Monday, January 30, 2012

A True Jewish Educator - Part 4

A Rebbe has to be so filled with Torah that if you prick him with a needle, not blood but Torah will come spilling forth.

A myseh I heard from R' Berel Wein who an eyewitness.....

Rav Eliyahu Yosef Henkin had two major disputes in his lifetime. Rav Moshe Feinstein, his neighbor on the lower east side, held that a civil marriage was halachically meaningless and no get was needed to dissolve it. Rav Henkin strongly differed and held that a woman married by the secular authorities needs a get if she wants to marry someone else.

Rav Aharon Kotler held that one is allowed to eat before the blowing of the shofar on Rosh Hashana [hence the custom in the yeshiva world to have kiddush before the blowing]. Rav Henkin was convinced that this practice was forbidden and that one must hear the blowing before he eats,

Rabbi Wein came to visit him when he a very old man. He had already lost his sight and unfortunately his lucidity as well. He kept repeating two sentences in Yiddish again and again.

"Ze darft a get. Tor men nicht essen far tkiyos. Ze darft a get. Tor men nicht essen far tkiyos."[Hope I got the yiddish right:-)]

"She needs a get. It's forbidden to eat before shofar blowing. She needs a get. It's forbidden to eat before shofar blowing."

Rabbi Wein remarked that he had visited other Rabbanim in a similar state and some had other "gems" that were coming out of their mouths that were clearly not becoming of someone of their stature. They had been repressing it all these years but the mind went and it all came out. What Rav Henkin had in his kishkes was halacha and dvar Hashem.

זכות הצדיקים יעזור ויגן ויושיע!!