In the preparation of this book, The Leo Jung Jubilee Volume, which I have the honor to present to Rabbi Jung this evening, we commissioned an artist to prepare a drawing which is used on the binding. It is a somewhat surrealistic picture of a prophet, Elijah, holding a book. Merged into the actual drawing is a Hebrew inscription from the Second Book of Kings, 2:46, which reads ve’yad Hashem haytah el Eliyahu – “and the hand of the Lord was to Elijah.” That is an idiom that means that the prophet Elijah was under divine inspiration.I believe that this verse summarizes the tributes that the previous speakers have so eloquently paid to our own Eliyahu, our beloved Rabbi Leo Jung. We feel that his unequaled record of service to Torah and to world Jewry is a result of a life–long divine inspiration, drawing upon the wells of Torah of both parents and teachers, amongst whom were counted some of the greatest Jews of the past generation.Allow me to draw your attention in particular to the peculiar idiom, “and the hand of the Lord was el Eliyahu – to Elijah.” Normally the biblical expression for divine inspiration is al – “the hand of the Lord was on the prophet,” not el – “to the prophet.” Thus, with the prophet Ezekiel and others, we read va-tehi alav sham yad Hashem – “the hand of the Lord was upon him there.”What is the difference? I believe it is this: when we use the expression al – that God’s hand was on or over the prophet – we mean that God works His design in human affairs through this individual; but the man himself remains passive and insignificant. The prophet, over whom the hand of God has been placed, is only a mouthpiece for God’s message. His own personality cannot be asserted – it has been suffocated. It might just as well have been somebody else whom God chose for this mission. The prophet’s character and personality are submerged in his duty. He is used by God – he never asserts his unique self. He is the fortunate accident of predestined history.But w…

The perek records the story of Rabbi Yosi ben Kisma, who was accosted by a stranger who asked him, מאיזו עיר אתה? Rabbi Yosi replied, etc., etc. What we have before us is an assertion by Rabbi Yosi that it is better to live among sages than among ignoramuses – among wise men than among fools. Rabbi Yosi disdains all material rewards that might entice him to a spiritually and scholarly less favorable environment. This is, apparently, an unexceptionable teaching. Yet the matter is not quite that simple. Is it really the best policy to pursue in order to assure the dominance of Torah in Israel? If all committed Jews decided to live exclusively in Jewish areas, where kashrut and Torah and tefillah were all assured at the highest level, would this not result in the decimation of our community and in the loss of countless thousands of Jews in the outlying communities? Furthermore, do we not have sufficient examples of great Jews who, by risking an alien environment, succeeded in converting that milieu into great centers of Torah? For instance, we know that Rav left Palestine to go down to Babylon – and almost singlehandedly made that community into a center of Torah for hundreds and hundreds of years to follow. Does Rabbi Yosi ben Kisma then mean to imply that this was wrong? Does he have any alternative solution for the spreading of Torah in Israel? I believe that Rabbi Yosi ben Kisma was not preaching a kind of contemporary retrenchment policy whereby all Orthodox Jews withdraw into one neighborhood and abandon the rest of the community. The stranger who accosted him did not ask, “Where do you live?” He asked him, מאיזו עיר אתה – “From what place are you?” And therein lies the difference. Philo maintained that the pious man is a stranger on earth, for he is intrinsically a citizen of Heaven who is only temporarily here. His real makom is in Heaven. That is, I believe, the meaning of this dialogue between the Tanna and the stranger. What, asked the stranger, is your rea…

This address is dedicated – as is my shiur tomorrow – to the memory of morenu ve-rabbenu Dr. Samuel Belkin, zikhrono livrakhah, whose tenth yahrzeit we will commemorate in a few weeks, during Chol ha-Moed Pesach. Because Dr. Belkin was not only my teacher for one year – the last year he taught – but also my predecessor as President, I had the opportunity to appreciate the full scope of his prodigious talents and insights – his greatness not only as a talmid chakham and as an educator, but also as a leader. And it is this quality of leadership that I choose to discuss on this, his tenth yahrzeit and the one hundredth birthday of our Yeshiva. Dr. Belkin taught us by example that to be a talmid chakham you need lomdus; to be a yerei shamayim you need emunah; to be a teacher you need love of your pupils as well as your subject matter. But to be a rav, a rabbi in the classic Jewish sense, you need all these – and much more: you need the gift of leadership.Dr. Belkin himself was an orphan from Lithuania who became a renowned תלמיד חכם at a young age, wandered to the U.S., got himself a doctorate at Brown University, and then came to Yeshiva as both a rosh yeshiva and professor of Greek. His contribution to the |ewish world, however, was not confined to what he knew and what he taught, but was distinguished by the way he combined these with his vision, his goals, his determination, his readiness to use either gentle persuasion or confrontation —in a word, his leadership. It was the ability to integrate his Torah and his Mada with his leadership qualities that ensured his place in Jewish history.Dr. Belkin was blessed with great gifts, both intellectual and personal, and few of us indeed can aspire to equal his achievements. But we can learn from him, each in his own way and in accordance with his own personality, to exercise leadership in our careers as rabbis; to bear in mind that the rabbinate is neither a service profession nor a lifelong kollel at the expense of a co…

זה זמן כביר שאבי יושב ותוהה על בעיה בהלכה ותשובה שלא מנאתי לה פשר מספיק – נשמעת לי שיש מגדולי האחרונים שהעלו את הקושיא הזאת, כגון המנחת חינוך והרב יששכר, בתירוצים שהריעו – ולפיכך הנני מנסה גם אנכי הקטן לבאר את הסוגיא, תחילה בהלכה, ואחר כך בדרך האגדה. הגמ׳ קדושין דף מ״ט ע״ב: התקדשי לי על מנת שאני רדיק, אפילו רשע גמור מקודשת, שמא הירהו בתשובה בדעתו. ע"מ שאני רשע, אפילו רדיק גמור מקודשת, שמא הירהר בדבר עכו"ם בדעתו. ואין הגמרא הזאת אומרת אלא דרשני: אם אמנם ההרהור תשובה מספיק להפוך רשע לרדיק, מה לנו ולכל הדינים שנאמרו ב"ס ונקבעו כהלכה ע״י הרמב״ם ושאר הפוסקים, כגון וידוי ותפילה וירידה וגלות, וכוי, הלא ע"י ההרהור בלבד יורא ידי חובתו 3. זאת ועוד: הלחם משנה, פ"ח מהל' אישות ה״ה, הקשה: אם אמנם האשה מקודשת כשקידשה בעיני שאני רדיק שמא הירהר בתשובה בדעתו, א"כ המקדש בפסולי עדות מדוע אינה מקודשת, ואיננו חושש שמא הירהרו העדים בתשובה בלבם? אבל באמת יש בעיה מאוד פשוטה "בעל-ביתית", המטרידה אותי: האם אמנם יש בכיתה של הידקור בלבד להפוך אותי מרשע לרדיק? האם יכול רעיון ופורח־עבר לשנות אותי מחוטא ופושע עד כדי כך שאוכל ליהנות מחברתם של החפץ־חיים ועוד רדיקים כאלה? 4. ובכדי להשיב על קושיות פשוטות אבל יסודיות אלה, ונקדים מ"ש מורנו הגריד"ס שליט״א, בספרו "על התשובה". אבל לפני כן, כמה מלים ספורות לבאר את המונחים הבריסקאית. מרוה נחלקת לשני יסודות: קיום המרוה, דהיינו המטרה ההלכתית של המרוה; ופעולת המרוה. הדרך, המרוה, הדרכים שבהם היא מתבטאת, שהאדם מוריא אותה לפועל על־ידם. והנה, לרוב השניים — הקיום והפעולה — הם זהים — כגון: תפילין, לולב, ספה"ע. הקיום והפעולה הם אחד. אבל לא תמיד הוא כך. יש פעולת המרוה שהוא מעשה גופני, על־ידי היד או הפה, ואילו הקיום הוא לא מעשה חיצוני אלא תחושה פנימית. בלב או בכוונה או בתודעה או ברגש, שאותה אני מוכרח להשיג על־ידי פעולת המרוה שתי דוגמאות: תפילה ואבלות. בתפילה הקיום הוא עבודה שבלב, חווית קרבת אלקים שעומד לפניו, ופעולת המרוה היא בטוי שפתיו שלוחשות תפילה, עמידה, כריעות וכוי, התפילה לכל פרטיה וגווניה המפוארים – הלכות תפילה. ובאבלות בפשטות. ובקיום של מגילות הרמב"ם, פרפרי הרמפה”ן, אנינות הלב, the experience of grief, מפפ פסיכולוגי מיוחד, ופעולת המפורה היא ע"י ניעול (unkempt) …

וה׳ נתן חכמה לשלמה כאשר דבר לו — "And the Lord gave Solomon wisdom, as He had said He would" (I Kings 5:26). With this verse does the Haftarah of this Shabbat (Terumah) begin. But what does כאשר דיבר לו ("as He said He would") refer to? Where do we hear of a promise by God to Solomon? The answer is — in I Kings Chapter 3. There we learn that young King Solomon succeeds to the throne of David. He is untried, an unknown, unfamiliar with the complicated affairs of royal politics and government administration. He has a prophetic dream in Givon in which God appears to him and asks him directly and simply, שאל מה אתן לך — ask, and I will give it to you. In response, Solomon thanks God, and protests that he is young, callow, inexperienced — and his responsibilities are overwhelming. What he asks for fits into one verse:ונתת לעבדך לב שומע לשפוט את עמך להבין בין טוב לרע, כי מי יוכל לשפט את עמך הכבד הזה"Give Thy servant an understanding (lit., hearing) heart to judge Thy people, that I may discern between good and evil for who is able to lead Thy great (lit., heavy) people"--I Kings 3:9God is enormously pleased at Solomon's request which is identified in the divine response as that of לב נבון וחכם and his wish is granted. Solomon's wisdom engulfs the world and becomes the stuff of song and legend.Note what he asks for: ־- לשומע a hearing heart, not merely אוזן שומעת, a hearing ear. A hearing heart (translated into English as an "understanding heart") has little to do with his auditory capacity. It has everything to do with his ability to listen, to hear, to understand--with the heart. It implies insight, instinct, sensitivity, compassion, wisdom. A hearing ear is communication over a relatively short distance-from mouth to ear. A hearing heart is far more significant, and it implies communication over longer distancesand greater depth: heart to heart...And what is the function of the "hearing heart?" - להבין בין טוב לרע, "to discern between good and evil," to understand the…

Permit me to begin with an expression of genuine regret for violating elementary decorum by discussing matters inappropriate to the happy occasion which brings us here this afternoon – but my excuse is that it would be far more inappropriate to ignore unpleasant and threatening facts that stare us in our collective face, that loom before us in all their frightful ugliness. The 60 years of RCA covered the most critical years of Jewish history. Of us it might be said, to paraphrase the Midrash on Noah, that ראינו שלשה עולמות – עולם בחורבנו, the world of Holocaust; עולם בבנינו, that of growth and State of Israel; and now, the third – עולם תלוי ועומד בין זה לזה – that of doubt, decline, and disillusionment. We are members of an organization that was born just as the demons of destruction were beginning to stir in all corners of Europe. The second period was one in which we participated in the halcyon post-war days as Americans took to building shuls and as the great migrations from Europe replenished our ranks, as day schools and kollelim and mikvaot were being erected all over the country, and as the Rav זצ״ל was teaching and speaking with unparalleled genius, as RCA became a powerful and significant actor on the stage of American Jewry. And, לדאבוננו הרב, we now witness the deep distress of Judaism as secularism rises, as the non-Orthodox movements grow further and further away from Torah and tradition, as intermarriage and assimilation increase here and even in Israel – which, in addition to being engulfed in Jewish ignorance (some 88% do not know the עשה״ד, about 40% cannot name any of the Patriarchs, and some 20% haven't heard the term חמשה חומשי תורה) – now has to put up with a virulent form of Jewish anti-Semitism called "Post-Zionism." It is a world of self-doubt and hesitation and trepidation – not exactly a great time to be a rabbi. A Besht parable (recorded in the writings of his disciples) tells of a king who appointed four ministers over his treasury, all …