In Tribute to Rav Shlomo Fischer Ztz”l

Prepared for print by: Dovi Safier
Adapted from the Divrei Hesped delivered by Rav Lipa Geldwerth

At the levayah of Rav Berish Zuckerman, an eminent Torah scholar, Rav Moshe Feinstein delivered a hesped. I still remember his words, because he delineated two distinct types of greatness. There are gedolim, he said, known by the masses — and then there are gedolim who are known primarily by other gedolim.

With the passing of Rav Shlomo Fischer, Rosh Yeshivas Itri, renowned halachic decisor, and author of the Beis Yishai, just two months shy of his 90th birthday, we have just lost the second sort of luminary: the sort of gaon known and understood only by other geonim. It’s only a small cadre who can appreciate the staggering loss of this mighty intellect and towering scholar.

Rav Moshe Shapira, a stellar gaon himself and not someone who was easily impressed, would say that Rav Shlomo “looms seven dargos (levels) above the world’s greatest lomdim.” Rav Shmuel Auerbach described him as “gevadig in der Velt — out of this world.” Maran Rav Chaim Kanievsky rose when a visitor identified himself as one of Rav Shlomo’s talmidim.

When Rav Shlomo was just 12 years of age, the Mir Rosh Yeshivah, Rav Leizer Yudel Finkel, noticed his extraordinary genius and invited him to join a special chaburah in the Mir that included far older bochurim, the likes of Rav Mendel Atik and Rav Chaim Greineman. The Brisker Rav extolled the divrei Torah shared by the young Rav Shlomo and once spent close to an hour pondering a kashe he’d raised on a famous Rav Chaim, commenting, “I don’t know if my father would have had a resolution…” In a letter written to Rav Shlomo, the Steipler Gaon addressed him with the reverence typically reserved for a senior Torah scholar.

Chazal reference an attribute known as “ziv hachachmah — the glow of wisdom,” upon which Rashi comments: “I do not know what this is.” The Tosafos Yom Tov is understandably perplexed by Rashi’s “not knowing.” Perhaps Rashi is telling us that there is a glow so dazzling, so blinding, that we cannot perceive it clearly enough to define it. This is how one feels when attempting to describe Rav Shlomo’s greatness.

In addition to his brilliance in Shas and poskim, Rav Shlomo had absolute mastery of every area of Torah. His total recall of Tanach and its most obscure mefarshim was no less than his bekius in all Midrashim and targumim, the Moreh, as well as all kadmonim (he edited the current print version of Rav Chasdai Crescas’s Ohr Hashem). His instant recall of Zohar Hakadosh and kisvei Ari ztz”l — including tomes of sifrei HaMekubalim, particularly the Leshem — was spectacular. His singular expertise in all kisvei HaGra was legendary (as a 28-year-old, he elucidated the manuscript of the Gra on the Sifra, and at 31, the Likutim in Kabbalah). The history surrounding each sefer and every mechaber was at his fingertips. His knowledge of the body of sifrei drush and chassidus, experts say, was amazing. His own koach hadrush as captured in his Beis Yishai was astounding.