The Gemara (Sanhedrin 99b) includes among those who have no share in the World to Come one who demeans a talmid chacham. Rabbeinu Yonah in Shaarei Teshuvah explains the severity of the punishment: One who embarrasses a talmid chacham causes a chillul haTorah by reducing the light of the Torah descending to the world.

Rav Chaim Volozhin in Nefesh HaChaim adds an astounding chiddush based on Rabbeinu Yonah: Even someone who speaks derogatorily of a student learning Torah lo lishmah is in the category of mevazeh talmid chacham because he makes it less likely for that student of Torah to develop into a genuine talmid chacham and thereby potentially reduces the light of Torah.

If so then one who makes it more likely that others will become talmidei chachamim constitutes a kiddush haTorah.

By that measure HaRav HaGaon Rav Ovadiah Yosef ztz”l was the greatest kiddush haTorah in recent centuries. No Torah giant in recent memory inspired so many to aspire to greatness in Torah by his example alone.

His imprint on Jewish history will be eternal. A secular Israeli politician commented recently that 200 years from now when someone asks “Who was Shimon Peres?” the likely answer will be “A politician who lived in the time of Rav Ovadiah.”

Rav Ovadiah remained very much a man of the people trading jokes and his famous slaps with the simple workingmen who were the primary audience for most of public shiurim. He never forgot his impoverished beginnings. His father removed him before bar mitzvah from yeshivah to work in his grocery store and only relented when the Rosh Yeshivah Rav Ezra Attiyah offered himself as a worker in place of the young illui.

Because Rav Ovadiah dwelt amid his nation in such intimacy thousands of such working people registered their sons for yeshivos and prayed that their sons would become talmidei chachamim like Maran Rav Ovadiah.

I once asked Rabbi Aharon Betzalel a prolific young talmid chacham why he was willing to subject himself to overwhelming pressures — mortgaging his small apartment collecting money for gas every night in the Itzkovitz shul in Bnei Brak — in order to create a cheder for sons of baalei teshuvah in an area where none existed. He told me that as a young boy his father used to take him to the lectures of Rav Ovadiah inJerusalem’s Bukharim neighborhood.

“Even as Rishon L’Tzion Rav Ovadiah did not consider it beneath him to teach three or four sleepy balabatim” Rabbi Bezalel said “Why should I consider it beneath me to do whatever has to be done to bring Torah to other Jews?”

Stories of Rav Ovadiah’s literally unfathomable command of every aspect of Torah proliferate. Here’s one. Rabbi Yehoshua Hartman author of the Chumash Gur Aryeh and numerous other annotated volumes of the Maharal’s writings once presented his neighbor Rav Ovadiah with his latest work. As he was leaving Rav Ovadiah’s home Rabbi Hartman asked him about the Maharal’s stature in psak halachah.

Rav Ovadiah replied that where the commentators on Shulchan Aruch cite the Maharal they nearly always declare the halachah to be like him and promptly rattled off 40 such examples on the spot. A computer could have produced all citations of the Maharal in the commentaries on Shulchan Aruch as quickly. But no algorithm could have figured out where the Maharal was cited l’halachah and where not.

Every Sephardic bochur who opens a Gemara today can relate dozens of such stories of Rav Ovadiah’s breadth of knowledge and harbors the secret ambition to be the next Rav Ovadiah. He is the hero whom all seek to emulate. Largely because of him their ranks today are in the tens of thousands.

Rav Ovadiah’s entire life was shaped by a single clear vision — to return the crown of Torah to its former prominence among the descendants of the Rambam and the author of Shulchan Aruch Rav Yosef Karo. That vision was expressed in his approach to psak halachah and in the founding of the Shas Party.

To a remarkable degree the son of a humble grocer lived to witness the fulfillment of his dream.

Making Every Moment Count

“Do teshuvah one day before your death” Chazal teach (Pirkei Avos 2:10). The talmidim of Rabi Eliezer asked “Does a man know the day of his death?” He replied “How much more so should you return today for perhaps you will die tomorrow. [And in this fashion] all your days will be in teshuvah” (Shabbos 153a).

Chazal enjoin us in numerous places to live each day with an awareness of possibly imminent death. The perception of the future as an endless expanse of time they knew is one of the tools of the yetzer. In yeshivos for instance if one did not learn well or diligently today or this zman it is always possible to tell oneself “I’ll learn well tomorrow [or next zman].” When we are relatively young (a group in which I no longer include myself) we take our lives for granted unless something shocks us out of our reverie. I received such a shock last week.

I picked up a neighbor hitching out of the neighborhood and mentioned that I sit next to the internal administrator of the yeshivah where he teaches in shiur every morning. He replied by asking “Did you hear about the tragedy involving our executive director?” I panicked. I knew that the yeshivah’s executive director was Rabbi Gershon Binyamin Burd who used to come to us for Shabbos as a student at Ohr Somayach more than a decade ago.

Nothing computed. I remembered Reb Gershon as a tall physically powerful young man and what a handsome couple he made with his kallah Batya who like him came from a Russian-speaking background.

He and Batya were alone on a secluded beach celebrating his 40th birthday on Erev Shabbos 30 Tishrei when Reb Gershon a former lifeguard decided to take a short swim. He was not prepared for the sudden wave that threw a rock or some kind of floating debris into the back of his neck knocking him unconscious. Underwater for 15 minutes he nevertheless battled for his life for 40 hours.

REB GERSHON’S SUDDEN PASSING teaches us how tenuous our grasp on life is. But his life teaches us as well something far more important: how to live as if every day could be the last.

From the time he first walked into a class in Chicago taught by Rabbi Doni Deutsch Gershon was insatiable. Shortly after becoming mitzvah observant he determined to make a Minchah minyan in theChicago suburb ofDeerfield where he worked. Somehow he made it happen.

Reb Gershon carried almost the entire financial responsibility for Yeshivas Bircas HaTorah in Jerusalem’s OldCity yet still managed to learn two and often three sedorim a day. He conducted almost all his yeshivah business by e-mail sleeping only a few hours a night.

Unlike most hyperefficient driven people however Reb Gershon was described as the “warmest most positive person I knew ” someone who always turned the conversation to the other party and left every one with whom he spoke uplifted. A bear hug was his trademark greeting. He was more than willing to carry the burden of maintaining old friendships and expressed his hakaras hatov to all those who helped him along the way often and for years after.

Only after his passing did numerous stories of his acts of chesed hidden even from his wife come to light.

One reason that he was able to raise money by e-mail said an old chavrusa was that just seeing the name Gershon Binyamim Burd whether on a personal e-mail or mass mailing caused memories of his “warmth sincerity and humility” to flow.

Rabbi Nissim Tagger rosh yeshivah of Bircas HaTorah and Rabbi Asher Baruch Wegbreit the mashgiach ruchani eulogized Reb Gershon by sharing e-mails he sent them in the days just prior to his tragic drowning. To Rabbi Tagger he sent a teshuvah of Rav Avigdor Nebentzal rav of the Old City containing the fifth different approach Reb Gershon had offered to the sugya to which Rabbi Tagger devoted his last shiur klali prior to Yom Kippur.

After 15 years of nonstop learning he was still asking Rabbi Tagger for eitzos in how to grow in learning. On a personal note he told his rosh yeshivah that he was being more “warm and fuzzy” with his five children the oldest a boy of nine. Less than an hour before his drowning he wrote Rabbi Wegbreit of his eagerness for the new mussar vaad beginning on Sunday and that he was contemplating how to apply Rabbeinu Yonah’s eitzah to break a bad middah by going to the opposite extreme. He concluded with the famous quote from the Vilna Gaon that the whole purpose of our lives in this world is to repair our defective middos.

Reb Gershon’s commitment to Bircas HaTorah was total. A recent e-mail to his rosh yeshivah about a possible fundraising trip to Toronto began “I’m more than happy to do whatever the Rosh Yeshivah wants — period.” He wanted anyone walking into the yeshivah to feel immediately that Bircas HaTorah would be the ideal place to learn. Not a burned-out lightbulb escaped his attention. And despite his devotion to seder he somehow always managed to be the first to greet anyone walking in for the first time.

I sit next to the yeshivah’s internal administrator in my morning shiur. He described e-mails from Reb Gershon noting a stain in a Shabbos tablecloth or an item left on the bulletin board for more than the allotted two days. My friend hired someone to wipe off the counter in the coffee room every hour to spare Reb Gershon agmas nefesh.

There was so much Reb Gershon burned to do. He told an old friend he met in the Old City how blessed he felt in his learning to be living in Eretz Yisrael by his beautiful family and to have a job he loved.

His too-short life obligates all of us to internalize and apply its lesson (in the words of Rabbi Wegbreit): “If you are eager to grow and prepared to work at it you’ll blossom.”