Longing for Brisk

In the annals of Slabodka, 1929 is a year written in blood, the yeshivah planted by the Alter of Slabodka in the holy city of Chevron destroyed as Arab neighbors massacred more than 60 of its talmidim.

That same year, Rav Yisrael and Hinda Ezrachi had their oldest son. The child would be a big part of Chevron’s rebirth, one of those whose spirit and strength would not just keep the glory of Slabodka alive, but also adapt it to the needs of a new generation.

The boy was bright and he was eager, interested primarily in learning and in speaking in learning with others. As a teenager, he would become one of the first Eretz Yisrael-born talmidim to be accepted in Chevron.

There was sort of a paradox to young Baruch Mordche. He was the quintessential Chevroner, embodying the confidence, flair, and poise that reflected the gadlus ha’adam approach, fully aware of the potential of man.

But into that identity, he managed to incorporate a very different attitude — and somehow, both would become part of his essence.

He was a Chevron talmid, he was enamored of the Brisker Rav, Rav Yitzchak Zev HaLevi Soloveitchik, and he longed to join the daily shiur that the Rav delivered in his home.

The Brisker Rav’s son would frequent the otzar haseforim in Chevron, and Baruch Mordche passed on the request for permission.

The Brisker Rav was familiar with Baruch Mordche, who would come up to speak in learning with him. (“I would go speak to the Rav,” Rav Baruch Mordche would reflect in later years, “and I was comfortable to do so. Nochum Partzovitz would be there too, and he would shake so forcefully that I could hear the coins in his pocket jangling, but I wasn’t scared. You know why? Because I was young and foolish and didn’t grasp what the Brisker Rav was. Reb Nochum did, so he was scared. He chapped!”)

That’s why the Brisker Rav’s response was such a surprise. No, the Rav answered. Baruch Mordche should not come to the shiur. Instead, the Rav told his son, “You will go to him in Chevron after the shiur and tell him what was said.”

And so, each day, Meshulam Dovid HaLevi Soloveitchik would pick up Baruch Mordechai Ezrachi in the Chevroner yeshivah and then they would go together to the Amerikaner Shul to chazzer the shiur.

After a few days, Baruch Mordche thanked his chavrusa for coming to pick him up, but told him he felt bad about the extra time. “I know the way to shul and can meet you there,” he said.

“What, and I should give up a tzivui from the Tatte? My father told me two things: One is to go to you in Chevron and the other is to tell you the shiur. Why should I lose out?” replied the son of the Brisker Rav.

IT

was not just those who frequented the Chevron yeshivah who admired the tall, dynamic, confident bochur: After the Holocaust, the great men of the Holy Land were mourning the unfathomable blow Klal Yisrael had sustained, the loss of so many gedolei Torah and their talmidim. They too kept an eye on Baruch Mordche.

He yearned to absorb Torah from each of them. In Yerushalayim of those years, the Chol Hamoed action was around the table of Rav Isser Zalman Meltzer, a pioneer in bringing the lomdus of Lita to the hallowed shuls of Yerushalayim, saying over the chakiros of Rav Chaim Brisker to the talmidim of Eitz Chaim.

Rav Dovid Finkel took his friend Baruch Mordche to Rav Isser Zalman’s home one Chol Hamoed, assuring the 16-year-old bochur that Rav Isser Zalman would appreciate his visit. They came in and Baruch Mordche was immediately overwhelmed at the sight, the room filled with great talmidei chachamim, a din of voices and opinions. He shrank back into the hallway, looking on through wide eyes as he tried to follow the back-and-forth.

A few minutes later, his view into the room was blocked: Rav Isser Zalman himself had risen and headed into the hallway, approaching the new arrival and greeting him.

Baruch Mordche was too awed to speak, but Rav Dovid Finkel said, “This bochur has a chiddush to share.”

Time seemed to stop as Rav Isser Zalman leaned over, his face radiating interest, as if he had been waiting all day for this bochur, to share his chiddush.

With no choice, Baruch Mordche shared the shtickel he had prepared, on the sugya of holachah shelo b’regel. Rav Isser Zalman listened, then smiled his approval and moved on, swept into the crowd.

On their way back home, Baruch Mordche shared his frustration with his friend. “The Rosh Yeshivah was just being polite with me. Why did you make me waste his time? Why did I open my mouth?”

Rav Dovid assured him that Rav Isser Zalman had heard and appreciated each word, but Baruch Mordche was not convinced.

Years passed. Baruch Mordche surpassed the expectations of his rebbeim, and he became a chassan to the daughter of the Chevroner mashgiach, Rav Meir Chodosh.

The celebration was great, not just within the yeshivah itself, but across the nascent olam hayeshivos.

At the chasunah, a dais lined with gedolei Torah was quiet as the chassan rose to deliver the traditional shtickel Torah — but the quiet was for barely a moment, as Rav Leizer Yudel Finkel, the Mirrer rosh yeshivah, interrupted with a kushya.

The chassan handled it coolly, but a moment later, there was a new round, Rav Leizer Yudel asking with more force. The assembled gedolim got involved, as the talmidim of Chevron looked on with wonder as their friend held his own.

The shtickel continued, and again, Rav Leizer Yudel interjected.

Seated in the middle of the dais was the senior rosh yeshivah, the elderly Rav Isser Zalman, who had made the effort to join in the simchah. He had been listening quietly, but now, as he spoke up, everyone listening in deference.

“Loz em, let the chassan continue, he has what to say,” Rav Isser Zalman told Rav Leizer Yudel. “I still remember the shtickel he told me, about holachah shelo b’regel!”

The chassan heard the comment and he locked eyes with Rav Dovid Finkel, standing in the corner: They shared a smile, remembering the Chol Hamoed visit eight years earlier.

Hear the Music

There was the lomdus and hasmadah, the thirst for Torah and the mussar, but there was also something else. Rav Dov Landau learned in Chevron during those years and he has publicly remarked that Rav Baruch Mordche changed his life.

In Ponevezh, Rav Dov explained, he had learned about hasmadah and havanah, but when he came to Chevron, Rav Baruch Mordche taught him something else: how to rejoice in a sevarah, to exult in a kushya, to celebrate a ra’aya and delight in a diyuk.

Rav Baruch Mordche taught him simchas haTorah.

They met for the last time just a few months ago, the generally restrained Rav Dov greeting his friend of seven decades… by dancing.

Dancing, because doesn’t everyone dance when they hear music?

After his chasunah, Rav Baruch Mordche delivered chaburos in the Chevron yeshivah, but it was obvious that he had a calling: The yeshivah world was coming alive, so many young talmidim across the country who could gain from the young talmid chacham.

Yeshivas Kfar Chassidim won out, Rav Baruch Mordche heading north twice a week to deliver shiur. Always a talmid, he would look back at those years with fondness, forever grateful for the chance to hear shmuessen from Rav Elya Lopian.

At one point, Rav Yechezkel Sarna, the Chevroner rosh yeshivah, asked Rav Baruch Mordche to stop traveling to Kfar Chassidim, feeling that the bochurim in Chevron were losing out. Rav Baruch Mordche was prepared to listen to his rosh yeshivah, but Rav Elya Lopian made it clear that Kfar Chassidim was not relinquishing their rights; the aged mashgiach traveled to Yerushalayim to state his case to Rav Sarna, who gave in.

L

earning, writing, teaching… and then, in 1964, Rav Baruch Mordche, talmid of so many great Torah luminaries, blazed a path of his own.

Tenuat Bnei Torah is not a political party, despite the name, nor is it a summer camp: It’s a philosophy, one based on the premise that every Yid has a neshamah that longs to taste the sweetness of Torah, and that once the neshamah and Torah meet, doors open up that will never close.

Rav Baruch Mordche was a connector, and traveling through the country and meeting people, he saw a historic opportunity. There were young men growing up in a system that gave them the fundamentals of Yiddishkeit — emunah, halachah, an appreciation for Torah and mitzvos — but with no real opportunity to encounter the geshmak in learning.

Rav Baruch Mordche envisioned a program in which bochurim from the olam hayeshivos and those from yeshivah high schools could learn side by side. The weeks of summer bein hazmanim, he realized, were perfect: In a society in which summer camp was virtually unheard of, he created a program in which the curriculum consisted of two things — learning, and having a great time.

And Rav Baruch Mordechai Ezrachi proceeded to perform the feat that he would repeat again and again for the next 60 years: He showed that they were really one thing.

How can there be true happiness without the Ketzos and Rav Akiva Eiger, without reading the Rambam’s lashon one more time?

The bochurim played and swam and sang and relaxed and learned together, the informal structure allowing for a certain freedom: Late at night, or early in the morning, or after a spirited Friday night farbrengen, a young man who had learned diligently and conscientiously but had never before experienced the thrill of a yeshivah-style argument over a diyuk in Rashi, would come back to one of his new friends and ask to learn a bit more.

At summer’s end, there were those who found it too hard to give it up, drawn to the beis medrash, eager to live a life in which that sort of joy was so readily accessible.

In later years, Rav Baruch Mordechai would reflect on the success of that program, commenting that the Torah sells itself, no gimmickry necessary.

This is true, of course, but an open Gemara on a shtender does not automatically draw a person toward it. What made the program so effective was that the bochurim who gave it its heart had all been influenced by the 35-year-old Rav Baruch Mordche, and, as would be the case for six decades, they all became “little Rav Baruch Mordches,” subconsciously or consciously imitating, emulating, and reflecting their rebbi.

It was the posture, the comportment, the style, the way they had learned from him how to say a shtickel Torah.

They heard him read a Gemara and they wanted to read a Gemara too. They watched him sitting under a tree, humming as he learned, and they went to get shtenders. They watched his pen dancing over the pages of his notebook and they hurried to buy notebooks of their own.

Rav Baruch Mordechai, reflected a talmid, would go on to become a great rosh yeshivah — but he would never stop being a yeshivah bochur.

All One Mission

To take boys who had already learned Gemara and introduce them to simchas haTorah was certainly an accomplishment, but Rav Baruch Mordche believed in the formula enough to look to a new frontier: He took a group of young mechanchim on a visit to Russia, still under Communist rule.

“I know,” Rav Baruch Mordche told them, “that you want to only to meet the young people and give them a chance to wear your tefillin, telling them how important a mitzvah it is, but I urge you to wait.”

In his opening remarks to a group of eager young people who knew so little, Rav Baruch Mordche told them that, while in their culture, questions were frowned upon, in the Judaism that was theirs, questions were encouraged. He told these teenagers who knew virtually nothing about Yiddishkeit about the prohibition to light a fire on Shabbos, explaining that before the advent of electricity, the only way to have light on Shabbos was to ignite the fire before Shabbos.

The audience grasped the concept and the visitor continued.

He spoke about the prohibition against causing damage to another, and shared another halachah with them: If someone lights a match to the curtains of another, the fire will spread throughout the house. Whatever damage it causes is the fault of the one who originally lit the curtains on fire.

The audience understood the reason in this concept as well.

“You understand that starting the fire that spreads obligates a person, and it is just as if he himself is continuously holding the fire to each piece of wood in the home. Why, then,” asked Rav Baruch Mordche, “is the one who ignites the oil lamp on Friday not considered as if he is making a fire on Shabbos itself?”

The bright young men who could not even recite Shema Yisrael started to argue between themselves, reasoning one way and another. Rav Baruch Mordche looked at the enthusiastic group and then at his fellow mechanchim.

“Now you can put tefillin on them,” he said.

For Rav Boruch Mordche, it wasn’t that he was active on two different fronts of harbatzas Torah and kiruv. For him, it was all one mission: to make the Torah beloved to its owners by allowing them to hear its song.

And because he heard its every note, capable of appreciating the simple melody even as he was attuned to its most intricate harmony, he could conduct a symphony like no other.

AS

the reputation of this charismatic rosh chaburah continued to spread, there were the inevitable detractors: They didn’t understand the erect carriage, the cufflinks, tie clip, and gleaming shoes, and they worried about the bochurim being influenced. Yes, they knew about Chevron and gadlus ha’adam, but this was too much. A group of them approached Rav Chaim Shlomo Leibowitz, the Kamenitzer rosh yeshivah, and shared their skepticism.

The Rosh Yeshivah, grandson of Rav Baruch Ber, had also learned in Chevron, yet his frock was wrinkled and his shoes scuffed. Wasn’t Rav Baruch Mordche doing it wrong, they asked him?

He raised his hand, unwilling to even hear them out.

“We don’t question Rav Baruch Mordche,” he said, his admiration obvious.

Later, one of Rav Chaim Shlomo’s talmidim asked the Rosh Yeshivah why he maintained such respect for Rav Baruch Mordche.

Rav Chaim Shlomo shared a memory. In 1948, bombs were falling on Yerushalayim. The streets were dark and frightening and the atmosphere in the bomb shelters was dismal. Neighbors crowded together, but no greetings were exchanged, people lacking the emotional strength to encourage one another.

Rav Chaim Shlomo recalled being in a shelter along with some of the greatest talmidei chachamim in the city. There was fear and dejection on every face, he remembered.

And then Rav Baruch Mordche came in. “And he saw the matzav and he started to circulate, going from person to person. With each one he spoke in learning, and from each, he somehow managed to extract not just an answer, but a smile. He never repeated the same kushya twice and somehow, he identified what sort of conversation would hearten each person — lomdus, practical halachah, drush, bekius. And when we emerged from the shelter a few minutes later, every person looked happy.”

Yeshivah for People

In 1976, at the close of the shivah for his father, Rav Baruch Mordechai announced that he would be opening a yeshivah that would carry the name of his father: Slabodka, as he had absorbed it from his rebbeim, as he had received it from his father-in-law, would have yet another outpost.

In Yerushalayim’s quiet Bayit Vegan, on Rechov Cassuto, Ateres Yisrael was “a yeshivah for people,” as its rosh yeshivah liked to say. Not for malachim, but for people. Because it was for them that the Torah was given and in them that the Torah could work its wonders, elevating and refining.

The yeshivah and its rosh yeshivah were one, the apartment across the yeshivah as if an annex; bochurim coming to speak in learning, but also to eat supper or simply schmooze. The Rebbetzin, who had grown up in an apartment in the Chevron yeshivah building, did not just allow this — she encouraged it, making it clear that just as her husband was their father, she was their mother.

And now that Rav Baruch Mordechai was no longer moving between positions and yeshivos, based in his own beis medrash, the talmidim got to observe something else: The Rosh Yeshivah seemed to learn without cease. All day, it appeared. Then, late at night, at 2 or even 3 a.m., they could look into the window of his apartment and see the familiar sight, hear the familiar song.

Fresh, engaged, vibrant. He would lean forward when he learned, his back not touching the chair, writing, pondering, jumping up to get a sefer, then humming again.

This sight, too, was part of the shiur, part of the message.

He said shiur klali and a shiur on the bekius limud and a shiur on the lomdishe topics in the parshah, and then he said a shmuess and he also wrote, his seforim veering well beyond the path through the yeshivishe masechtos.

And he sat with his bochurim, able to listen, to understand, and to empathize. Yet for nearly every problem, he had the same solution: One has to know how to learn, and then, they have an island, a dimension in which pain cannot break them.

He could cry with a yasom — oh, he did, so many times. He would hear distressing news and burst into wails, reaching for his Tehillim. But then, it was back to learning, gently, insistently, lovingly pulling the talmidim into this realm, the realm where only joy resides.

It was how he survived.

The Rosh Yeshivah, talmidim knew, did not get into bed during the week. He sat in his chair throughout the night, learning, dozing, then learning some more. There were nights in which he would come into the beis medrash well after midnight, looking around at the bochurim immersed in learning and smiling, his expression radiating such satisfaction.

The yeshivah swallowed up much of his time, but he would never let it own him. The Torah had claimed him first, and so he said weekly chaburos to talmidim from other yeshivos, alternating groups of Swiss and American yungeleit. With those chaburos he got to learn Kodshim, which was so beloved to him, or sugyos in halachah that are not covered in the regular yeshivah cycle.

One of these yungeleit was moving back to America, and before leaving, he came, along with his wife, to receive a farewell brachah. The Rebbetzin warmly welcomed the wife, whom she had never before met, and presented her with a gift — a copy of the book she had authored: The Mashgiach, a biography of Rav Meir Chodosh, that had been translated into English by ArtScroll. The Rebbetzin wrote an elaborate inscription, which she then proceeded to clarify.

“How can I write that I admire you if I do not even know you?” she asked, then answered her own question. “It is because you allowed your husband to come learn here every Motzaei Shabbos, not expecting him to come to the coffee shop with you. That is admirable, so I admire you.”

The yungerman smiled. “The Rebbetzin is saying a whole shiur klali,” he joked, “asking a kushya, saying pshat, being masbir…”

Rebbetzin Shulamis smiled and then looked over at her husband. “Listen,” she said proudly, “you live with the lamdan hador for decades, something rubs off.”

Of their relationship, the Rebbetzin shared two details with a talmid. One, that aside from the fact that her husband did not sleep very much during the week, she said she had never seen him sit down on the couch to relax. “Either he’s learning, davening, doing chesed, listening to someone… I never saw him sit down just like that.”

In his shmuessen, this was a constant refrain. A great person does not do things randomly, say things randomly, or go places randomly. Each word and action have import and consequence, so it is all taken seriously.

Sinking into a couch — a moment to let go, to unwind — was too small an action for him: Why would he let go when he’d discovered a world that made him so happy?

The other detail that the Rebbetzin shared toward the end of her life was more personal. “In seventy years,” she said, “he never spoke harshly or unkindly to me, his middos were always impeccable. And,” she added, “I am the daughter of a baal mussar, so I know what good middos means.”

Although he carried himself regally, the self-respect was not the sort that made those around him small, but the opposite.

A talmid once came to the door, and although the Rosh Yeshivah was not feeling well, he got up and went to change from the robe he was wearing into a more elegant, silk robe.

“It hurts me to move my hands,” the Rosh Yeshivah conceded, “but I changed my robe so you should realize the kavod due a ben Torah, the respect I have for you.”

So that you should realize, and have that same respect for yourself….

H

aving a yeshivah meant that he was responsible for the budget, and so Rav Baruch Mordche was introduced to a new reality: travel. To Europe and South America, Canada, and America.

The trips were lengthier than he would have liked, and they kept him away from his beloved beis medrash. For Torah communities across the world, though, they were a gift.

And whenever he arrived, it was Yom Tov.

Local yeshivos and kollelim begged for the chance to host him for a shiur. If the schedule allowed for it, he agreed — yeshivos for more accomplished boys and yeshivos for weaker boys, elementary schools and high schools, elite kollelim and yeshivos for baalei teshuvah.

What sugya was the yeshivah learning? Palginan? Tzroros? Bah B’machteres? He was ready. He would walk into the packed beis medrash and stride to the front. He would remove his hat, and then adjust the trademark oversized yarmulke, then simply stand there staring fiercely at the crowd, issuing a challenge even before a word was spoken.

When the atmosphere was heavy with tension, he would start. Slowly, at first, then a bit quicker. His voice rising, and then, when he reached the climax, he would pause — a second, two seconds, ten or fifteen seconds — and then a roar, thunder and lightning and azoiiii darf men zuggen!

“Why? Perhaps, efsher, we can say differently,” someone distinguished would ask from the front row.

He would regard them with pity. “There is no efsher in a sugya,” he would say. “Pshat has to be muchrach, the sugya itself has to force you to say it that way. We are not here to give suggestions, but to follow the suggestions we are being given.”

The talmidei chachamim were not intimidated. They continued to ask, and he thrived on it, answering, deflecting, arguing, and sometimes just staring and repeating the words he had already used, as if directing the questioner to rethink the issue.

But what if the question came from a young bochur, a hesitant teenager reaching desperately for the confidence to finish the whole question?

Then, Rav Baruch Mordche’s expression would go from imposing to incredulous to delighted to appreciative. “Duss iz gefregt, now that’s called asking a question!”

Is there a charger that can power the neshamah of a bochur as effectively as that sort of reaction?

In the shiur itself, along with the oratorical brilliance and unparalleled ability to find the perfect word to express an idea, there was also the sheer delight: If he quoted the Brisker Rav, his accent shifted slightly to reflect that, reading the Rambam with the Brisker inflection.

When he quoted the Shulchan Aruch HaRav, authored by the Baal HaTanya, he would say, “Listen closely, listen to how Rav Zalman is teaching it to us,” the Avnei Nezer was simply “the Sochatchover,” and the roshei yeshivah who came from Europe were referred to as they had been called two or three generations earlier, identified by their hometowns rather than surnames — “zugt Reb Nochum Troker,” “fregt Reb Zunya Mirrer,” or “Reb Chaim Stuchiner is masbir….”

Perhaps it added color, but there was a message in this as well. Bnei Torah belong not to a newly created association of yeshivos, some sort of organization, but to an olam haTorah, a yeshivah world hundreds of years old, and the 17-year- old bochur of today is carrying the torch of these giants forward.

This Is Everything

Along with these shiurim, the many trips abroad gave the wider Torah world another gift as well. Once ensconced in his seat in the airplane cabin, the overhead light went on, the tray table opened up, and seder started. Rav Baruch Mordche — as many witnesses testified over the years — would learn throughout the entire flight, sitting for 11 or 12 hours learning and writing, eventually publishing seforim written entirely in transit.

His schedule on these trips didn’t indicate a tremendous motivation to raise funds. He would sit down in the study of his host, open his seforim and notebooks, and slip away into another realm. If his son, Rav Benzion, or one of the askanim arranged a meeting, then the Rosh Yeshivah would go — but then it was back to the seforim again.

For decades, the Rosh Yeshivah’s New York host was Reb Yisroel Lefkowitz. After Reb Yisroel’s passing, Mrs. Shoshana Lefkowitz continued the tradition. In the Lefkowitz house, there was a round table, and that, essentially, was Rav Baruch Mordche’s base: Until the end of his life, he would talk fondly about the round table in the Lefkowitz house, the round table that had allowed him to escape America and be at home.

In recent years, as a member of the Moetzes Gedolei HaTorah, his responsibilities grew. Public life had the potential to pull him away from the beis medrash, but he did not allow that to happen. He was in North America for a wedding, and there was a large crowd of people waiting to talk to him: talmidim, brachah-seekers, and askanim with weighty issues to discuss.

And then suddenly, he excused himself, even though there was a line of people waiting. He had heard that Rav Yerucham Olshin was saying a shiur in a side room at that very chasunah.

“How can I miss the chance to hear the Rosh Yeshivah?” he asked by way of apology, certain that the waiting people understood him. Some things are not negotiable and this… this is everything.

Rav Baruch Mordche’s last trip to America was less than a year ago. After close to 50 years of renting space, the yeshivah finally had a home of its own, in Kiryat Sefer — but the expenses were high.

The then-93-year-old Rosh Yeshivah was weak, but when he said shiur, the dynamism and vigor was there.

On the trip, the Rosh Yeshivah visited a Lakewood elementary school, but rather than say a shiur or shmuess, he did something else — he asked a question.

He shared the kushya, then stood there smiling as discussions swirled around him, the children “handling” with each other, with their rebbeim, realizing — perhaps for the first time — what it feels like not just to hear or speak words of Torah, but to feel it come forth from inside of you.

Then, over the last few months, the Rosh Yeshivah fell ill. He could no longer talk, but talmidim kept coming to speak in learning, his mouth moving and the talmidim reading his lips and replying.

Those moments kept him alive.

The day before his petirah, he appeared to be getting stronger. He understood the seriousness of the period we are going through, and he said that people should strengthen themselves in Torah and yiras Shamayim. The tzibbur should hold fast to achdus, and the main avodah, he concluded, is to believe with a full heart that ein od milvado — there is none besides Hashem.

By the next morning, Thursday, 11 Cheshvan, Rav Baruch Mordche was gone.

Camp Bnei Torah, an outgrowth of the Rosh Yeshivah’s original Bnei Torah movement, had a theme song, an anthem whose words were written by the one who best understood Rav Baruch Mordche’s essence — Rebbetzin Shulamis.

Bnei Torah anachnu, we are bnei Torah, its children in every way,

Torah, you have borne us, and over us, you stand watch…

Torah, you embrace body and soul, our heartbeat coming solely from you,

You rest deep within us, planting eternal joy…

The Torah is for people, Rav Baruch Mordche taught, given to man to allow him to soar. People don’t live forever, but if one is fortunate, he does not just merit learning Torah, but also revealing its light to others, leaving a bit of his vitality behind — a fire that lives on…  planting eternal joy. —

The Greatest Privilege

Six months ago, Rav Baruch Mordechai Ezrachi was menachem avel the children of Rav Gershon Edelstein. After sitting with them, he looked around: Clearly, there was someone else he wanted to speak to.

Reb Motti Paley was the grandson who attended to Rav Gershon, and Rav Baruch Mordche understood what he must be feeling. The Rosh Yeshivah went over to him, thanking the young man for his selflessness and devotion, explaining that he had not just benefitted the gadol hador, but the entire dor as well.

And so, as Rav Baruch Mordche taught, I’ve written these next lines in tribute to Reb Yaakov Grossbard, Rav Baruch Mordche’s devoted gabbai:

I do not know if I ever saw a talmid/gabbai/meshamesh quite like you, giving away your days and nights to your rebbi — not for personal gain, and with no familial responsibility.

You left your own young family to attend to the Rosh Yeshivah, and you did not make it look like a burden, but a privilege. The people always wanted more of Rav Baruch Mordche, and that meant more patience on your end. And as one of those people, I don’t think I ever saw you angry, rough or mean.

You lived your life in proximity to an elevated person and it shows.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 984)