpse of man and the world through the perspective of the blue techeiles thread.

He began with Adam HaRishon and scrolled through the historical eras of Shmuel HaNavi, Shaul HaMelech, and Dovid HaMelech until he got to people of the modern world with their ambitions to reach the heavens. His main point was that the techeiles in the garment reminds one to shed the illusions that accompany mankind constantly—sometimes it’s riches, sometimes power or influence—and one forgets that man is not more than the fig leaf with which Adam and Chava covered themselves. Yet, when Adam actually heard the voice of Hashem at sunset, he declared, “But I am totally naked.”

As his sources, Rabbi Soloveitchik uses Zohar and Chabad sefarim like the Tanya and Likutei Torah. But he can also delve in his own wellspring of knowledge. His ideas sprout wings, spread over the ocean of Torah in which he is a master swimmer and skilled diver.

Not only was it a pleasure to sit and listen to the lecture, but it wasn’t any less of a pleasure to see that New York has such a large crowd of thousands who yearn to hear what such a man has to say.

While listening to Rabbi Soloveitchik’s explanation of techeiles, the name of one of the greatest Chassidic Rebbes came to mind. It was he who devoted his whole life to fight on all fronts in defense of the blue thread, so that Jews should fulfill the mitzvah of tzitzis properly.

Everyone knows that Radziner Chassidim wear techeiles in their tzitzis. But how many people know what a great man Reb Gershon Henach Radziner was, and with what passion he dedicated his life to renew the mitzvah of techeiles?

Perhaps it was so hard because it is hard for mankind to shed the “illusionary garments” and the towers constructed of fig leaves, as Rabbi Soloveitchik defined the nuance of techeiles.

The Rebbe, Reb Gershon Henach Radziner, a grandson of the first Izbitzer Rebbe, was, I would venture to say, the most outstanding personality in Poland in the latter half of the previous century. He was a genius in Torah who compiled a Gemara on Taharos. He traveled great distances to seek the chilazon—the fish which possesses some sort of pouch whose blood is used to dye the techeiles. He sought and he found, and on the first day of Chanukah 5649 (1889), he dyed the first pack of techeiles in Radzin. The kettle in which he boiled the first batch of techeiles in Radzin also fanned the flames of a great machlokes between him and other Torah greats. He wrote three sefarim: Sh’phunei M’munei Chol, P’sil Techeiles, and Ein Techeiles to put forth his side to those who opposed him. (These sefarim were reprinted here in America by Reb Gershon Henach’s nephew, the Radziner Rebbe, Reb Yerucham Leiner.)

He carried on a sharp correspondence with Reb Yitzchak Elchanan and with Reb Yehoshua’le Kutner. He also “ate his heart out” because Reb Chaim Brisker, Rabbi Soloveitchik’s grandfather, was totally impassive to the idea of renewing techeiles, and he expresses his hurt (see the introduction of Ein Techeiles) that Reb Chaim did not even find it vital to look into his pamphlets and articles about techeiles. “I do not have any objection that he did not read what I wrote, for who am I to impose the words of such a low person as I am, but he should have read them for the honor of the mitzvah.”

Sitting in the full auditorium of Yeshiva Rabbeinu Yitzchak Elchanan, listening to the mystical thoughts hidden in the blue thread which had been lost to us, I thought often of the Rebbe from Poland who once again found that blue thread and put it on thousands of Jews.

The most tragic part of this whole issue is that the techeiles from Radzin—along with those who wore it—perished on the altar that was Polish Jewry.

Book Review: Late Summer Fruit

Dr. Yitzchak Levin, professor in Yeshiva University and chairman of the American Section of the International Agudah Executive, wrote a book in English titled Late Summer Fruit (Bloch Publishing) aimed mainly at the American generation who knew nothing about Jews and Jewish life in Poland before the war. He wrote it to impart at least a bit of an idea of what a Jewish community and Jewish leader in Poland meant.

Those American-born Jews who will read this book will learn of things they had not known, and only then will they be able to feel the pain of our great tragedy, our destruction.

But I will say that those who knew Polish life before the war will be even more interested in this outstanding book. It gives them an opportunity to see pre-war Poland through the perspective of today’s generation, and to compare Jewish life today with yesterday’s.

The most valuable section of this book is undoubtedly Dr. Levin’s description of his father, the Reisher Rav, Reb Aharon Levin, H’yd, who sanctified Hashem’s name for 13 years with his speeches in the Polish Siem (Legislature). He lost his life al kiddush Hashem in Lemberg during the summer of 1941 when a Nazi bullet ended his life. Dr. Levin could have devoted an entire book describing the colorful life of his father, who, besides being a member of the Siem, was also one of the most prominent Polish rabbis and the author of several sefarim, which he wrote while riding the train between Warsaw and his hometowns—first Sambur and then later Reisha.

For those who look on in astonishment about the fight surrounding the rabbinate in Israel, it would be interesting to read what Dr. Levin writes: In the last years before the war, some of the largest cities in Poland did not have official rabbis because they could not agree on a suitable candidate. Warsaw, under Polish rule, did not have a chief rabbi for the same reason.

For those who brag about 50,000 Jewish day-school students in America, the following numbers will be very interesting. In the “chorev” schools for boys, there were 49,270 students in the school year of 1937–38. The Bais Yaakov schools had 35,000 girls. Not included in these numbers are the students of the yeshivos, the Mizrachi schools, the Tarbus (culture) schools, and the Yiddishist schools.

It is strange and hard to understand today how, on December 16, 1930, in the Polish Siem in Warsaw, the Reisha Rav had to defend religious Jews and their patriotism against an attack on the platform of the Siem by Yitzchak Greenbaum.

The book leaves some impressions and conclusions for the present. First of all, not everything in the past was all light, and not everything today is all shadow. Secondly, the specific Jewish lack, the test of pain and poverty, brings forth in the arena such glorified figures that freedom and riches cannot produce.

‘Pray For Welfare Of The Government’

One does not have to be a resident of Williamsburg to feel, or at least understand, the bitter taste that Dr. Nelson Glick’s prayer at the inauguration last Friday left in the mouths of many Jews.

If the Reform rabbi was chosen, for whatever reason, to represent the religion of Avraham, Yitzchak, and Yaakov at one of the most important moments in American history, he should have, with all due respect, risen to the occasion, and at least for those five minutes played the part of a Jew who is praying to the Master of the Universe.

The priests were not ashamed of their priestly vestments, and the president himself was not embarrassed to cross himself twice in front of the whole nation. But when it was the chance for the representative of the pure Jewish faith, it was impossible to tell who he was and which nation or religion he represented. Even the “Yivarechecha,” which he said in a Sephardic Hebrew pronunciation, had an extra “Vyechuneka,” and he omitted the end of the berachah, “V’yasem lecha shalom.”

The Christians had three religious representatives—a Catholic, a Presbyterian, and a Protestant. Jews in America, even the most extreme, do not want to divide Judaism into three “religions,” because they feel that those who stray are just not religious, and their way is not another direction which real Judaism can follow. The general conclusion in regard to issues of the rabbinate and shuls is that the Orthodox do not join any organizations with Conservative or Reform members, but there is no talk of forming three separate denominations.

If a Reform rabbi is invited as a Jewish religious leader to say a prayer at the inauguration of a new American president, he could have, out of respect for those he is supposed to represent, at least veered from the accepted Reform practice and donned a yarmulke.

Under these circumstances, we have no other way but to wish our new president much success, despite the chillul Hashem that Dr. Nelson Glick caused by his so-called “prayer.” 

Note: This is a translation of an article printed January 26, 1961, in the Morgen Zhurnal (Morning Journal) newspaper. R’ Nison Gordon usually wrote about a single topic in his column each week. In this column, besides the shiur of Rav Y.D. Soloveitchik, he also covered the Orthodoxy’s disapproval of the so-called Jewish benediction at President Kennedy’s inauguration, and he reviewed a new book of interest to the Jewish community.

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