Rav Dovid Soloveitchik didn’t remain in the past, but neither did he veer from his message of emes and the uncompromising derech of Brisk. Yet his was also a journey of joy, warmth and love — the very life-force of Torah

Photos: AEGedolimphotos.com, Shuki Lehrer, Mishpacha archives, Rabbi Shimon Yosef Meller, author of HaRav MiBrisk

There were many words I would have used to describe the apartment.

To me, it was, first and foremost, intimidating. I came with nothing except an assurance from my rosh yeshivah in America that I was on the reshimah for the new zeman, but there was no confirmation number or bar code to prove it.

On the morning of the first day of Rosh Chodesh Elul we gathered, a cluster of jetlagged new arrivals in shirts that were still crisp and white from the American dry-cleaners, standing nervously outside Amos 28, waiting for the door to open. We made small talk — where’s your dirah, how does the money-changing thing work, does Rav Dovid expect you to say a shtickel Torah? — when at precisely 11:00, the door was opened by the Rosh Yeshivah himself.

Rav Dovid Soloveitchik, in a large yarmulke and blue silk robe, with eyes as pure and clear as those of a child.

The line started to move, one bochur after another, and eventually my turn came. The room — where Rav Dovid learned, ate seudos with his family, said shiur — was austere. Steel-frame bookcases sagged under aged seforim; pictures of the Beis HaLevi, Rav Chaim, and the Brisker Rav seemed to be waiting for the handyman to come hang them in a more permanent location; and a few plain wooden chairs stood around the table.

He consulted a tiny paper — the actual reshimah — and, searching with a Parker Pen, confirmed that my name was there, and I was officially enrolled in yeshivah.

Gut. Good.

Rav Dovid’s yeshivah, back then, wasn’t much for formality.

First seder was in the Kerem shul, down a long road at the Western tip of Geula that seemed more like a driveway with a few hut-like homes lining it, some with real chickens walking around in the front yard. Rav Shach, it was reported, had spent all day learning in that shul, at a different time. Now it was used by Rav Dovid’s yeshivah and you had to climb up a steep staircase to the entrance, then climb over people to get to your seat, as if it were the middle row in an airplane.

Fresh-faced Americans said “anshuldigs” as they made their way over unflustered Israelis and squeezed through groups of hard-edged Yerushalmim, a delicate dance of mutual respect around the circular grate surrounding the raised bimah. On one part of the hexagon-shaped bench sat Rav Velvel, the Rosh Yeshivah’s son and newly appointed successor.

Second seder was at the Amerikaner shul in Zichron Moshe, an overstuffed room that was either freezing or over-heated, depending how closely you were seated to the heater. Shiur was in a third location, an apartment gifted to the yeshivah by a widow who asked that Torah be learned between its walls, in an oddly shaped room featuring seats in which you could see but not hear, or the opposite.

This was Yeshivas HaGrama’d, the yeshivah of Rav Meshulam Dovid Halevi Soloveitchik. And somehow, the various outposts and diverse talmidim were joined, if not by background, style, or even substance, by shared allegiance and devotion to the Rosh Yeshivah.

His home was open. We went there once a week for Chumash shiur, once a month for “chalukah” (the stipend given to talmidim in the yeshivah since the yeshivah’s founding in Europe), and talmidim were invited to join the Rosh Yeshivah for Krias HaTorah at his home-based minyan on Mondays and Thursdays.

The apartment itself took on all the dimensions of the yeshivah it served — the passion and fervor, the reverence and awe, the authenticity and truth — but years later, I found the single word to describe it.

It came from a letter written by Rav Moshe Shmuel Shapira, a talmid and relative of Rav Dovid’s father, the Brisker Rav, in which he described the atmosphere in his rebbi’s home.

“Each day,” wrote Rav Moshe Shmuel, “I learn at the joyous home of the Brisker Rav.”

It was a joyous home.

And the four amos of Rav Dovid Soloveitchik were a joyous place to be.

Because in the precision and punctiliousness of Brisk, the zeal for halachah and the near-tangible fear of Heaven, Rav Dovid revealed the neshamah, the warmth at the core, the life running through the dinim.

And so his talmidim, spread across shuls and later, continents, loved him so — a love that continued until his very last day.

And now they are bereft.