Rooted in a bygone era, Rav Binyomin Finkel soothes the ills of a new century

Photos: Eli Cobin, Menachem Weinberger, Baruch Yaari, Naftali Lerer, Family Archives

He’s the mashgiach of one of the mainstays of the yeshivah world, but Rav Binyomin Finkel’s own personality fuses classic mussar with chassidic warmth, and tempers rigorous introspection with an open heart for those far from his standards

It’s close enough to midnight that even in Itzkovitch, the Bnei Brak shtibel that doesn’t sleep, people are rubbing their eyes. The last daf yomi shiur of the day is winding down. A late Maariv is reduced to a hum, and the tzedakah collectors are thinking of calling it a day.

One man in the corner, though, seems remarkably unhurried. Clad in homburg and frock coat, he stands nestled against one of the pillars of the aron kodesh, lost in another dimension. Two minyanim have come and gone; the third will overtake him soon, and yet — as if it were Kol Nidrei night — he continues to quietly pour out his tefillah.

A half hour later, as the rav turns around and heads toward a waiting car, a knot of petitioners forms. “Harav,” says one bochur, “please give me a brachah to enjoy my learning.” A second approaches and asks for a brachah for a shidduch. “Does the rav remember my great-grandfather?” a third wants to know.

Despite the fact that the 70-year-old rav has spent a grueling day learning, giving shiurim, being mesader kiddushin in Bnei Brak, delivering a hesped near Haifa, and answering literally hundreds of questions large and small, he responds to each with a warm smile and genuine interest. From his tranquility, the eager questioners would never know that he’s hardly eaten for hours, or that his day still has a long time to run.

Welcome to the extraordinary world of Mirrer Mashgiach Rav Binyomin Finkel, someone whose childhood nickname — “Binyomin HaTzaddik” — rings true decades after his classmates first coined it.

Born into a family that was like a shelf of gedolim biographies, he is that ultra-rare phenomenon — an inheritor of the proverbial “row of zeros” of great yichus, who decided to put his own number in front.

Son of one great gaon, Rav Aryeh Finkel; leading talmid of an uncle, Rav Chaim Shmuelevitz; and heavily influenced by a saintly Yerushalmi grandfather, Rav Shmuel Aharon Yudelevitch, Rav Binyomin Finkel embarked on his own relentless path of growth that saw him emerge as something totally unique.

A childhood spent seeking out all the different flavors of greatness that were available a short walk from the Mir shaped Rav Binyomin into both a transmitter of his great forebears’ legacy, and a citizen of the entire Torah world — at home among Briskers as among chassidim and Sephardi chachamim.

Whether he’s walking out of the great fortress of Torah that his Mirrer predecessors built, or speaking in shuls from Zurich to Deal, New Jersey, the effect is the same: he’s mobbed by crowds seeking a brachah or direction on any number of questions. What are they drawn by? The advice he gives — daven, learn more, work on middos — isn’t new. But his authenticity, the way he utterly believes that these constitute the only road to success, is breathtaking in its clarity.

So, too, is his fusion of old and new. His roots lie in the bygone world of the great figures in whose shadow he was raised, but he’s a 21st century tzaddik — connected to a world where bochurim struggle with technology and can be elevated by a kumzitz.

Most of all, Rav Binyomin’s chein — a spiritual magnetism that draws others like moths hungry for the light of the flame — stems from an overflowing love for his fellow Jew. ahavas Yisrael is no mere slogan; he’s simply incapable of ignoring someone in need.