From Delancey Street to rosh kollel to dayan to ArtScroll editor to community rav for new olim, Rav Chaim Malinowitz packed in so much that his story defies easy description

I

magine growing up with Rav Moshe Feinstein down the street, the iconic Rabbi Jacob Joseph yeshivah as your school, and surrounded by the immigrant Jewish life that was once New York’s Lower East Side.

That near-mythical neighborhood, which has receded into the collective imagination as the world of Rabbi Shmuel Kunda’s classic “When Zaidy Was Young,” was the birthplace of Rav Chaim Malinowitz. The many stops of his life — as a student of Mirrer gaon Rav Abba Berman, as a young dayan in Monsey, as a brilliant editor at the forefront of Artscroll’s Torah revolution, and as an inspirational rav and community builder in Ramat Beit Shemesh — took him far from Delancey Street and the Bialystoker Synagogue. But it was the Lower East Side’s mix of Torah learning and pashtus that marked every stage of his life — cut short suddenly at age 67.

In a way, Rav Chaim Malinowitz’s life story is a difficult one to tell. Asked to talk about him, people respond with a jumble of adjectives: fearless, original, mainstream, broad-minded, gaon, down to earth, blunt, caring, maamin, prolific. This multi-faceted definition is itself part of the story of someone so wide-ranging.

But in another sense, Rav Malinowitz’s life story is very simple. As his father’s rebbi, Rav Aharon Kotler, said when asked how his exclusively Torah system would produce rabbanim: “When the clouds fill up with water, it rains.”

About Rav Chaim Malinowitz, whose lifelong dedication to Torah learning led to a prolific output of teaching, psak, and communal leadership, it could be said that it didn’t just rain — it poured.

After His Heart

“We called him the ‘Torah Temimah’ kid, because he wasn’t like other American boys — he knew all of the Torah Temimah and midrashim on Chumash,” says Rabbi Dovid Stein, a rav in Rehovot and close friend since third grade in RJJ.

By all accounts, Chaim Malinowitz was gifted. Born in 1952, he was a fun-loving boy with lots of friends, who displayed a precocious creativity by auctioning off an incomplete set of Rebbi Akiva Eiger at a profit in order to buy the yeshivah a new one. But he was also what his son Nechemya calls a “genius” — interested in Torah while his school friends were still on baseball.

IQ apart, his precocious drive for Torah shouldn’t have come as a surprise given the kind of home that he grew up in. His father, Rav Avrohom Aharon, was a prewar talmid of Rav Aharon Kotler in Kletzk. As a teen he’d chosen to stay on in Europe to learn when his parents and ten siblings immigrated to Palestine. It was a fateful decision: while his close family turned into secular kibbutzniks, he emerged from the war years in Shanghai as one of the elite group of Rav Aharon’s veteran talmidim.

Torah greatness was unremarkable in the Lower East Side of the 1950s. Neighbors such as Rav Yosef Eliyahu Henkin, the preeminent posek in America before Rav Moshe Feinstein’s arrival, were just that — neighbors. Everywhere were the broken Jews who had arrived from Europe and were struggling to put down roots in this strange new country.

That Lower East Side climate of Torah and unpretentiousness marked Chaim Malinowitz for life, and were obvious in his simple, non-rabbinic suit and totally down-to-earth manner. “He felt that this atmosphere of Torah with pashtus were his roots,” says Rebbetzin Simi Malinowitz. “It was a place where there was emes and no fakery.”

But by his bar mitzvah, Chaim had outgrown RJJ and he was accepted to Rav Shmuel Kamenetsky’s yeshivah — known simply as ‘Philly” — well below the age of his fellow bochurim. Despite the resistance that his age caused, his abilities soon made young Chaim a bad fit for the younger shiurim, and so he skipped two classes and headed for the beis medrash to learn under Baranovitch-born Rav Mendel Kaplan, a legendary figure in America’s post-war Torah revival.

Although Chaim was clearly gifted, it was his willingness to add perspiration to inspiration that was out of the ordinary. For the last 20 years of his life, the Malinowitz family says, he managed on very little sleep — not much more than two hours a night. He’d be learning till late at night and then be up for k’vasikin again a few hours later. This punishing schedule developed over the years, but it had its roots back in Philly.

“The yeshivah had a 10 p.m. curfew, but he wanted to continue learning,” says his son Nechemya. “So his rebbeim told him to get up early if he wanted to learn more. That’s when he started to get up at 4 a.m., and how he ended up being someone who always davened k’vasikin.”

But by the time he was 18, another characteristic was emerging in Chaim Malinowitz: a drive for essential truth in Torah. It was a quest that led him to his most revered rebbi.

By summer 1970, the Philly bochur had a gnawing sense that there was still more depth in Torah that he wasn’t accessing. Then someone suggested that he try out Yeshivas Iyun HaTalmud, led by Rav Abba Berman, in Queens. In the world of Torah greatness that was the pre-war Mir yeshivah, “Reb Abba” was recognized as part of the elite, a prime student of Rav Yerucham Levovitz; in a world of in-depth Torah learning, Reb Abba was deeper.

Never large, the yeshivah produced major geonim including future Lakewood rosh yeshivah Rav Yeruchem Olshin, Bnei Brak mekubal Rav Yisrael Elya Weintraub, and Rav Moshe Wolpin, whose Jerusalem yeshivah has become its own brand of analytical iyun. Chaim Malinowitz went to hear a shiur, and in the words of childhood friend Rabbi Dovid Stein, “he was intoxicated.”

But then an unexpected problem arose: His father was opposed to him going. “As a talmid of Rav Aharon Kotler, his father much preferred that he enroll at Lakewood. Chaim was very close to his father, and so he listened to him.”

But the young bochur simply wanted Reb Abba’s Torah too much. And so Chaim Malinowitz went to ask his old neighbor, the gadol hador Rav Moshe Feinstein, what to do. “A person has to learn mah shelibo chafetz,” decided Rav Moshe. The answer cleared the way for his chosen path. And so, Chaim moved to Iyun HaTalmud, his home until he got married six years later.

In 1976 he married Simi, née Maza, a daughter of Rav Dovber Maza, a veteran mechanech and close talmid of Rav Moshe Feinstein, and then stayed by Reb Abba’s side at the kollel, eventually becoming rosh kollel when Reb Abba left for Eretz Yisrael in 1980. Even 25 years after he himself moved away from America, Rav Malinowitz remained the acknowledged leader of that special chaburah. The incisive brand of learning that he perfected in those years stood him in good stead as a dayan decades later.

“Reb Abba taught him to be able to get to the heart of any issue, which is how he was able to advise so many people,” says his wife. “And through all the many roles that he took on later, he remained in essence what he was in those years: a yeshivah man.”

Fearless Face-off  

Perhaps the most glaring omission from the standard portrait of a gadol is the way they interacted with their family. Here and there one finds glimpses, but it’s easier to find descriptions of astounding learning than of how they balanced raising a family with total dedication to Torah.

“My father made life fun, and showed us children how Torah was the best possible life to lead,” Nechemya says. With a brood of ten children, six boys and four girls — now aged 19 to 42 — the Malinowitzes had their hands full. “He made every mitzvah into an adventure — whether taking us to k’vasikin in Monsey in the snow, or driving all the way to Washington Heights to pick up a klaf for the haftarah, or getting the Parks Department’s permission to chop down reeds for schach because he held you shouldn’t rely on bamboo.

“He loved us,” continues Nechemya simply, “and he was my hero.”

Creating memories like that isn’t easy, and especially not when you’re spending many hours gaining proficiency across swathes of Shas and poskim. When he was still a bochur, he received his first semichah in issur v’heter from Rav Moshe Feinstein at the ripe old age of 19, based on those early-morning sessions begun in Philly. That, in part, was thanks to his father, who wanted him to have the ability to turn to the rabbinate if need be — as indeed he did, much to his later surprise.

But now in his years in kollel, he spread his wings, amassing the knowledge that would be remarkable later as his fluency in all areas of Shas, hashkafah, and halachah. “He had very broad ambitions when it came to learning,” recalls Rebbetzin Malinowitz. “He didn’t want to limit himself to anything.”

Rav Malinowitz entered the new world of Even Ha’ezer, where he became a world authority on gittin, and also got a full yadin semichah, once again from Rav Moshe Feinstein. So at a very young age he found himself a dayan on the beis din of Kollel HaRabbanim in Monsey, dealing with sensitive issues of divorce and the hot-button topic of agunos.

It was here that his fearlessness, which was to become a dominant feature of his life as a rav, showed itself.

There were cases where a husband had to persuaded to give a get to his agunah wife and the process could be fraught with conflict and an element of danger, but Rav Malinowitz wasn’t the type to be cowed. “My father would joke about it,” recalls his son Nechemya.

And it helped to have a supportive wife: “My attitude was that if he’d done it, it was because it was the right thing to do,” says the rebbetzin.

The plight of agunos never stopped affecting Rav Malinowitz, even long after ending his work as an active dayan. “Just last year my father rang me up and said, ‘Let’s go to the US and take care of an agunah,’ ” says Nechemya. “So we flew to America and knocked on this man’s door, and my father said to him. ‘You think no one is interested in this case. I care, and I’ll do everything in my power to make sure that your wife receives her get.’ A week later, she had her get.”

But it wasn’t just with recalcitrant husbands that the dayan could get tough; his truthfulness meant that he was also prepared to challenge fellow rabbanim on matters of principle.

That’s what happened with the 1992 New York Get Law. As part of a long-standing effort to solve the problem of agunos, various activist groups lobbied for a law that would make it difficult for those refusing to grant a get to receive a civil divorce. Initially, many people looked positively on the initiative; after all, it was an ingenious solution to a painful problem. But Rav Malinowitz fought the bill tooth and nail. He held that the financial penalties for withholding a get would create a coercive element, potentially invalidating all divorces issued in New York as get me’useh, or a coerced get. It was only when Rav Shlomo Zalman Auerbach, in one of his final decisions, supported him that the tide was turned.

But Rav Malinowitz was also prepared to take up the cudgel against those who mocked halachah as anachronistic. In a well-known case involving kiddushei ketanah — a father betrothing his young daughter — he demonstrated both broad-shouldered halachic authority and polemical skills in defending halachah in the court of public opinion.

The case involved  “Mr. G.,” who as a bargaining chip in a bitter divorce battle, shocked the beis din by saying that he’d engaged his young daughter, and would only reveal who the man was if his divorce conditions were met. Although not practiced in this way for hundreds of years, Torah law gives a father the authority to marry off his daughter in this way — and thus there was the horrific possibility of his daughter being caught in the crossfire.

Rav Malinowitz’s response, printed in the Journal of Halacha and Contemporary Society, was to use his unquestioned halachic expertise to declare the girl unmarried. But he didn’t suffice with that. In his fluent and forceful style, he pushed back against the mischaracterization of rabbanim as “imperious, old-fashioned, out-of-touch scholars in their ivory towers.” And he rejected the dangerous idea that if rabbis were put under enough pressure, they would find a “rabbinic way to alleviate the problem.”

The underlying force of his strength and conviction was grounded in the search for truth in Torah. “It was a combination of caring for people and being an ish emes,” says Rebbetzin Malinowitz.

That twin engine — broad Torah knowledge coupled with a search for truth — found expression in the massive endeavor of Torah teaching called ArtScroll. Like every successful revolution, the original aim of ArtScroll — democratizing Torah study — has succeeded so well that it’s now hard to grasp what an achievement it has been. The Schottenstein Shas Bavli, Yerushalmi, Mishnah, and so many other works has led to unprecedented numbers of Jews learning Torah.

And playing a pivotal role in all of that was Rav Chaim Malinowitz. As if the kollel and dayanus wasn’t enough, and working at unbelievable speed, he employed his phenomenal knowledge as senior editor of the Schottenstein Talmud Bavli.

“His role was to learn through the sugya with the ArtScroll commentary to probe it to find its weak points,” says Rabbi Eliezer Herzka, rav in Khal Meor Chaim, Lakewood, and a senior editor of the ArtScroll Shas. “He was the posek acharon — the final word on any text.”

To be able to do that successfully, says Rabbi Herzka, Rav Malinowitz brought a mastery of “kol haTorah kulah” to every footnote. “For example, if a sugya in Bava Kama talks about Taharos, he would note whether the thrust of the commentary had taken into account the main opinions in the other sugya. And his capacity to follow through a particular shitah was phenomenal — after a few hundred footnotes, he would be able to say, ‘here you’ve missed Tosafos and the Rashba.’ ”

In a phrase that is echoed multiple times in conversations about Rav Malinowitz, Rabbi Herzka adds: “He was a strong-minded person; but it was mixed with anavah — it was never an ego thing. In a minute he would be mekabel from someone else, even someone much younger than himself.”

My Heart’s in the East

It was entirely in keeping with Rav Malinowitz’s larger-than-life personality that he suddenly decided to leave behind all his accomplishments and move to Eretz Yisrael should come suddenly.

“One day in 1997, he pulled out a Ramban and spoke about how living in Eretz Yisrael was a mitzvah,” recalls Rebbetzin Malinowitz. “It was one day to the next.”

The call of an unfulfilled mitzvah was too strong to ignore, so the Malinowitz family prepared to move, much to the shock of the Monsey community. People couldn’t believe that he was ready to give up his kollel, the shul that had grown from it, and his position as a dayan.

It also looked like the end of the line at ArtScroll. “It was the pre-email era, and just relying on faxes, it seemed unrealistic to continue working on the Shas long-distance,” says Nechemya Malinowitz. But then ArtScroll saw a way for him to continue his work even from Eretz Yisrael, an accommodation for which he was very grateful.

Making the move with children of all ages was something of a leap into the unknown and was a symptom of his deep, visceral bitachon. Later, in his own community, teaching Chovos Halevavos became a firm favorite. As someone who walked the walk himself, he could talk emunah to others in a real way.

The move to Eretz Yisrael brought out unknown dimensions of Rav Malinowitz’s personality. Rav Noah Weinberg brought him in to teach in Aish HaTorah, and this former head of Kollel Iyun HaTalmud, the epitome of the litvishe iyun system, found that he could connect to those with no Jewish background. “He used to joke that people went past him on the way to get a coffee, and said, ‘Rabbi, what’s the meaning of life?’ ” says his wife. “And he was surprised to find that he could connect to that.”

But another dramatic stage of Rav Malinowitz’s long evolution was yet to come. In 2001, he was approached to become the rabbi of what would become known as Beis Tefillah Yonah Avraham (BTYA), one of Ramat Beit Shemesh’s most vibrant communities.

“This was the one decision where I saw that he was really hesitant,” says Rebbetzin Malinowitz. “He was always very decisive, and he didn’t know whether he could be a community rav.”

So what he couldn’t decide himself, he went to ask others. Rav Moshe Shapiro told him that the obligation to prepare shiurim would be good for his own learning. Rav Gamliel Rabinowitz told him that the need of the generation was to help others. He even asked Rav Refoel Levin, one of the last people to have a tradition for using the goral haGra, to clarify his doubt in this way. But Rav Refoel refused: “I only do it in case of doubt — but here there’s no question that it’s your duty to take up the offer.”

Not only did the shul benefit from that advice — he himself discovered possibilities for chesed and leadership that he hadn’t possessed before.

The impact that Rav Malinowitz had on his community is obvious from a cursory look around BTYA. In the entrance is a large color-coded sign listing the shiurim that take place around the clock. There is Gemara on multiple levels; Mishnah; halachah; hashkafah; and of course Rav Malinowitz’s constant companion, the Chovos Halevavos; shiurim for women, for boys and girls; shiurim early in the morning and late at night. It was Rav Malinowitz’s vision come alive.

As his wife stresses, “He never stopped believing that all community life needs to focus on Torah — that’s why he was always looking to add another shiur.”

But it didn’t matter whether it was his Torah, someone else giving the shiur, or just providing a home for people to learn — it was all Torah to him. That found recent expression when he heard about an Israeli Sephardi kollel that had been evicted from its premises, and invited them into BTYA. Torah was Torah, even if not directly related to his own community.

And in his own shiurim and writings, he displayed a flair for making his argument in a down-to-earth, relatable way. Having hoovered up vast stores of general knowledge along the way, he drew on sources as varied as Snoopy and Ben Shapiro to present Torah ideas as he saw them.

Even Rav Malinowitz’s famed 22-hour daily schedule didn’t explain his incredibly wide activities. It was a commuting rabbanus, because although he continued to live in Jerusalem, he was in his place in shul every day from eight o’clock in the morning. His concept of rabbanus also went far beyond giving shiurim answering sh’eilos. He set up many local mosdos to cater to the needs of his community members, many of whom, as American olim, didn’t find their place in the local chareidi system.

How was he able to accomplish so much? “He really admired the members of his community — he told me they were his family,” says Rav Elimelech Kornfeld of Kehillas HaGra and one of Ramat Beit Shemesh’s leading rabbanim.

Former BTYA president Tzvi Gherman is a good example of Rav Malinowitz’s profound influence on his community. As newcomers to Israel in 2006, the Ghermans were unfamiliar with everything about their new country. “Having the Rav in my life gave me an inkling as to what it must have been like living in the days of nevi’im,” he says. “I imagine that people had great comfort and confidence when they sought guidance from a navi — I had that same comfort and confidence with everything I asked the Rav.”

What was so special about Rav Malinowitz as community rabbi? Gherman mentions his superhuman schedule and genius in Torah, but then recalls another personal anecdote: “My children had the gift of knowing the Rav on a fun level as well. We had the zechus of driving the Rav on shul trips and we were once discussing Jewish music when the Rav asked my kids if they ever heard the When Zaidy Was Young albums. When they answered in the negative, he was flabbergasted. The next day the Rav called me into his office and gave me Shmuel Kunda’s When Zaidy Was Young for my kids.”

And then there was his chesed. Despite his uncompromising nature when it came to things like fasting (“You have a headache? Fasting is not supposed to feel good”), he made a list of people to call after a taanis to check how it had gone.

As in many areas of his life, he regularly went beyond the call of duty in helping others. Every day, he would daven k’vasikin in Jerusalem, where he lived, and then slowly carry his briefcase packed with seforim (he called it his “nuclear football”) on the bus to Ramat Beit Shemesh. Once, when he’d arrived in BTYA for Shacharis, he noticed that someone whose wife had gone to the US was late for shul, so he went around to the house and helped with the children.

There was the time that he stayed up all night saying Tehillim for the son of a shul member who was undergoing an operation, or one Yom Tov when he walked 15 minutes to someone’s house to make sure they got an urgent tetanus shot. Then there was the boy who was suspended from school for a week, and Rav Malinowitz gave him some “ArtScroll work” to do; the boy then received a signed copy of the newly published volume he’d “worked” on.

On another occasion, when he became aware of an addiction issue a bochur was struggling with, he personally sponsored the boy’s rehab — to the tune of $11,000, because, he told him, “I believe in you.”

When a shul member was in the throes of postpartum depression, he galvanized the kehillah to set up a babysitting rotation and personally monitored the functional level of the home — at times even reading the children books and helping out with bedtime.

In retrospect, Rav Malinowitz’s unexpected time as community rav was the distilled essence of his outsize life, where his learning, teaching, life’s wisdom, and chesed met.  His fearlessness and down-to-earth brilliance were also personal gifts. But his hard work, what he made of those gifts, was all his own. As Rav Elya Brudny, rosh yeshivah of the Mir in Brooklyn, said about Rav Malinowitz: “He’s someone who didn’t let his kishron stand in the way of his growth.”

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 790)