On Giants’ Shoulders

In memory of my rebbe, Rabbi Beryl Wein ob”m

You and I will do
What giants wanted to.
So stand and take the credit
We will be the ones to end it,
Though we’re small, we’re standing tall
Like soldiers
Riding high ’cause we’re on our fathers’ shoulders.

Avraham Fried- Composed by Yossi Green, Lyrics by Yocheved Reich- Shtar Hatenoyim

These words, sung by Avraham Fried, address the age-old question: Why should our generation merit the Final Redemption, when even greater generations that preceded us did not?

Quoting Rabbi Wein ob”m himself: “Every generation has special people that affect the lives of many of their contemporaries as well as the lives of later generations. The Talmud teaches us that the Lord, so to speak, saw that these people were rare in human society and therefore He sparingly distributed them over the generations. In this way, every generation would have some of these superior scholars, leaders, and role models.

As the previous generation, now inexorably passing from the scene, we can mourn the loss of such great people. However, the Jewish people are never bereft of scholarship, humanity, piety, and visionary leadership. Time will tell who the exact replacements in the next generation will be for those who have just passed on.

We may be assured, though, that there will definitely be proper replacements to guide the Jewish people spiritually in the difficult times that we apparently face and will face for the foreseeable future. King Solomon remarked in the great book of Kohelet that generations depart and new generations arrive in the world and will do so eternally.”

Much has been said and written about Rabbi Beryl Wein ob”m who recently passed away. Everything I have both heard and read about his life reinforces my great respect for the person I can proudly say was my teacher, my rebbe. With his passing, I feel compelled to recognize both him and all the giants I was blessed to know during their lifetimes, and the everlasting impact they left on the world, and on me personally.

Rabbi Wein and I came from different generations, different worlds (not only because he was a native of Chicago and I was born in Miami Beach). Rabbi Wein is a descendant and student of great Lithuanian Rabbis. My practice of Judaism (and the sports teams I rooted for) took a different path.

In the end, through different routes, we made Aliyah.

I am a Lubavitcher Chosid. My first encounter with the Late Lubavitcher Rebbe ob”m, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, was in 1959 when I was only 6 months old. Whatever details I have of that first personal encounter, among many, I know from my father ob”m and my mother. My parents, although not Lubavitcher Chasidim at the time, had already enjoyed a relationship with the Rebbe. (That’s a whole ‘nother story). I merited to serve as an emissary of the Rebbe for over two decades before making Aliyah in 2003.

Long before I studied in a Lubavitcher Yeshiva, I had the merit of being taught by Rabbi Wein.

For those of you familiar with Rabbi Wein’s timeline, you know that Rabbi Wein left the legal world to accept his very first Rabbinic position at Beth Israel Congregation in Miami Beach, Florida, my hometown, in 1964. I was 5 years old at the time. Rabbi Wein was 30.

In Rabbi Wein’s words: “One day, … I found my old friend from yeshivah, Rabbi Aryeh Rottman waiting for me. “I’m leaving my shul in Miami Beach, and Rabbi Kreiswirth says you should be my successor,” he told me. “I replied that I wasn’t interested, but Rabbi Rottman was not someone who took no for an answer, especially when on a mission from his rosh yeshivah.”

I mention this story in particular because it is similar to my father’s own story.

My father received his smicha from Mirrer Yeshiva. He enjoyed a close relationship with Rabbi Avraham Kalmanowitz (another giant). But my father ob”m was also attracted to the study of Chasidus, and to the young Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson ob”m.

My father’s dream was to raise his family in New York, close to his family, and to send his children to Bobov cheder. His dream was not to raise a family in the God-forsaken 1950s city of Miami Beach.

“Man plans, and G-d laughs”.

Sure enough, the same person, Rabbi Aryeh Rottman (another giant), who would recruit Rabbi Wein in 1964, recruited my father in 1957.

The story I heard firsthand from Rabbi Rottman’s wife was that Rabbi Rottman used an amazing tactic to convince my father to move to Miami Beach. He persuaded my father to ask the Lubavitcher Rebbe for his advice! (Neither Rabbi Rottman nor my father were Lubavitcher Chasidim). Keep in mind, the very first official, permanent emissary of the Rebbe in Florida wouldn’t be arriving until 1960.

The rest is history. I don’t know exactly what my father’s job description was, but he served as the Assistant Rabbi, Baal Koray, Shliach Tzibur, Baal tokeah, among other responsibilities at Beth Israel, and as a school teacher at the Hebrew Academy of Greater Miami led by another giant, Rabbi Sender Gross ob”m. Rabbi Gross was my school principal for 10 years straight. (My father was my teacher in first, seventh, and eighth grades).

Of course, the Jewish community of Miami Beach is a whole different universe today, on so many levels. I merited to live there, with my 14 younger siblings, during its early years.

Which brings me back to Rabbi Wein.

As the (oldest) son of the Assistant rabbi, I was expected to sit up on the stage located at the very front of the Sanctuary, where the Torah Ark was located, where Rabbi Wein sat to one side of the stage with his son, and my father sat on the other side of the stage together with me. Every single week.

This is how my formative years were spent. Every single Shabbat, I would walk together Shabbat morning to Shul with my father, a fifteen-minute walk, rain or shine, in the Miami Beach humidity. And every Shabbat, when the other younger children were allowed to leave during Rabbi Wein’s weekly sermon, I was expected to sit there on the stage, at court side, and listen.

And listen, I did. I am one of the fortunate ones who enjoyed week after week after week, year after year, almost a decade of weekly Shabbat sermons from Rabbi Wein. As a child growing up, until both Rabbi Wein and I left Miami Beach, I observed and absorbed the great speaking style of Rabbi Wein. The impact of that experience left an indelible imprint on the person I would eventually become.

Even more than that, Rabbi Wein was my teacher, my rebbe. A small group of us merited to meet with Rabbi Wein regularly during the week after school hours to study Talmud with him in his Study.

From all those years of after-school study with him, I remember one thing.

We were a small group of very young teenagers, maybe just 4 or 5 of us. As it happened, one week, one of the participants was a no-show. I figured that without everyone there, we could get a break from the class that week, and we could be excused to go home early.

Rabbi Wein didn’t agree with my reasoning and wouldn’t hear of it. It was on that day that Rabbi Wein taught me the great lesson of the value of every single person. He explained to me that my studying was not dependent upon the attendance of others.  Every one of us was a whole world. I am a whole world.

The class would go on.

The values that I learned from Rabbi Wein were the values he shared throughout his lifetime with countless others. The 60s Rabbi Wein I personally knew went from strength to strength to strength throughout his life, through the 70s, the 80s, the 90s, and into the 21^st century. He belonged not just to our generation, but to other generations as well. We will never fully comprehend and appreciate his impact on the Jewish Nation.

In closing, I would like to reiterate the last line of Avraham Fried’s song:

“Riding high ’cause we’re on our fathers’ shoulders.”

Without question, I am who I am today because of all the many giants I was blessed to know during my lifetime, including my great-grandfather and grandparents.

When I was a teenager, my mother asked me what my plans for life were.

She had never asked me that question before.

I was taken aback by her question. In my mind, at least, it was a no-brainer.

I planned to follow in my father’s footsteps. The giant of them all.