All in Good Time
| January 31, 2018For Rav Yehuda Zev Segal ztz”l, the Manchester Rosh Yeshivah, the most seemingly insignificant event became a mussar lesson. Twenty-five years after his petirah, talmidim still integrate those messages
T
efillos in the Manchester Yeshivah were meticulous and lengthy, yet long after the last Kaddish for Maariv was over, the Rosh Yeshivah himself, Rav Yehuda Zev Segal ztz”l, would finally complete his davening. A talmid would then give the Rosh Yeshivah a ride home to 40 Broom Lane — but for the elderly sage, the ride was not a gap in the day’s schedule. He got into the car carrying a sheaf of letters to mail. Originally, the foreign boys would give their letters to a bochur named Eliezer Heilpern to mail, but one time when they brought the letters, Rav Yehuda Zev asked if he could take them. The bochurim hesitated. Surely this wasn’t kavod for the Rosh Yeshivah! But who were they to argue?
The yeshivah’s driver asked if he could go out into the cold night instead of the Rosh Yeshivah. But Rav Yehuda Zev became very animated, exclaiming, “I would give you a million pounds for this mitzvah! Posting the letters is a chesed for the bochur, and brings great joy to the faraway parents.”
Every evening, the car stopped by the red mailbox on Leicester Road, and the Rosh Yeshivah emerged. He would say “Hineni muchan u’mezuman to do a mitzvah of chesed,” and mail the letters. When he got back into the car, he would exult, “Look how Hashem gives Olam Haba away. For a little nothing, you get so much!”
Sometimes, if young Eliezer did the mailing, the Rosh Yeshivah made sure to let his talmid know that it was a big opportunity, and he should have the right intentions while doing the mitzvah. One evening, the driver forgot to stop, and the Rosh Yeshivah brought the letters home. That night, he walked from his home back to the mailbox to mail them. Another time, Eliezer, the letter-gatherer — who is today Rabbi Eliezer Heilpern, popular Torah lecturer from Manchester — had no letters to bring. The Rosh Yeshivah turned to him in disappointment: “What, you don’t have an esrog [a mitzvah] today?”
Every Minute a Mitzvah
Manchester is a medium-sized city in England’s northwest. In the cool month of Shevat, rain leaves the streets soaked and sidewalks shining. The water seems to trickle through every crack and crevice, leaving one’s very bones damp. Yet for the town’s venerated Rosh Yeshivah, Rav Yehuda Zev Segal ztz”l — whose 25th yahrtzeit is next week, on 22 Shevat — there was no mundane, there was no humdrum. No cracks existed in his day — every minute was a flowing stream of Hashem’s bounty and an opportunity to fulfill His wishes.
Inside the Rosh Yeshivah’s copy of the sefer Shemiras Halashon, which he learned during his simple meals, there was a small folded paper, containing personal resolutions for that year.
One year, a bochur got a peek. The neatly numbered list contained 15 kabbalos. Among them: “L’hishtadel shelo laasos shum maaseh, afilu katan, k’gon hashatas hayad, bli machshavah kodem — To try not to do any action, even as small as stretching out a hand, without giving prior thought.”
An outsized goal? Every single action with thought? For the Rosh Yeshivah, this seemingly unrealistic existence was within reach. Seasons did not pass him by, nor did weeks, days, or even minutes. Instead of drifting, the Rosh Yeshivah allowed Hashem’s will to shape each minute — by working to elevate each and every increment of time into a mitzvah opportunity and taking gems of mussar from every corner.
Every minute, another mitzvah.
Putting a sefer back in the right place on the shelf was a mitzvah of chesed. “Just have in mind that you are doing this as a chesed so that your friend will be able to find it easily,” he’d say. Dancing at a chasunah was never a night out. “Have in mind that you are doing this dance l’sheim Shamayim, to gladden the chassan and kallah, and every moment of dancing becomes a mitzvah.” The Rosh Yeshivah would quote Rav Simcha Zissel of Kelm, saying that “adding machshavah before a deed is adding the numeral before a bunch of zeros. An action that has little value on its own becomes billions — once a l’sheim Shamayim thought is added.”
Every time the Rosh Yeshivah sat down to eat, he stated his intention of doing the mitzvah of guarding one’s health. Then out came a small card with the brachos printed on it. It was his custom never to daven anything by heart, so one brachos card was kept at home and one in yeshivah. And he always said asher yatzar from a siddur.
Shmuessen were not just part of his job description, but a fulfillment of Hashem’s mandate of rebuking. Before every shmuess he gave in the yeshivah, Rav Segal would say quietly, “Now I will do the mitzvah of hochei’ach tochiach es amisecha.”
In the Rosh Yeshivah’s mitzvah-based mindset, any routine act became a mitzvah bein adam l’chaveiro. When the towels in yeshivah became damp, he told the boys that they should jump to change them. “When the towels become wet, people can’t dry their hands properly. When you change the towel, you’re doing a mitzvah of helping your friends not to get chapped hands. They should sell the privilege of changing the towel!”
By the same token, he taught them to pick up any peels and wrappers from the streets or public areas. “If you leave it there, someone can slip — but more than that, you’re causing someone else to bend down and pick it up.”
When the Rosh Yeshivah davened, it seemed as if the fire of the tefillos encompassed him as he spoke each word meticulously from the siddur. Occasionally he would add words of supplication in Yiddish. In those days, the variety of translated siddurim that abound today didn’t exist. The Rosh Yeshivah, who followed every word with his finger, used a “ladies’ siddur,” the Korban Minchah, because he liked the Yiddish translation it provided. His kavanah was so famously intense that it was widely known that he never looked out of the lines, not even noticing if a student wrote a name in the margin.
Former students remember that a highlight of the Rosh Yeshivah’s tefillah was the Ezras Avoseinu section before Shemoneh Esreh in Shacharis. Rav Segal would become very animated and emotional as he read the words describing Kri’as Yam Suf. Rabbi Yitzchok Nussbaum, a close talmid who today serves as mashgiach in Manchester’s Yeshivah L’Zeirim, relates that the Rosh Yeshivah was once unwell, and he fainted during this section. When he awoke, he continued from the exact word he had stopped at. “When he davened, the Rosh Yeshivah wasn’t just saying the words, he was living them. And therefore he knew exactly which parts of davening he had already lived that day.”
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