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Correspondence

Sep. 12, 1983

Letter to R. Stavsky about His Success Sending Student to Yeshivot (1983)

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Dear Rabbi Lamm: I have just returned from a brief vacation in Denver and was thrilled to learn of your being elected President of Yeshiva University. I hasten to add my mazel tov to you and wish you much hatzlacha in the tasks that are before you. I know that Hashem will guide you, as He has done in the past, to be an articulate and brilliant spokesman on behalf of Torah Jewry. With best wishes from house to house for a ketivah v’chatimah tovah. As ever, David Stavsky
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Letter to Michael Weisz about R. Stavsky 36th Anniversary at Beth Jacob (1993)

Dear Mr. Weisz: I was delighted to learn that your Congregation will be celebrating the “twice chai” anniversary of the tenure of your distinguished Rabbi, David Stavsky, on August 28, 1993. Were it at all possible, I would be joining you for these festivities. I have known Rabbi Stavsky for most of my life, certainly for all the 36 years that he has been with Beth Jacob. My feelings for him consist of equal amounts of affection and respect. Regretfully, I cannot be there in person, and I hope that these lines will substitute, however poorly, for my personal presence. Rabbi Stavsky has brought to his rabbinic career the varied talents and the prodigious qualities of heart and sensitivity and compassion with which he was amply endowed by a beneficent Creator. I have rarely met a man, even a rabbi, so thoroughly and genuinely dedicated to his mission. His personal warmth, his gift for programmatic innovation, his oratorical aptitude, and his extensive talmudic learning have all combined to make him a role model for younger rabbis, because – above all else – his career has been characterized by pure and sincere dedication to Torah, to Israel, and to his congregation. He is a le’shem Shamayim Jew whose presence has been a blessing to Beth Jacob and all of Columbus, as well as the source of inestimable pride to his alma mater, Yeshiva University. The occasion of “twice chai” is perhaps unintentionally symbolic of the career of your Rabbi. He has lived a full life relating to his community and his people, giving of himself and sharing his wisdom with all fortunate enough to come into the circle of his acquaintanceship and friendship. At the same time, he has lived a full, wholesome, and vibrant inner life in which he has always been conscious of the exalted role of the Rav and the daunting moral and spiritual and psychological demands it makes of those who wear the mantle of the rabbinate. He is to be congratulated for both, and the congregation deserves the appreciation…
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Letter Praising R. Stavsky (2003)

Dear Friends: I have known Rabbi David Stavsky almost from the very beginning of his rabbinate in Columbus, Ohio. Although I probably met him casually in his student days at Yeshiva University, it was only shortly after the beginning of his stewardship of Beth Jacob Congregation that I got to take the measure of the man and learned to admire him both as a human being and as a rabbi. The occasion was his founding of a very special program during the Ten Days of Penitence – a novel idea that demonstrated his creativity, his ability to broach a great Jewish concept (in this case, teshuvah or repentance) in a manner that is acceptable and attractive to the contemporary Jew, and his talent for converting an abstract plan into effective reality. I was, I believe, the first or second guest speaker at these annual events, and I knew then that this rabbi would have a long and distinguished career in a very important Jewish community. During his 46 years as your spiritual leader, he has proved that a rabbi can remain firm in his commitments to Torah and to Orthodoxy without alienating the less learned and the less observant. His fundamental human qualities, his personal warmth, his transparent love of his fellow Jews and fellow humans, his charm and his wisdom have endeared him not only to the members of his congregation, but to the entire community. And during all this time – without detracting from any of his manifold responsibilities to congregation, community, and Israel – he has managed to raise a very special and loving family together with his beloved and talented wife Ruth. Their extraordinary children, children-in-law, and grandchildren are eloquent testimony to their success as parents and grandparents. I am proud to call him a dear, precious, and distinguished friend. Rabbi Stavsky is a source of genuine pride to his teachers and to the schools which fashioned him – Yeshiva University and its affiliated Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary. On behalf of his a…
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