Fourth Yahrzeit Azkarah for Rav Aharon Walkin zt”l: His Torah, Ahavas Yisrael, and Living Legacy

Transcript

This Torah class is brought to you by TorahAnytime.com. ברוכים הבאים, welcome, rabosai, to the fourth Yortzeit askarah, Morenu v'Rabbeinu, HaGaon Rav Aharon Walkin, zecher tzaddik v'kadosh livrachah, Rosh Yeshiva chazak, Yeshivat Beit Natan, year, kol zerעו Moshe v'Leah. So it mamash feels, it literally feels like it was yesterday, during Corona, during COVID, and we heard the tragic news, the sudden petirah of the Rav zatzal. And we're going to hear tonight many, many words of divrei hisorerus and divrei chizuk from various different rabbanim from the community. And all I could say is that one of the many qualities that the Rosh Yeshiva had was that there's a line, and this line applies to the Rosh Yeshiva, and I try to live by this line. It's very hard, but we try our very best. The line is as follows: No one cares how much you know until they know how much you care. A person could know the Torah inside and out, backwards and forwards, but if there isn't that kesher, that relationship, it's not the same. But the Rosh Yeshiva zatzal had the Torah, and he had that care, that warmth, that I'm sure we're going to hear about from the various different rabbanim and speakers. So without further ado, I'd like to call upon our dear friend Rabbi Avov, operations manager at Chazak, who will emcee tonight's program. And be'ezrat Hashem, we should only hear besoros tovos. Thank you, Rabbi ... It's ... very close to the yeshiva, and I want to thank everyone for joining us this evening. We have so many tremendous talmidim of the Rosh Yeshiva. We're going to address us one after another for a few minutes, and then we're going to have Rabbi Goldwasser following as the keynote speaker. It's our great honor to call upon one of the great rabbanim in the community, Rabbi Follows of Luno, for some divrei. ... Torah that we want. It's always good to be the first speaker, and you know for sure that you're not going to repeat anything that other people are going to say. In fact, when Rabbi Yaniv was giving the introductory remarks, I felt like he read my mind. I'm going to read you a piece of Gemara in Bava Batra, daf aleph amud aleph, which I think I can connect to my ready. The Gemara says the following: Amar Rav Yehuda amar Rav. Rav Yehuda said in the name of Rav, 'Zafuroto ha'ish yato v'Yehoshua ben Gamla shmo.' He says this person should be remembered for good. His name was Yehoshua ben Gamla. He was one of the Kohanim Gedolim in the Second Beit HaMikdash. Ilmalei hu, nishtakcha Torah miYisrael. If it wasn't for him, chas v'chalila, Torah might have been forgotten from Am Yisrael. What did he do? Shebetchilah, mi sheyesh lo av melamdo Torah. In the beginning, the way it used to be before Yehoshua ben Gamla, whoever had a father, a father would teach his son Torah. Mi she'ein lo av, lo haya lo Torah. People that didn't have fathers, they lost their fathers at a young age, or for whatever reason they got divorced, the son wouldn't learn. No father in the house to teach. Mai darush? Why do they think that that's the appropriate way? Because it says in the pasuk, 'Limadtem otam, limadtem atem.' It says you should teach them, and the way the pasuk, the word otam, could be read as atem, that you should teach yourself, which means to say either you, the father, teach, or the person is going to teach himself, but there's no obligation that some other person should come. Yehoshua ben Gamla came and he said, Then they made a takanah. It's not enough to rely only on the father. They're going to make melamdei tinokot, literally teachers for little kids. I'm not sure if this is like a cheder or a yeshiva, teachers for little kids in Yerushalayim, and there's a pasuk for that as well. And then they said, No, that's also not enough, and they decided that every city should have teachers. And eventually it got to a point where the takanah, this decree, extended where every single neighborhood, every single building, to such an extent that if the neighbors said, No, we don't want noise, it's too much, you could protest other businesses from opening, but you can't protest a yeshiva or a cheder from opening. And this was all Yehoshua ben Gamla's zechut. He's the one that realized this need, that the father himself, sometimes there's no father to teach. So that's why he is remembered for good. A Rosh Yeshiva recently came from Eretz Yisrael. He said, I don't understand this Gemara. Usually, when the Gemara tells us this was the history of how this decree came about, the way it usually looks is like this: the people were good, they were very religious, they were very careful about the laws of it.

There was no need for a decree. And then, unfortunately, generations, they deteriorate, and they had to make special decrees to keep people religious, to keep them from this. Seems like an obvious thing. Moshe Rabbeinu should have made this already. What did they do before yeshivas were around? How did people learn? Seemingly, this is where a generation wasn't good before, and now they became better. How could that be? So this Rosh Yeshiva, Rav Tzvi Altman from Eretz Yisrael, said the following. He said, What we're being taught over here is the following. A kid goes to yeshiva. Today we have secular studies, but without secular studies, imagine an entire day spent in yeshiva: seven, eight hours learning by a rebbe, aleph-beis, Mishnayos, whatever it is that they're learning. Let's say this kid didn't go to yeshiva; instead, his father had to teach him. How many hours can a father spend every day teaching his son? Father has to go to work. He comes home, six, seven o'clock, whenever the sun sets. The kid has to go to sleep soon. So they spend half hour maybe eating, I don't know, maybe talking to each other, and then probably another half hour, maybe an hour, learning with his children. And that's if he only has one son. What if he has three sons, five sons, and each one's a different age? So he spends 15 minutes with this one, 15 minutes with that one. So we're talking about a father devoting maybe daily 15, 20 minutes per child on average. He says, Before the takanah of Yehoshua ben Gamla, the 15, 20 minutes that a child spent with his father was just as good as spending six hours in yeshiva. Why? He says, Because here you're learning from your father, and here you're learning from a stranger. Learning from a stranger is not the same thing as learning from your father. When you learn from your father, you're not just being taught. Look at this. This is aleph, repeat after me. What about this? This is beis, and then when you get to Mishnayos. Like Rabbi Nehorai said, you have to know that the person cares about you. If the person cares about you, you open up, and you're able to receive things much faster, and you're able to understand things on your own because you're being taught by somebody who loves you. Whereas when you're learning by a teacher, and Baruch Hashem, the rabbeim in Am Yisrael are very dedicated people, but at the end of the day, it's not his child. And next year is going to be another class, another 20, 30 kids to get used to. So therefore, the kesher is not that strong like with a father, and therefore he has to take several hours a day for the same information to be inculcated into the student. Rabbi Wolkin taught with a lot of love, so much so that my first introduction to him was he used to have a Sunday shiur. What happens to be was a quite long shiur, three, four hours. But that's not because he spoke for three, four hours. It's because he let everybody speak. He would ask a question, five people would offer their answers. He would comment on each one, depending on how much the person was close to him. Sometimes he would praise it, sometimes he would, you know, tease the person, make fun of him if he was very close. He got a nice stinging remark because he knew that you can handle it. That's how the shiur went. You were sitting there, you were learning not with a teacher, not with, you know, an instructor that's cold and doesn't even know who you are and just be quiet and listen. You were sitting over there learning with a friend, and probably more than a friend, more like a grandfather. Even though that was only once a week, it made a big impression on me, and there were many other people. Some of them are sitting in this room, many others are already much older, moved out to other places, but it made a huge impression on me, very, very big impression, once a week only. Then, Baruch Hashem, the way things turned out, Hashem had mercy on me that I was able to spend more time learning in the Beit Midrash, and I was able to see Rabbi Wolkin again. Much more hours of the day, but it's not as if the entire time he was speaking to me, dedicating his energy to other talmidim, dealing with people's struggles with their parents, their struggles eventually when they got married with their chinuch, with their shalom bayis, and all sorts of other things, observing this person in action. It wasn't just learning Torah; it was also trying to absorb his fatherly energy. And that's what we're going to miss very, very much. Baruch Hashem, a lot of his talmidim became important figures in the community: Rabbi Meirov, Rabbi Niv Meirov, Rabbi Ilan Meirov, a good friend of mine. I remember when they just started their organization, Chazak, they were still thinking about what the emblem should be, the logo. Should we call it Chazak with the Q? That famous story about the walking... What's the Q? I remember still. We were in the beit midrash. The seeds that he planted, just like a father plants, he doesn't go with the son to college and sit with him and teach him every single thing. He gives him that initial push, and the child knows that my father is behind me, he has my back. That gives him enough confidence, enough energy that whatever he's going to do in life, he's going to think, My dad's with me. My dad's thinking about me. My dad's davening for me. That's the feeling that people had whenever Rav Wolkin was around. And I remember that when we got the news, the very difficult...

The news that he passed away, the one phrase that everybody said, it's a huge void. It's not something that you could just replace with another person. Chas v'shalom not to compare, but a teacher passes away, nu, so there's a substitute. There's not a substitute for such a person. It's very hard to replace that personal connection that he had with every single person. I'll end off with one phrase that he used to say that I was thinking about it yesterday whenever he texted me, reminded me about the yahrzeit, so פיעקע, I forgot, that Rav Wolkin used to say, I'm sure other people have heard it as well. People would come in distracted from whatever was bothering them, and sometimes they couldn't focus in shiur. So he used to say, Listen, when you walk through that door, you hang up your problems on the door now. I promise you, they'll still be there at the end. Nobody's going to take them. He says, Don't worry about it. Walk in, you hang it like you hang up your coat. You're going to come out, they'll still be there. Don't worry about it. Just when you're here, focus on your learning. And that's how we tried to, you know, it was a difficult thing to adjust, obviously, but yeah, when you walked in, you tried to forget, okay, now we're learning this, we're doing it. I want to tell you that the one person that took those problems off the door was him. People came to him and they complained, and we all went home feeling better that I was able to vent, I was able to unload to somebody else. But we didn't know that when he went home, he would spend nights saying Tehillim, learning, mentioning people's names, crying, davening to HaKadosh Baruch Hu, please give him eitzot. He would call whatever it was, doctors or askanim, to find out for this person a solution. And we were, you know, we just thought it was a person who was listening to us and that's it, you know, might as well just talk to a statue. No. This is a person who went with all of our problems home, and he tried the best that he can, whether it was to help or to daven to HaKadosh Baruch Hu, to try to make the person's... To burn easier. That's a very, very difficult thing to replace, and very much missing. And be'ezrat Hashem, our success, our accomplishment, I am sure he is looking down and he's smiling, and he's taking pride in the fact that he was able to set all of this in motion. Be'ezrat Hashem, we should all be zocheh to see the geulah shleimah and to see him with us again, bimheרה b'yameinu, amen. My next speaker is Rabbi Binyamin Kaima. He's very close to Rosh Yeshiva and a smichah from Rosh Yeshiva. B'shum ravi rabotai, I actually joined the Rebbe's kollel later. I was already much older. I didn't spend so much time, but I'll share—I don't have so many stories like Rabbi Zevulunov—but I'll share what I picked up, what I learned from him. There's a famous teshuvah from Rav Chaim מוולאז'ין. Rav Chaim מוולאז'ין was one of the greatest students of the Vilna Gaon, and he wrote a teshuvah about the agunah de-Vilna. There was an agunah. An agunah is a woman that doesn't know what happened to her husband, and she's basically stuck, unable to be remarried. So Rav Chaim oversaw this case, and after he permitted this agunah, a different rav had a problem with it. He says, How do you permit such a woman with no evidence or not enough evidence? And this is his reply. This is Rav Chaim's reply to the Tamin Chacham, and he says the following: בעניין הגונה דווילנא, שמתי עיני על כל דיבור ואמירה נעימה, I placed my eyes on every word, the pleasant words of this woman. וראיתי, and I saw, שברוב דברינו, that in most of our words, כוונתנו הולך אל מקום אחד, we're on the same direction. אלא שכבוד תורתו, but כבוד תורתו, meaning he's referring to the Tamin Chacham, נוטה לחומרה, you're being strict, you're being stringent. מחמת שאין הדבר מוטל עליו, it's because the responsibility regarding this woman is not on him. ואף אני כמוהו, meaning I'm also like him. לא פניתי אל צדדי היתרים העולים מתוך עיון טרם הועלה עלי אור ההוראה. He says that I did not look, me personally, Rav Chaim is saying that I did not look for heterim to pasken this she'eilah, this type of she'eilah, until that responsibility was placed on me. So he's basically, so he's saying to the Tamin Chacham that you know why you're strict? It's because there's nothing on you. You don't have to pasken over here. The responsibility is not on you. You're sitting in your chair and you can be machmir, but the responsibility of psak is on me, Rav Chaim is saying. And therefore, he says, והנה...

And because the generation he lived in, the 1800s, and he says that because in our generations that the dor is biref, they're missing chachamim, v'ha'alu al tzavari, all hahora, the responsibility of psak went on my neck from all around, she'ein matirin b'shum ofan, that they would not permit any woman without asking me first. And he says, v'chashavti im koni, I spoke with my Creator. I thought of what my Creator would say. V'ra'iti chovah l'atzmi l'chazek b'chol kochi. I saw that there was a tremendous obligation on me to mishkod al takanat haagunot, v'Hashem yigmar b'yadi l'shigyonot. So what the Baalim Musar point out from this Rav Chaim is that to be a leader, it's not enough to know a lot of Torah, and it's not enough to have a lot of yirat Shamayim, which are all necessary. You need something more. You need to feel responsibility for the am. You need to have that love. Why? What's missing? If I know a lot of Torah and I have a lot of yirat Shamayim, what else could be missing? So I don't love people as much as I should. You know what would be missing? That when you see a case in front of you, when you have to pasken, when you have to rule, when you have to find a solution, there's not enough adrenaline in your blood to come up with focus. And that's what Rav Chaim was saying, that because I felt love to this agunah, meaning I felt to all people. Therefore, I took it as I pushed myself to find the heter. And this is something that Rav Moshe Feinstein, when he talks about, very interesting, he says, Kayin, when he brought the flax, the flax seed, right, as the korban, came up with the idea. So Rav Moshe asks the very obvious and famous question: he came up with the idea of bringing a korban. Why would you bring from the cheap stuff? Bring from the best. So Rav Moshe answers, he says that because in front of Hashem, everything belongs to Hashem, right? What's the difference if I bring a hundred cows, two thousand cows? What's the difference? It all belongs to Him. So the point is, the fact that my thought, my energy, I want to give something to Hashem, so what's the difference what I give? The opposite. By bringing less, you're showing that everything belongs, that I can't give God anything. By bringing less is the opposite. By giving less is better. This was what Kayin thought. So where was the mistake? So Rav Moshe says the mistake was that he lacked a certain energy that is necessary when it comes to avodat Hashem. You can't be robotic. You need love, you need ahava. And without that, you'll stumble, you'll make mistakes, Rav Moshe says, that if you don't have that ahava, a robot will make a mistake because the world is not made out of robots, made out of people. And you need this ahava in order to get it right. And that's why I picked up from our Rebbe that it was not just he was a tremendous talmid chacham. He loved people. And when you love people, you push yourself more. You find, somehow you find the energy. A person who's cruel will very easily decide, I can't help. I tried. It didn't work. I really tried. It doesn't work. But if you love people more, you'll find a solution. There's something within you. When you want something, where does the want come from? When you love people, you'll find a solution for them. And even when you can't, you daven to Hashem. You'll do as much as possible to be moser nefesh because you love people. And this is, I think, this is what I learned from him, and what we can learn from him, is that to love people as much as possible. When you love people, you'll be moser nefesh even more. His zechut should be a salvation for us, and should try to emulate as much as possible his kochot. We're not going to have his kochot, but something to learn from him and to better our ways. Our next speaker is a rabbi who was very close with Rosh Yeshiva. He's the head of the Chazak Night Kollel, and also called partner by Menachem Zaka. Thank you very much, Rabbi. You see from about who Rebbe was from his main talmidim.

The, with Rabbi Ilan, Rav Yaniv, people that see their mesirus nefesh is something that everyone observes day to day, trying to see more. How can I help more? How can I be ... more? How can we bring more, more people into the shuls, into the batei midrash? How can we increase learning more and more? So, ma shebinus zechut to work with Rabbi and Rav Yaniv, Baruch Hashem. I'm very grateful for the opportunity to participate in this beautiful meeting, with the goal of being mevarer mekuchos shel tzaddik, to clarify a little bit for ourselves the nekudos that we can take away from what Rebbe was koneh over his short life. You know, when the Chazal say, margali befumei, a pearl in the mouth of a particular Tanna or Amora, right? You know, why do they call it margali befumei? It was like a saying that they said a lot during their lives, okay? You know, we know from the parshiyot of Yaakov Avinu, and before him Eliezer, right, the way merchants, right, jewelers and people who are traveling that needed to store valuables like gems, right, and precious pearls, you'd keep it in their mouth. You'd store it in their mouth, right? This lashon of Chazal comes even from even before, right? We know in the parashah of tefillin, right, l'maan tihyeh Torat Hashem beficha, right? We put on tefillin for the purpose that Hashem's Torah should be in our mouths. To be stored in our minds, to be part of us, be able to take it with us wherever we go. ... all the beautiful words of Reb Zalmanov, and after Reb Chaimov, and the rest of the rabbanim, ... be able to have some takeaways, to have a little bit of the ... of Rebbe. And I want to focus on a couple of those by introducing, number one first, there's a beautiful Toldos Yaakov Yosef, the main talmid of the Baal Shem Tov, and the Toldos Yaakov Yosef said something amazing. I heard this from Rav Moshe Weinberger literally 25 years ago in Queens Valley. He used to give shiur in Queens Valley, if no one remembers. So the Toldos said the following: A person would like, would want so much to be able to give over to his child, to his student, to his son, to his child, even if one is learning with his chavrusa, and you want them to receive the Torah that you want to say, okay, that you intend to give to them. You want them to receive it the same way that you intended, that you wanted, that they should hear it. There's a secret, the secret to that success, to that effective transmission of Torah from generation to generation, from father to son, from rebbe to talmid, from chavruta to chavruta, is that that Torah, that thing that you want to share, has to come from a selfless place, mamash selfless. When I heard this from Rav Moshe Weinberger, I went after and I asked him. We ask in the tefillah, in Ahavah Rabbah, when we pray to have a strong connection, relationship with Hashem, with Torah, the first thing we ask for is l'havin, to understand. The shoresh of ahavah, the sefarim hakedoshim say, is hav, to give. So the proof is in the pudding, right? When you see, when you see the word hei-beis, right, the shoresh of ahavah, you see it also in the word l'havin, to understand. So the person understands, understands. It's an indication. An indication: he received from his rebbe. Why? Because his rebbe gave over the Torah from a selfless place, a place without self-consideration, without self-interest. One of the things that rebbe always used to hear him say, after drashah, like those amazing Sunday drashos, where in a matter of an hour...

We heard so many different... It was astonishing how many mareh mekomos, how many sources of Torah the Rebbe was able to cover in such a short span of time. Afterwards, when people were praising in immense gadlus of the shiur the Rebbe just heard, what would Rebbe say? Remember? He says, The Torah is beautiful. He did not allow the kavod to eclipse his kavod, to eclipse the kavod of Torah. The Gemara in Nedarim is a beautiful account of Avraham Avinu from bringing, having a little party with Malki Tzedek, the Kohen, right? The first Kohen. And Malki Tzedek began to praise Avraham Avinu after he won the war with the melachim. And what was Avraham Avinu's response? He said, Is it possible that you're praising this servant before the master? It's at that point that Avraham Avinu received the kehunah for generation to come. Generation to generation, we have kehunah only because of that defining moment, where Avraham Avinu did not take the credit for himself. He did not allow the kavod that someone else is giving him to eclipse the kavod of Hashem יתברך. I was zoche, Baruch Hashem. I'm so grateful to Hashem Yisbarach for the zchus to spend much time with Rebbe. Got my first job at a kollel through Rebbe, and afterwards he hired me to teach Gemara in the yeshiva, and to spend some car rides with him, pouring out my heart, my troubles, to which he mamash, he was like a מעין קלימה, נפש היפה, mamash, he was mechazek me'od me'od. Magaleh befumi, a pearl in the mouth of Rebbe was the words, It's not about me. Over and over, I used to hear him say this: It's not about me. You know, when we're bringing up a child, when bringing up someone who's going to take Torah, bring Torah to the next generation, we say at the brit milah, Ze katan gadol yihyeh, right? And we bless the child, the parents, Tizkeh legadlo, lTorah, lchuppah ulmaasim tovim also, the lashon of gadlut, right? Gadol. You know, bezrat Hashem, after Sefirat HaOmer, we're working on ourselves for 49 days and receive the Torah anew. We don't want to just become talmidei chachamim; we want to become gedolim. Why? This is a ma'amar of Rav says an amazing—this is about Rav, he was a dayan in the Beis Din Yerushalayim a generation ago. He told me that the meaning of the ze katan gadol yihyeh, the inyan of gadol, is that a person... He's completely selfless. He's selfless in his Torah learning, in his teaching. He's selfless in his relationships, in his relationship with his spouse. He's selfless in all of his ma'asim. ... the pearls of wisdom that we hear from the other rabbanim, ... to receive always, that should be just like we took away from these pearls of wisdom, we should be able to keep it in our mouths. ... Thank you. Thank you, Rabbi Zucker, for joining us. Next speaker is Rabbi Michal Chaimov, ... one of the rabbanim ... ... to the organizers of tonight's event, Rabbi ... and the Chazak organization. I got a phone call a few days ago reminding me that tonight's going to be the yahrzeit of our dear Rebbe, ... of blessed memory, who I had the privilege of learning under, I had the privilege of meeting about eight years ago, and he ...

And our Rebbe, he put many things into perspective for me, and he enhanced my avodat Hashem in many, many, many ways. So our Rebbe, for many of us, was not only a Rebbe; he was a mentor, a father. He was a therapist to many people. He would mamash countless hours sit with people, talk to them, give them attention, give them love. He was ohev Am Yisrael, and he was ohev Hashem to levels that we mamash will never know. There's a Gemara in Masechet Shabbat that discusses a case of what to do when a baheret, a skin affliction, grows on the makom hamilah. We know that the baby who's eight days old needs to have brit milah, but there is a prohibition that prohibits cutting off a baheret, a skin affliction of tzaraat and the like. So what do you do if the tzaraat grows on the makom hamilah? Do you do the milah, perform the mitzvah, or do you say, No, I'm not allowed to cut the baheret, and therefore I don't perform the mitzvah? Gemara says you perform the mitzvah. And from here, this is one of the sources to the principle, the very famous principle in Chazal: aseh doche lo ta'aseh. A positive command is doche, pushes off a lo ta'aseh, a negative command. What's the deeper meaning of aseh doche lo ta'aseh? So the Chachmei HaChassidut, they explain that an aseh, a positive command, stems from ahavat Hashem, from the love of God Almighty. A lo ta'aseh, its mekor, it stems from what? From yirat Hashem. So the Gemara is telling us that an aseh, ahavat Hashem, is greater than yirat Hashem. The love of God is on a higher playing field, on a higher level than yirat Hashem. Of course, there are higher levels of yirah, but simply put, when you have yirah and ahavah, ahavah is step two. It's a higher level. And this is who HaRav was. He was chinat Aharon HaKohen, who was ohev shalom v'rodef shalom. He was ohev et habriyot, and he was an ohev Hashem mamash to levels that we will never understand. I remember, as ben adam l'chaveiro, I'll just paint you an example. There was once a middle-aged gentleman, who is what we call a yenta, came inside one day the beit midrash and, Od Yosef Chai, complaining about this, complaining about that. He walks over to me, Pachimu eta, pachimu to. I tell him, Listen, I'm not in charge. Have a good day. I don't have time for you. So he's looking for who's in charge. He finds Rav Aharon walking in the back. He goes to him, Rabbi! And he starts to give him a whole eulogy. I turned around, I turned from my shtender, I wanted to see how the Rav was going to handle the situation. It's okay. He said, I'm sorry, even though he wasn't. He didn't do anything wrong, Harav, and still, I'm sorry. And that's so big, and he calmed him down. In the end, the gentleman sat down with him, and he said, No, kibod harav, I'm sorry. And he basically mellowed him out, and he became also a lover of Harav, Harav Balkin. He had a way with people. He had an ahavah for people, as was mentioned prior to when I got up, that he was mitpalel behind closed doors for people's problems, and it takes an adam gadol to really understand that people need the tefilot of the rabbi. And he was mitpalel ba'adenu, and I'm sure that in his zechut, you know, the pandemic was minimized, and many, many people, they had brachot in their own lives in the zechut of the Rav. I just want to touch on one point that Harav Zakai mentioned. He said, Margela b'pumei, and it's a very, very famous statement that certain rabbanim would say, and Rav Balkin had many, many gems that would come out of his mouth. One of the gems that's very apropos to today's generation is Be normal. He used to say, Be normal. Don't go crazy. Be normal. Be healthy, okay? Don't be—I'm scared to use certain B2E, but don't be a frumnik. Don't go. Gotta be normal. You gotta have that ahavat Hashem with you all the time. You cannot be OCD about mitzvot. We perform mitzvot with fervor, with love, with mesirut nefesh, like the Rav himself was moser nefesh. But one thing he always stressed is be normal and be happy. Tismach b'avodat Hashem. That if your avodat Hashem, if you're not happy, then you're not holding in that. And you gotta make sure that you're holding in all the chumrot that you take upon yourself, and you're mamash excited and you're mamash serving Hashem from ahavah, then you could keep all of the chumrot. But if you're not holding there, the Rebbe would say, first be happy, first be normal. And that's a gem that we take with us for the rest of our lives, that avodat Hashem, it needs that fervor, it needs that ahavah. And bezrat Hashem, the Rebbe will be a melitz yosher, baadeinu, v'ad kol hakahal hakadosh, וכן יהי רצון, ונאמר אמן. Amen. Hazak u'baruch, Rabbi Chaimov. Our next speaker is somebody, a posthumous of a yeshiva, a person who's very instrumental in the continuation of the legacy of the Beis Medrash, which keeps on going stronger and stronger. It's called upon Moshe. Good evening, everybody.

As many of you know, I'm generally a person of many words. I always have what to say, Baruch Hashem. But for four years, I haven't really found any words to say, and I don't think I'm going to find much words tonight to say except for the obvious. It's a tremendous, it was a tremendous loss. You know, the year the Reb passed away, he went to Eretz Yisrael and he went to Reb Chaim on his last visit. And the bracha that he asked Reb Chaim to give him is that when he davens for people's refuah shleimah, that the bracha should be mitkayem. That was the bracha that he asked for. And, you know, everybody here, I'm sure, had very close relationship with the Rebbe and understood, but the magnitude of what was lost is unfathomable, unbelievable. Rav Sadan once told me that the Rebbe took a seed of tzaddikim, I forgot which neshama it was, this was something in the Zohar, and he threw them into all the generations, and one ended up here, one ended up here, and you see that every single generation has certain gedolim and certain people that are, you know, yotzei min haklal, something. And so first of all, I just want to thank the Rebbe for the ability that I was put in his presence for those many years. And, you know, the fight that's still inside of me is because of him. It's because of what he instilled in me. He was a person who taught you how to look at every single person with a certain way, with a certain love, with a certain admiration. And like I said, there's not enough words. I don't even know how to formulate the words to be able to explain what he was and who he was. But I will say one thing. There is a Navi, Navi Daniel, and it says, I heard from Rav Naftali Horowitz, and he said something beautiful. He said, right, Rashi says over there that matzdikei harabim k'kochavim l'olam va'ed. Rashi says those, right, who is he talking about? Talking about people who are melamdei tinokot shel beit rabban, people who teach students, who teach. And what does one have to do with another? So he's saying the closest star that we have today to our planet, when we look up to the sky, the closest star that we see is four light years away, which means that four years ago there was a light. It took four years for that light to travel. So the light we see now is from four years ago. It's not from now. It's not like you turn on this light and you see it right away. It's something from four years ago. And there are stars that are as far as 1,500 years that we look up and we see. And what does that have to do with a person who's matzdikei harabim, people who are teaching tinokot shel beit rabban, is what you see, the furthering of the generations and how people, their families keep going, their kids are from, messages get passed along, and the zechuyot continue even though he's not here, the zechuyot continue. And, you know, I've personally had many, many miracles and different things that I've seen, and I know that a lot of it is from his koach and from his tefilos for us. He used to sit in the beis medrash and cry, and people say he used to cry in private. I used to see him cry in public. The guy used to come in collecting tzedakah, the guy's telling him his problem, he used to start crying. I've never seen that ever. A guy, because, you know, you get used to it. This guy comes, I lost this, I have this, I have this sickness, lo aleinu. Everybody comes with a new thing, and he's sitting there crying over... Other people's problems, it's a level that I've never seen. And I guess that was one of the main things that connected me to him, is his high level of sensitivity towards other people, his love for other people, and, you know, that's something that, you know, their words can't explain. So, with that said, I first of all, like I said, thank HaKadosh Baruch Hu for putting him in my life, and I daven that Rebbe should be a meilitz yosher for us, for all of us, like he is. And the same way he was sitting here and crying and davening for all of us, he should continue doing it from there. And I have a request that HaKadosh Baruch Hu should be able to maybe can't fill the void, but help us, you know, get our heads above water, because for me, that void is still very, very real, and I'm sure I'm speaking for other people here as well. And really, I hope that we really get to unite very, very soon. Like they say, תיקון המשיח, and hopefully it comes sooner than later so we'd be able—you know, I used to make a famous joke. He used to tell me, Moshe, after I, you know, after 120, my talmidim, I said they're gonna forget the jokes and they're gonna remember the Torah that I taught them, but I still remember the jokes as well.

It's a joke I used to say, Rebbe. I used to say, you know, in Gan Eden I'm going to be in your class as well. I used to make him laugh. In Gan Eden I'm going to be in your class as well. He tells me, Moshiach, Gehenna is only for 11 months. And, you know, that love, that, you know, he really kept us going, and bezrat Hashem we should see Mashiach Tzidkeinu speedily in our days, and bezrat Hashem we reunite and be able to see that fire, that love, that light, bezrat Hashem very soon again. Thank you, everybody. Thank you, Moshe, for your meaningful remarks. The keynote speaker tonight was our great uncle, Rabbi David Goaser. I appreciate the hum himself. He's a tremendous renowned speaker and author and rabbin chassid, and of course he himself was very close to the Rosh Yeshiva. So, hopefully, ... Thank you very much. בישוד קהל הנכבד, הרב יניב שליטא, רבי איבא מנהל. The last picture I have of the Rosh Yeshiva was together with Rav Yaniv and myself, לא רחוקים טובים. When I came in this evening and I saw Rav Yaniv sitting in the front, already brought back to me zichronot of the Rosh Yeshiva, just to see him. I tell you, it is very difficult to define the Rosh Yeshiva. Rav Wolken was—you could not define him. You could not describe him. You could not measure him. You could not try to quantify, to qualify. Yaakov Avinu was asked by Esav a very interesting question. Usually, we would not think that Esav would ask such a question. He asked him, Hagidah na shmecha. Tell me your name. Yaakov Avinu, tell me your name. Vayomer, lamah zeh tishal lishmi? Why are you asking me my name? It is interesting that some people do not want to reveal their nature because they are constantly changing. The Rosh Yeshiva had a different din. You could not tell his nature. Was he chassid? Was he Litvak? Was he Ashkenaz? Was he Sefard? Was he machmir? Was he meikel? Was he Rosh Yeshiva? Was he Rebbe? Was he father? Av? Was he brother? Nobody knows, because he was all of those. And to every person, he meant something a little bit different. To have the Rosh Yeshiva the years that he was here, I can't even tell you, is a matanah tovah that Hashem gave to us. The fact that years after, Chazak makes a tribute and talmidim and rabbeim come and say divrei zichronot, it shows that the memory of the Rosh Yeshiva will be here forever. When I go in— Lakewood, and I go to his shul. Everything is exact the way it was when he was living. The chair is there. His sefer is there with the hundreds and hundreds of names that he used to be mispallel for all the time. When I came in one time, I didn't even know who he was, first time I met him. He told me, Please sit here. Looked like a rabbi. I said, Okay. I sit there. Then all of a sudden I begin to chap. He put me in his chair. I jumped up. He said, No, no, no, no, you've got to sit here. I said, Rav, this is your chair. No, no, no, no, I'd be more comfortable, he said. I said, I would be more comfortable, you would sit here. Back and forth. And it never changed the entire time. When Chazak made a dinner, and they brought out to him the dinner, I forgot the name of the place, so he insisted that the waiter give me the portion first. I said, Rosh yeshiva, you're Rosh yeshiva. I'm just a visitor here. I'm from the, you know, just a guest. He said, No. The din is that you've got to have the first portion. I figured, Okay. Finally they brought him a portion. He put it—he's sitting here—he put the portion maybe two feet...

He pulls out a Rambam. The rest of the main course was lechem mishneh. No, no eating, no drinking, just talking back and forth. They came over to him, everybody, the great love that they had. Each one wanted just to shake his hand. Some wanted to give a dvar Torah or receive a dvar Torah, some a psak halacha. But generally, it was the person himself. It's interesting. There is a sugya, b'riya b'amah kaneh, that sometimes just by seeing something, you can be koneh, you can acquire, you can get a stronghold on it. With the Rosh Yeshiva, that was the way it was. You didn't have to learn a Rabbi Akiva Eiger with him. You didn't have to learn halacha with him. You didn't have to talk with him and see what he felt in his hashkafot, in all the drashot that he made. He was a maayan hamisgaber. He kept giving out more and more, the sefarim that come out, now the Haggadah that comes out. It shows he was an olam malei. He constantly gave over. However, he always disguised it. You would never, ever know what he held in his brain, what he held in his mind. Years to come, they will still be taking the Torah and still writing it up, because that was the man, the genius, the understanding that he had for every person. B'riya b'amah kaneh, just by seeing him, observing him, watching him in davening. You watch him pray. We watch him pray. He was crying. He was crying the entire time. You watch him pray. He was jumping. He was dancing. He incorporated everything. All you needed to do was to study him and watch him, and that would be enough, let alone if you talk with him. I just have a few short divrei Torah dedicated to the great Rosh Yeshiva. First, we should know that he was only Torah. He was only Torah. His essence was Torah. Anything else that you could present him with, he really wasn't interested. He was interested. He was a person, but only Torah. There is a teshuva from the great Minchat Yitzchak, Rabbi Yitzchak Weiss, in Eretz Yisrael. And the teshuva is concerning a yeshiva bachur that did not want to go to secular studies, advanced secular studies. He wanted to learn Torah in yeshiva. His parents were against it. So the parents said, I tell you what, let's go. Da Torah. We'll see what the posek says. They went. Of course, the son said his piece. The parents said their piece. The Minchat Yitzchak said, You parents, I have to tell you, your son is right. Allow him to go to learn. Support him. I promise you, I, the Minchat Yitzchak, promise you, particular nachat from him, you will never stop smiling. And he did. A few years later. It was raining one day. Rain. So some people come into shul regularly, some people come in on a rainy day. It's convenient. A guy comes into shul. I happened to repeat this teshuvah from the Minchat Yitzchak, and I said it. Everybody was coming in line to say Shabbat shalom. That guy, the visitor, came in because of the rain. He's in the back. Okay, he's waiting on line. He gets into the line and he says, Rebbe, I got a big machlokes with my son. I got a big problem with my son. He wants to stay and learn in beit midrash, and I told him in the beginning of the year he cannot do that. He got to go out. He got to get a secular education, got to work. He's not staying. And he argued with me, and he didn't go. You're saying, Rak Torah? Rak Torah, Rebbe? Is that what you think is right? I said to him, My friend, I will tell you one thing. Number one, the reason it was raining today is not because of any other reason than you should come here and hear that drashah, because I wasn't going to say that drashah, but it fell into my head, and Rav Shvadron told me if something falls into my head when I'm speaking, I should say it.

And I didn't even want to say it, because I'm usually a little bit more gentle. You should know, a little bit more gentle. He begins to talk to me back and forth. I said to him, What are you arguing? Your son came home. He wants to become talmid chacham. He wants to become great. He has a love for Torah. He learned for you. You don't have to learn. I told him, You don't have to learn. He'll learn for you. Now, isn't that good? By the time we were done, hu bocheh. He began to cry. He said, I'm going to go home. I'm going to think about it. Next Shabbat, he came to the shul. It was a sunny day. He walked over to me and he said, I went and told my son. He is right. It's the first time we talked in five months. Rak Torah. If you want to know Rav Wolkin, he was only Torah. The man's essence, his mahus, his everything about him, every fiber was only Torah. Chochmat adam ta'ir panav. Kohelet. The wisdom of a person shines in the face. Rav Wolkin, walking down the street, he shined. He smiled. Somebody came over to him. Mi mekabel...? Mekabel b'sever panim yafot like I've never seen. Didn't matter who it was. Even somebody, one time it happened that somebody came and insulted him, insulted him to his face. You know what he did? He just gave him a pat, smiled at him in a bracha. I seen it. Who can do that? I wouldn't do it. I don't have the ometz, the courage to be that way. I don't have the patience to be that. And lavdil bein chaim l'chaim, that was the Rebbe. He was always in that mode. Ask mechilah from a person that he did not have to ask mechilah from. He would ask forgiveness when he didn't have to. Why is it that everybody feels so close? Interesting, says Chacham Shmuel, when a chacham dies, hakol kerovav. Everybody is close, because everybody tries to say, I was so close to Rebbe. I was the one that he really loved. I was the one he knew. We were together, and Rebbe, you don't know, he told me things. Everybody says that about Rav Wolkin, because everybody was to him. Everyone was his favorite. Everyone was his best. Rabbi Simcha Wasserman, zicher tzaddik livracha, said that there are two seas in the Holy Land, in Eretz Yisrael: the Kinneret and the Yam HaMelach. Kinneret and the Yam HaMelach. The Kinneret, full of fresh water, full of life. Yam HaMelach, salt, salt, no life at all. The Kinneret, it takes in water, it gives out water. Yam HaMelach only takes in water, doesn't give out. Rav Wolkin was a giver. He only gave out. He gave out his kochot. He gave out everything that he had. He had a beyond, beyond human understanding, the power. The day when he was so ill and he already wasn't feeling well, he called up my son-in-law, Benzion. And he told Reb Benzion Schachter, I'm not sure I'm going to be able to learn tonight. I'm not sure, with a weak voice. Benzion got the call. Rebbe saying, I'm not sure I could learn tonight. That sounded serious. It wasn't four hours later that the call came in that Rosh Yeshiva was no longer ba'Artzos HaChayim. He had gone to Shamayim. Every bit of koach that he had, everything that he possibly could do for the klal, he gave. The anivut, the humility, the modesty, was beyond. He humbled himself before everyone. So, like Moshe Rabbeinu, the greatness was his modesty, the humility. The greatness of Rav Wolkin was his modesty, was his humility before everybody. He loved everybody. There wasn't anyone who he didn't love—a child, an elderly person, a person that came in and was a little bit boisterous. He didn't care. He was mekarev everybody. He had an ahavah for all chachamim.

It didn't matter who. I saw him myself. A Rosh Yeshiva would come in, one of the Rosh Yeshiva in Lakewood, or a rebbe would come in. He was equal to everybody. He loved them. He himself, great Rosh Yeshiva, yet he was machnia to everybody. I just would like to say that he had no greater love than the talmidim, than Yeshiva Chazak. There wasn't anything that he loved better. When he would come to something in our place in Jackson, he would say, and they would say, Could you come into— I'm sorry, I have to be in yeshiva. And then occasionally they would say, So, Rosh Yeshiva, you know, you do live here in Jackson, in Lakewood. Maybe, you know, you should think about coming over here. We have yeshiva. He was shocked. He said, This is my yeshiva. This is my yeshiva. I could think about moving to Queens, but I couldn't think about anything else. That was a dedication, the ahava and the extreme love that he had for everybody, everyone here. I just want to say a few minutes that when Elisha, when Elisha was taking leave of Eliyahu Hanavi, and Eliyahu Hanavi was going up to Shamayim, so it happened to be Eliyahu Hanavi said, Tell me, what would you like? What's your request? What do you want of me before I go? Tell me. Elisha said, Vina pi shnayim bruchacha elai. Let there be a double portion of your spirit, of your ruach. Let it be on me. Let it be on me. Eliyahu Hanavi answered Elisha in a very interesting way. Eliyahu Hanavi said, You made a difficult request. This is not simple what you're asking. However, I will tell you the following. If you see me taken from you, then it's going to happen that you're going to get that ruach. If you see me actually going, then you're going to get the spirit. But if you don't, then it will not happen. It's not going to be. We know, Rechev Eish, Susei Eish, the chariot of fire, the horses of fire came down, separated them, and Eliyahu Hanavi went up to Shamayim. The pasuk tells us Elisha saw it, and what did he say? Avi, avi, my father, my father, Rechev Yisrael, the chariots of Yisrael and their riders. We don't understand it. Why did Eliyahu Hanavi say, Only if you see me taken from you, then you will get the double spirit, then you will get the ruach? Why? What was the reason for it? The answer is that when a person leaves this world, if we see them, and we remember them, and we make a zecher to them, and we continue to say things and learn the sefarim and go over Rebbe's sefarim, if you do that, if you remember, you cry out, Avi, avi, on the earth side, Avi, avi, father, Rosh Yeshiva, Rebbe, my life, my life. If you cry out and you think about it. And you go into who he was and what he did, then you get the double ruach. Then you get all the brachos. Then you get every blessing because you have the right hashkafah. You got the right outlook. That is the significance that a person will always remember. On the yahrzeit, the great Gaon, Rabbi Yaakov Kamenetsky said, Lirot u'leira'ot. On the shlosha regalim, we came to Yerushalayim, Ir HaKodesh. May there be great peace in Eretz Yisrael. May all the nechamos to finish. May all the chatufim come home safe and sound. May there be besuros tovot for Klal Yisrael. What happens when a person begins to think about this? When an individual says, Avi, avi, he was my father, is my father. It's difficult to go on without him. Then the spirit will always be here. The spirit will be in Chazak. The spirit will be in yeshiva. The spirit will be in Jackson, in the shul. The spirit will be all over. You carry on the spirit. Rabbi Yaakov Kamenetsky says, On the day of the yahrzeit, Rebbe comes, we appear in front of him to be seen. Would Rebbe be proud of me?

Would he be happy with my progress? Would he agree with the mahalach that I made, hu liros, and to contemplate, to think a few minutes about Rosh Yeshiva, how he looked and how he looks today. Just in finishing, the great Rabbi Yehoshua Leib Diskin, the father, avi yetomim, brought in orphans to his own house, started Diskin Orphan Home. You go in Eretz Yisrael, see a big, big building, Diskin Orphan Home, one is bigger, Yatom va'almanah yoded. A person should always support yetomim, orphans. There was a little orphan girl that was brought up in the house of Rabbi Yehoshua Leib Diskin. And while he was there, in the house, one night, the little girl got a bath and a shampoo by the Rebbetzin, the rabbanit gave her. And then the rabbanit was combing her hair, like they do, little girl after the shampoo was combing her hair. Rabbi Yehoshua Leib passed by the room, in the room where she was, in the outside room, and he saw the girl was crying, little girl crying. Yehoshua Leib, avi yetomim, he couldn't see a little girl cry. It was too much for him. He went over to the girl and he said to the little girl, Are you okay? Is the rabbanit, the Rebbetzin, is she combing your hair too hard? The little girl said, No. She's combing it softer than my mother used to. But there's only one thing. When my mother was finished drying and combing my hair, she used to give me a kiss on my head. That kiss nobody gave me since she's not here. A lot of Rebbeim, a lot of tzaddikim, a lot of roshei yeshivas, but nobody gives a kiss that the great Reb Wolkin, the great tzaddik, gave to each and every one of us. We should remember on the night of the yahrzeit of the greatness of HaGaon Rav Wolkin, and remember him throughout the year in shul, in our own avodat hakodesh, to do the things that he wanted to do and wanted us to do. Tezichu baruch, u'mevorach. Hashem Elokim dim'ah me'al kol panim. Thank you, Rabbi. Goa's for the tremendous, meaningful, tremendous remarks. Of course, we should take all the lessons that we heard from all the talmidim, the rabbanim. Tonight, we should take it with us, share it to other people over the next day, and of course throughout the entire, for many years to come, with Hashem and all the brachot, all the learning that we do, we should continue to remember Rosh Yeshiva, and that will inspire us to continue doing more Torah, mitzvot, with Hashem ... Amen. Amen. You've just experienced another Torah class, brought to you by TorahAnytime.com.