Family Mission

For the thousands of listeners drawn to the new Lakewood mashgiach’s shmuessen in 1997, the sound of mussar couched in northern British diction was an exotic feature of Reb Mattisyahu’s past in Gateshead, a place few in the audience were familiar with.

Like some branch office of Bnei Brak set down in a working-class town in England’s northeast, the Gateshead that raised the future Beis Medrash Govoha mashgiach was a hothouse for gedolim. The shtetl of a few hundred families punched well above its weight in Torah terms.

Yaakov and Ettel Salomon were drawn to the town for its chinuch opportunities. Originally from Nuremberg, Germany, they left for London after the rise of the Nazis. Like many Yekkehs, they were drawn to North-West London’s Golders Green neighborhood, where their first son — known as Joe — was joined by a younger brother on Erev Chanukah 1937.

Mattisyahu was named both after a great-grandfather, and — given the timing — the Kohein Gadol. Like his namesake from the Chanukah era, the newborn was destined for leadership, and showed those qualities early on.

When their second-born was only a few months old, the Salomons made the decision that would influence the course of Reb Mattisyahu’s life: the choice to move from London — the country’s capital — to the impoverished backwater of Gateshead.

“If we stay in London, you’ll have a comfortable life,” Yaakov Salomon told his wife. “In Gateshead, the chinuch opportunities are better.”

Mrs. Salomon chose chinuch.

While the Salomons were renowned for their chesed — they regularly hosted weddings in their garden, and Yaakov Salomon signed affidavits for other refugees to enter the country — they weren’t a rabbinic family. But the parents had reserves of emunah and wisdom that gave them higher aspirations than middle-class material comfort.

When asked years later by Chai Lifeline how to speak of death to children, Reb Mattisyahu related what his own father had told him when asked where a person goes when he dies.

“It’s like when you go to sleep in my bed, and someone carries you to your own bed when you’re asleep,” Yaakov Salomon told his son. “The same is with us: you go to sleep in this World, and Hashem carries you to Olam HaBa.”

At the 2005 Agudah convention, Reb Mattisyahu shared a childhood memory about his father, which testified both to Yaakov Salomon’s chesed and to his son’s development.

“After the war, my father z”l brought over a group of young survivors to England,” Reb Mattisyahu remembered. “One day, he brought in a 16-year-old boy and told my mother, ‘This boy deserves a bag of cookies, because he’s just been tested on 200 blatt Gemara by heart, by the rosh yeshivah, which he learned from his father in the concentration camp.’

“I was jealous of him getting the attention,” said Reb Mattisyahu, “and that left a great impression on me. As I grew older, I pictured to myself what it must have been like for the father sitting with his son huddled in a corner, frightened of being caught. All of a sudden, the father grew in my eyes, and the greatness of Klal Yisrael grew in my eyes.”

But the spiritual aspirations that were transmitted in the Salomon home were tested when Mattisyahu was a teenager. In 1954, Yaakov Salomon was suddenly niftar, victim of a brain hemorrhage. His wife Ettel — by then mother of eight, including three very young ones, was left to fend for herself.

The sudden loss left the family facing peril — material and spiritual. In a sign of the times, Rav Naftoli Shakovitzky, then Gateshead’s rav, instructed that “Jacob Salomon” be written in English on the back of the matzeivah, so that even if the orphans didn’t receive a Jewish education, they’d be able to read it.

When he was an energetic 17-year-old, it was suggested that Mattisyahu leave Gateshead Yeshivah and go to work to help the family. But his mother told him not to worry, and said he didn’t have to leave yeshivah to help.

Although the young bochur did take time off in the evenings to help out packaging the tartan-themed stationery and trinkets that were shipped off for sale in Scotland further north, he would make up any lost time the following day before Shacharis.

It was the first inkling of a genuine thirst for learning that would eventually set him apart from his peers. But first, the traumatic loss of his father revealed itself in a sensitivity to the plight of others that would be a lifelong mark of Reb Mattisyahu’s nature.

Rabbi Menashe Koninsky — now a rosh kollel in Kiryat Sefer — was an Antwerp-born bochur who was orphaned of his parents in the war, and came to Gateshead Yeshivah. Two years younger than Reb Mattisyahu, he was taken under the latter’s wing.

“Reb Mattisyahu became a father figure for his younger siblings, and would lead the family Seder on Pesach. He invited me to join, which I did for both Pesach and Succos for a number of years.”

The care and sense of responsibility for another yasom went on for years. The path for entry to Gateshead Kollel ran through an acceptance committee, but a few years later, Rabbi Koninsky was invited to join the kollel, without applying.

“Reb Mattisyahu was then a member of the two-man executive that ran the kollel, following the structure that Rav Dessler had out in place. It was Reb Mattisyahu who smoothed the way for me to join, and I was there for 40 years.”

That special care for orphans famously manifested itself in what Reb Mattisyahu called his “club.”

“We’re members of the same club,” he told more than one young orphan, “and so we’re the same. I’m the president — take my number, and if you ever want to speak to me, I’m always available.”

Eye to the Future

Reb Mattisyahu’s own decade-long tenure in the storied Gateshead Kollel was preceded by the only learning experience that took place beyond the precincts of Gateshead. The yeshivah was headed by the duumvirate of the two “Reb Leibs” —Reb Leib Gurwitz and his brother-in-law Reb Leib Lopian.

The latter suggested that the razor-sharp Salomon bochur should go to Kfar Chassidim, to Reb Leib’s father, the renowned Rav Elya Lopian. Mattisyahu Salomon was there for less than a year, but merited an very close relationship with the aged baal mussar.

That connection imprinted itself in the British bochur’s DNA. He regarded Rav Elya as his rebbi, and frequently quoted from his mussar, a legacy of Kelm.

Rav Moshe Shimon Greenberg, who was together with Reb Mattisyahu in Kfar Chassidim, said that as a bochur, Reb Mattisyahu was considered one of the top three lamdanim in the elite yeshivah.

Rabbi Menachem Savitz, menahel of Yeshivas Mekor Chaim in Lakewood, recalled a time he was in the Mashgiach’s home and had to move some boxes, only to discover binders packed with the Mashgiach’s handwritten notes on every masechta in Shas.

It was his sister’s chasunah that curtailed the time in Kfar Chassidim by a month. In subsequent years, Reb Mattisyahu would return to the yeshivah repeatedly to spent Elul in his rebbi’s shadow. It was on one of these occasions, says Rav Shmuel Yeshaya Keller, rosh yeshivah of Telshe-Chicago and a son-in-law of Reb Leib Lopian, that Rav Elya set his talmid’s mission in life.

“I have a feeling that the achrayus for mussar in the next generation will be on your shoulders,” he said.

“We can assume that it was those marching orders at such a young age,” says Rav Keller, “that kept Reb Mattisyahu going against all the obstacles in his path.”

Blood and Tears

In a town of storied institutions, perhaps none is more so than the Gateshead Kollel. Established by Rav Dessler in 1941, even as the shipyards and heavy industries across the river from Gateshead were being blitzed by the Luftwaffe, the kollel is a self-governing institution. Its constitution calls for a two-man executive of two avreichim voted in by their peers.

Reb Mattisyahu actually joined when he was still a bochur; the kollel only pays avreichim after a two-year trial period. But with no means of support besides the stipend, he joined two years before he got married, thus ensuring a basic livelihood after his chasunah.

Contemporaries included outstanding Torah figures such as Rav Chaim Kaufman, a chavrusa and lifelong friend who went on to lead the town’s yeshivah ketanah; Rav Zechariah Gelley, later the rav of Breuer’s in Washington Heights; and Rav Daniel Levy of Zurich.

A token of Reb Mattisyahu’s standing and emerging leadership qualities were his election as a member of the executive. His colleague in the position was Rav Yaakov Toledano, from Morocco, who went on to become a major builder of Torah in Paris.

Throughout his kollel years and beyond, Reb Mattisyahu felt that his future was to become a maggid shiur — despite his leanings to mussar, becoming a mashgiach, with all the day-to-day involvement with the mundane side of yeshivah life, wasn’t something that he aspired to.

Later in life, he would repeatedly turn to gedolim such as the Steipler and Rav Shach asking to be relieved of the burden to return to the Gemara, only to be told that he couldn’t be spared.

The first to suggest that Reb Mattisyahu give mussar shiurim in Gateshead Yeshivah, says Rabbi Koninsky, were the bochurim themselves.

“When I was a bochur, I remember that a group of bochurim approached the yeshivah’s hanhalah to ask that Reb Mattisyahu start saying shmuessen. Even then, his very structured, analytical style of mussar and original delivery was drawing interest.”

That early approach led nowhere, but it was only a few years down the line in 1967 — with Reb Mattisyahu a mere 30 years old — that the move happened.

Since 1948, the yeshivah’s mashgiach had been Rav Moshe Schwab ztz”l — brother of Rav Shimon Schwab from Washington Heights and a talmid of prewar Mir.

At first, the junior mashgiach’s style was novel to the bochurim.

“I joined the yeshivah a year before Reb Mattisyahu did,” remembers Rabbi Avrohom Katz, founder of Gateshead’s New Seminary. “Initially, he was sort of looked at with a slight degree of bochurly cynicism, because he gave shiurim on things like emunah. We had never heard that treated as subject — it was always a given.

“We had vaadim with him on every issue under the sun. His shiurim were eminently listenable to — they had a proper structure, not the wanderings of a Torah mind. And they resonated, because they were full of ideas that could be put into practice.”

Reb Mattisyahu’s intellectually rigorous style of mussar was appreciated by the post-high school boys who made up a significant part of the yeshivah’s student body.

A taste of Reb Mattisyahu’s signature style emerges from the Matnas Chaim series of his seforim, which contain his shmuessen. On the Moadim, 48 Kinyanei HaTorah, and other topics, there’s a noteworthy depth in exploring the themes from multiple angles. The breadth of the Mashgiach’s bekius across different Rishonim and Acharonim, as well as innovation as he explores topics like a sugya in Gemara, stands out.

Beyond the shiur room, Reb Mattisyahu was a very good advisor. “He understood bochurim, and cared for them. He had an uncanny ability to focus on the core of the matter.”

In later years, that advice took the form of policy for Rabbi Katz’s fledgling seminary, which Reb Mattisyahu advised him to found. The Mashgiach also guided everything from major chinuch questions to hiring decisions.

Down to Details

Being mashgiach was far more than delivering shiurim, says Mr. Totty Lebrecht, the longtime yeshivah administrator, who worked closely with the Mashgiach from 1987 until Reb Mattisyahu left in 1997.

“He was indefatigable — he was up at 4:30 to learn until Shacharis, then gave a vaad on Ramban, then would go on his routines as mashgiach in the most practical way. He’d wake up bochurim, have appointments with them for much of the morning, and after lunch, another chavrusa, and prepare his different shmuessen and vaadim, which would continue in the evenings, unless he had to travel out if town, which he did frequently.”

What drove him, says Totty Lebrecht, was not his job, but a sense of responsibility. “He felt, ‘If I don’t wake up this boy, then who will?’ He was a big baal achrayus — that was his nature.”

Even the practical elements were a component of the Mashgiach’s avodah. “Whenever he had to make a practical intervention in the yeshivah’s operation, such as putting locks on the dining hall so that bochurim shouldn’t enter before the end of davening, he would be mekabel taanis, so that the bochurim wouldn’t react adversely.”

Over the years in Gateshead, Reb Mattisyahu’s davening on the Yamim Noraim established itself as something legendary. It was less the nusach than the power and meaning that he infused in the words that brought alumni back years after leaving the yeshivah.

In that category belongs the story of the bloodstained machzor, which continues to be retold in the town. One year, when his brother Eliyahu was ill, Reb Mattisyahu put such effort into the words “U’teshuvah u’tefillah u’tzedakah” that he had a nosebleed, erasing the words “maavirin es roa hagezeirah.”

That year, the (true) story goes, no one in the Gateshead kehillah died.

The canonical status of that story goes a long way to convey the powerful impression of the Mashgiach’s davening, and the reverence with which he came to be held across the town.

Torah Pioneers

Regular visitors to the Salomon house in Gateshead, and later in Lakewood, would have noticed a constant: the Rebbetzin acting as gatekeeper. Sitting in the kitchen, all day and until late at night, she would answer phone, saying “Salomon!”

Rebbetzin Miriam was born in Manchester, to the Falk family — like the Salomons, of German origin, who went on to establish themselves as a British Torah dynasty. Among his brothers-in-law were Gateshead posek Rav Eliyahu Falk, and Dayan Aharon Dovid Dunner of London. What made these families exceptional was that in an era when bnei Torah were divided as “bank kvetshers” — idle timewasters — the Falks wanted their sons-in-law to learn.

Reb Mattisyahu and his wife were married in 1960, and she became an integral element in his success.

“Women flocked to the Rebbetzin,” recalls Rabbi Avrohom Katz. “She was a pillar of common sense, of kindness, of big thinking. She was his air traffic controller. She never lost her calm, and she was responsible for their open home. After their own Purim seudah, Reb Mattisyahu made a second seudah for us, the yungeleit. The largesse with which they went about doing things was remarkable.”

Together, the Salomons raised ten children. Reb Mattisyahu’s genuine warmth was felt outside the home, and inside it as well. His grandson Rabbi Nesanel Salomon was 12 years old when his grandparents left Gateshead for Lakewood and remembers the happiness of his zeide’s home. “We had such a rich childhood with our grandparents. I would go across the road to them on Friday night, to sit on my zeide’s lap and be given candies. Even as a young boy, I was expected to say something from the Mayanah ahel Torah and then would be rewarded.

“If we were staying in his house when our mother had a baby, for example, then he’d look for us when he got home in the evening. If we were already in bed, he’d take us out to say hello.”

Seder night — which continued until four or five o’clock in the morning, was a highlight for the extended Salomon family. Already from his early years as a bochur, Reb Mattisyahu had learned to step in for his younger siblings as a father figure, and he developed the ability to engage all the participants.

Outreach Vision

He may have been the mashgiach in a small town in England’s north, but Rav Mattisyahu Salomon had a visionary’s eye for the vast new possibilities far from Gateshead’s precincts. That’s how, more than four decades ago, Rav Mattisyahu became an early proponent of the nascent kiruv movement — a belief that he took with him while crossing the Atlantic.

It all began in 1979, when an American visitor arrived in town. It was Reb Avi Shulman z”l, founder of Torah Umesorah’s Project Seed, which had pioneered an outreach seminar for nonreligious Jews, and wanted to bring the idea to English shores. Kiruv was an unknown concept at the time — certainly in the rarefied, kollel-oriented world of Gateshead — but the visitor discovered that he had a ready convert in the Gateshead mashgiach.

“Reb Mattisyahu was ahead of his time,” says Rabbi Joey Grunfeld, founder of Project Seed in Britain. “He knew that the Jewish world was hemorrhaging and immediately understood that there was a way to reach out to non-frum Jews. I was then learning in Gateshead kollel, headed for a standard path such as being a maggid shiur, but Reb Mattisyahu thought that I had the capabilities to make a difference in outreach. From that moment, he guided me personally, and was one of the main rabbinic backers of Seed through the decades since.”

As the outreach effort expanded, that guidance took many forms. It was the heyday of the kiruv seminar, and Rabbi Grunfeld — fresh out of the rarefied world of Gateshead Kollel — found himself with a host of hashkafic questions, such as the mixed-gender format that these front-line kiruv events inevitably had to be. Beyond charting a path for the organization, Reb Mattisyahu proved to be perfect for addressing audiences comprised of people even remote from Torah life.

“He was a gifted orator, and had a phenomenal ability to read the room. He had the ability to tailor his mussar ideas for whichever audience he found himself in front of. Added to that, his regal bearing impressed people very much.”

For many of those undergoing a religious transformation, Reb Mattisyahu was the natural address for advice as they navigated a new world. His trademark warm smile was a sign of genuine empathy, and a store of wisdom that belied his relative youth.

That background in guiding kiruv efforts meant that when the Mashgiach arrived in Lakewood in 1997, he was the natural address for the outreach efforts of TorahLinks, a kiruv organization associated with Beis Medrash Govoha.

“When Reb Mattisyahu arrived, TorahLinks was operating out of the yeshivah office, and was backed by the Rosh Yeshivah Reb Malkiel Kotler,” says Rabbi Yehuda Farber. “There were different vaadim being formed with the Mashgiach, but the one involving the TorahLinks avreichim — the 10 to 15 full-time employees of the organization — was likely the vaad closest to the Mashgiach. It went on every week for 15 years.”

The first one, says Rabbi Farber, was unforgettable for the way that the Mashgiach — an unknown quantity —challenged the participants’ assumptions.

“No one knew him personally, but we thought that he would praise us for what we were involved in. But Reb Mattisyahu was unpredictable, and he went on the attack.”

“Very nice you’re involved in kiruv,” he said, “but who told you to? Did you think of the reasons why you should do kiruv? Do you understand what it means to ask a secular person to keep Shabbos? What it does to his family, relationships? How do you have the chutzpah to do that, if you’re not taking on something difficult yourself?”

It was the prelude to a whole series of shiurim in which he demanded consistency. If ahavas Hashem was the basis for outreach, then what did it say when mekarvim weren’t equally bothered by frum Jews talking during chazaras hashatz?

“If you aren’t consistent in your reasoning, if you’re fooling yourself,” his message was, “then don’t do it.”

Over the next 15 years, until his health deteriorated, Reb Mattisyahu would interact with TorahLinks talmidim on a regular basis. He and the Rebbetzin would go to Marlboro, New Jersey, to the branch there and spend Shabbos with the students.

“People chased him the entire Shabbos, as the avreichim would back in Lakewood, and he would give them all the time in the world. He had love for every Jew, religious or secular, and in turn they loved him too.”

Transatlantic Transfer

Already in the mid 1980s, Lakewood mashgiach Rav Nosson Wachtfogel had wanted to bring Reb Mattisyahu in as mashgiach, but it was a full decade after the idea was mooted — in 1997 — that the Salomons made the move. It wasn’t easy to go: Gateshead Yeshivah didn’t want to lose him, and Lakewood sent one of the roshei yeshivah — Rav Dovid Schustal — to persuade him of the impact that he could have, and that his mussar would be received well on American shores.

In the end, it was down to Rav Elazar Menachem Shach and Rav Aharon Leib Steinman who ruled in favor of Lakewood, pointing to the long historical precedent of rabbanim leaving smaller kehillos for larger ones.

As he was aged 60, it was late in life to start over, especially for the Rebbetzin, who would be leaving behind grandchildren (although two —and eventually five — married daughters in America were compensation.)

Multiple visits to America to speak meant that the new mashgiach wasn’t an unknown quantity; but despite his known star power, there were no expectations of a revolution. He himself was looking forward to more time to spend learning. Instead, a whirlwind ensued.

“When he came to Lakewood, there was a sense that he put so much energy into the yeshivah and talmidim of Gateshead that his new position would be sort of a semi-retirement for him,” says Rabbi Yechiel Biberfeld, rosh kollel of the Philadelphia Community Kollel, of the Mashgiach’s arrival. “He arrived on Rosh Chodesh Kislev, and people were saying that by Chanukah, people would already be singing Vayehi bimei Mattisyahu.”

The reaction was phenomenal. Even before the number of talmidim in the yeshivah ballooned to the staggering numbers of today, his legendary weekly shmuessen in the yeshivah’s Bais Eliyahu were attended by some 1,000 yungeleit who packed the beis medrash. He would spend five or six weeks on one topic, slowly developing different nuances in a middah, building upon it week after week.

Initially, he would give two vaadim at night in his home, but rather than some stragglers showing up intermittently, as some had thought, the most serious yungeleit — seasoned talmidei chachamim — were enamored of him and showed up at his home. The unexpected turnout was almost chaotic until they developed a system for which yungeleit could go to which vaadim.

He gave shmuessen on the classic mussar seforim such as Emunah U’bitachon, Nefesh HaChaim, and Tomer Devorah, which eventually formed the basis for the Matnas Chaim series, and later the Matnas Chelko series, the latter compiled from talmidim’s notes.

“The weekly shmuessen that he had gave were products of his Gateshead years — the breadth of his outstanding bekius in the Rabbeinu Yonah and Rambam were from decades before. He knew the Rambam verbatim — it was ingrained in him. When he took ill, I visited him and started saying the first words of a Rambam the Mashgiach mentioned in a shmuess, and the Mashgiach finished it verbatim.

“A shmuess was a sugya, and one inyan continued through was a multi-week buildup. It was like reading a book — you can’t just show up in middle. On the other hand, once you read the first page, you want to go on to the second.”

Leadership Lessons

Standing before Beis Medrash Govoha’s aron kodesh at his inauguration, Reb Mattisyahu’s first words were a mission statement in the form of a quote from Rav Yechezkel Abramsky. Chazal (Menachos 28) say that while the klei shareis, the vessels of the Beis Hamikdash, were fashioned and created for eternity, the chatzotzros, the trumpets, were buried during Moshe Rabbeinu’s life.

The question is why the chatzotzros were different from the other keilim, which remained kosher for subsequent generations.

“Avodah, Divine service,” explained the new mashgiach, is unchanging, regardless of era or time. “Each and every mitzvah, as represented by these keilim, is eternal and timeless, relevant and applicable now as ever. But hisorerus, inspiration, is constantly changing! The clarion call of one generation won’t necessarily work to gather the next one. The nisyonos of the fathers aren’t the same as those of the sons.”

Alongside his energization of mussar in Lakewood, Reb Mattisyahu emerged as a major force on the communal scene, forging the tools necessary to combat the tests of a new generation.

Back in England, his influence had been projected far beyond Gateshead’s provincial shores in multiple interventions, particularly against the left-leaning Jewish establishment in London on issues of halachic importance.

In America, he was afforded a vastly greater playing field. Chinuch was a major focus: Notable campaigns involved girls being left out of high schools, in which the Mashgiach exerted his authority to ensure the high schools all stayed closed until each girl had a place.

Struggling bochurim also crossed his radar. At one point, the Mashgiach sensed a yeshivah was needed for bochurim who weren’t succeeding in the more typical institutions, and headed a group of mechanchim to form a yeshivah in Bradley Beach, New Jersey.

Along with the bochurim and rebbeim in the fledging yeshivah, the Mashgiach recruited a group of serious yungeleit to learn in the yeshivah, thus lending a certain tzurah to the beis medrash that he felt was important to maintain. Rabbi Savitz, who learned in Bradley Beach as a yungerman, recalls the Mashgiach coming to say a shmuess weekly to “his” bochurim.

Yet the same Mashgiach who was the crown jewel of Beis Medrash Govoha, who held the rapt attention of thousands of serious talmidei chachamim as they drank in his every word, wasn’t finding the same success with the yeshivah’s bochurim. Rather than sit with trepidation and awe, the Bradley bochurim would kibbitz around, waiting for the clock to signal dismissal time, whereupon they would no longer be subject to listening to the Lakewood Mashgiach.

“This is hard for me!” he told one of the yungeleit. “We have to work to get them to be interested!”

Rather than give up and go back to where an audience awaited him, the Mashgiach used the opportunity to strategize how he could formulate his shmuessen in a way that would appeal to an audience he was unaccustomed to — a process that ultimately proved successful.

And then there was technology. Born in an analogue era, the Mashgiach understood one big thing about the new connectivity facilitated by the rise of the Internet: that because it was so ubiquitous, and fast moving, it presented a far more formidable challenge than that of television.

“The Mashgiach was the first adam gadol in Klal Yisrael to raise the awareness of tech,” says Rabbi Nechemiah Gottlieb, founder of TAG, which advises on Internet filtration, with more than 50 locations worldwide. “He raised the problem at Agudah conventions. He made the first tech asifah in Lakewood 17 years ago, when 3,000 people came. Everything halachah- and hashkafah-related in tech today is due to the influence of the Mashgiach.

“When he started talking, people laughed at him. But he pushed. Today it’s accepted. People don’t have a question that you need rabbinic input in the area of technology.”

Life Journey

Living down the block from the yeshivah meant that the Mashgiach was accessible to hundreds of people. He had five-minute appointments after Shacharis, and if you couldn’t get one of those, you could drive him to or from the yeshivah, which gave about one and a half minutes.

Time was all important, but there were priorities; as in Gateshead, when it came to almanos and yesomim, the schedule was cleared.

“He would always say, ‘Almanos and yesomim dictate our lives,’ ” recalls his gabbai, Reb Mordechai Levi. “The Mashgiach would have a regular schedule of people he’d visit to be mechazek them.”

Spending so much time with Reb Mattisyahu gave his gabbai a unique perspective on the sheer range of people who knocked at his door, and the transformative effect that he had on the community as a whole.

“He had such a broad range of people coming to him to ask for an eitzah, or to learn with him. He changed the way people looked at Lakewood. Before he came to Lakewood, there was a disconnect between the lomdei Torah and the wider balabatish world. But he could talk to everyone. There was a bi-monthly vaad for bochurim from Yeshivah University, for example. And the reason he could relate to so many different types of people was that he genuinely loved them.”

As in his Gateshead years, the intense schedule of appointments, vaadim, and shmuessen went alongside chavrusas that were strictly observed. One chavrusa was author and mechaber seforim Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Reinman. “We learned many masechtas together, and developed a warm friendship. He combined the seriousness of a baal mussar with being leibedig — he could be fun.”

That combination of depth and openness, avodah and relatability was Reb Mattisyahu’s hallmark throughout his years on both sides of the Atlantic.

It was simply who he was: a genuinely great, genuinely down-to-earth person, bred in the no-nonsense climes of Gateshead, and raised in a home where only the real things in life such as Torah and chesed counted.

And that’s why, as his body succumbed over the last few years, and his horizons shrunk to his own four walls, Reb Mattisyahu’s famous smile didn’t falter.

Asked by his oldest son, Rav Yaakov Yehudah Salomon, how he could make peace with his new circumstances, he replied with a reference to the stop-start, erratic journeys of Klal Yisrael for 40 years in the desert, which were “al pi Hashem.”

“Hashem wanted that I should serve him in one way,” he would say, “and now He wants me to serve Him in another.”

Decades after he undertook the journey across the Atlantic to fulfill Rav Elya’s instruction to spread mussar far and wide, tens of thousands accompanied the aron on the way to its final resting place.

As the niftar left the yeshivah where he’d lived and taught so much of what became his sefer Matnas Chaim, he left behind an enduring gift — the secret of how to elevate life itself.

Bold Move

By Yoni Klajn

Although Reb Mattisyahu hadn’t lived in Gateshead for over 20 years, his presence and impact is still felt wherever you go. One such place is the home of Dovid and Ruthie Morgan, where a photo of the Mashgiach graces the sideboard. Graduates of the Seed outreach seminars, the couple got to know the Mashgiach in 1986, at the beginning of their religious journey.

An investment banker, David Morgan and his wife lived in the upscale Hampstead Garden neighborhood of London. Visiting the Gateshead of Seed founder Rabbi Joey Grunfeld, they thought they’d come to another planet. “We’d never met anyone like the Mashgiach, but we were completely charmed by him. You could see he was full of wisdom, everything he said made absolute sense.”

Putting their questions about their religious growth to Reb Mattisyahu, he made a bold suggestion: that the family relocate to Gateshead at a very early point in their becoming frum.

The Morgans’ oldest was seven when they made the move, and the outlandish-sounding idea paid off in the shape of a family of frum children.

“I had the privilege of learning with him once a week for ten years,” says Reb Dovid. “We learned Ramchal, Sefer Hachinuch, and Maharal. When we learned, the phone would ring off the hook.

The connection was a package deal that included Rebbetzin Salomon too. She gave tremendous eitzos on all sorts of things. “Once one of our children became very unwell at three months old,” Reb Dovid recalls. “It was very serious, and the first place we called was the Salomons.

“We were invited for Seder night with them, and the Mashgiach geared it to the kids. He lay on a chaise-longue, wearing a massive yarmulke. One of the older family members wanted to say something from the Vilna Gaon, but he wouldn’t hear of it, because the Seder was for the kids. We learned so much just from being in their presence.”

Yoni Klajn and Yosef Herz contributed to this report

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 994)