Rav Mattisyahu Salomon saw how all of us could rise to our best selves

Photos: Ruskin Photography, AEGedolim photos, Bernstein Studios, Meir Haltovsky,  Mattis Goldberg

Along with his razor-sharp mind, Lakewood mashgiach, Rav Mattisyahu Salomon was renowned for his ability to listen and advise; he was fiercely protective against any threat to the yeshivah world, yet was an outward-looking visionary who’d been an early advocate of kiruv. And above all, he knew how to wear his stature lightly, because his mind was matched by his heart — and he saw how all of us could rise to our best selves

The tens of thousands who packed into New York’s Citi Field stadium in May 2012 for the so-called “Internet asifah” knew they were witnessing history. Against the backdrop of scoreboards and advertising hoardings, a long dais evocative of a Daf Yomi siyum featured an unprecedented lineup of roshei yeshivah and chassidic rebbes. In the Torah world’s long-running battle with technology, the event promised to be a turning point.

Even after three and a half hours of speeches, when Rav Mattisyahu Salomon got up to address the crowd, the massive audience sat up in anticipation.

“Moirai v’rabbosai,” he thundered, his British diction rolling across this most American of venues. “Drink in this sight! Since the times of the Beis Hamikdash, this has never happened, such a gathering for kevod Shamayim.”

The sight of Reb Mattisyahu Salomon at the height of his powers was a mesmerizing display. His voice rising and falling, the Lakewood Mashgiach gave a masterclass of oratory as he framed the struggle over Internet access in frum homes as an existential battle for the Jewish future. It was as if the entire distilled force of his Torah personality — the decades of mussar, his burning passion for kedushah, his powers as a leader — had been poured into that one speech.

“Chamol aleinu v’al tapeinu,” he pleaded, his voice breaking. “What can we do to protect our children?”

As the event ended with the Tefillas HaShelah, no one realized that history had been made, in more ways than one. Not only was technology awareness firmly at the center of the communal agenda, but it was a form of goodbye.

Within a year, the long decline that saw the Mashgiach retreat from public view due to illness had set in. In hindsight, the asifah into which Reb Mattisyahu had invested so much effort was the high point of his time in America, the culmination of everything he’d worked for.

With his petirah over a decade later, that event looms large — and justifiably so. The ability to marshal the Torah world’s disparate groups in service of a greater cause, to face down the march of modernity because it threatened Klal Yisrael, marked the emergence of Lakewood’s mashgiach into a manhig, a Torah leader.

It encapsulates the story of a gadol who burst out of a corner of England to become one of the defining personalities of the modern Torah world, his rare mix of inner greatness and worldly talent a key part of Lakewood’s emergence as the center of Torah life in America.

“Reb Mattisyahu was unique for his great tzidkus, as a gaon and for his mesirus nefesh for Klal Yisrael,” Rav Yeruchem Olshin said in his hesped. “He allowed himself no sleep, and used his last strength to build Torah.”

That superhuman dedication went alongside a set of unique character traits. As a baal mussar, he bore the imprint of his great rebbi, Rav Elya Lopian, along with the razor-sharp mind of a lamdan. “Derhoiben,” elevated, is one of the most frequent descriptions that people used about him, alongside — improbably — “friend.”

That’s because he had that rarest of gifts: the ability to wear his undoubted stature lightly. He was the man who was remembered both for his powerful tefillos as well as for the l’chayim he’d shared with those who flew with him.

Renowned for his ability to listen and advise, he was also a preeminent leader. Fiercely protective against any threat to the yeshivah world, he was an outward-looking visionary who’d been an early advocate of kiruv while still a young mashgiach.

Above all, “Reb Mattisyahu,” as he was known — a legacy of his Gateshead days — was an illustration of what happens when the mind is matched by the heart; and when Torah brilliance is allied with the magnetism that fills rooms.