Rabbi Meir Schuster ztz”l who passed away last week was the great man of the generation in terms of his devotion to a particular mission. Rabbi Noah Weinberg the founder of Aish HaTorah constantly singled out Rabbi Schuster to his students as the exemplar of the “power of one” — the power of each of us to dramatically change the world if we could just put aside our egos and acknowledge that success or failure is not in our hands but Hashem’s. The path of virtually every Aish student in the early decades began with an encounter — often several — with Rabbi Schuster.
When Reb Meir first started to maintain his vigil for young backpacking Jews at the Kosel his own ego played no role. He never asked himself whether he was well-suited to approach hundreds of complete strangers every day for nearly 40 years or whether he was likely to be successful getting them to taste Torah for the first time. For if he had asked the question the answer would have been a resounding no. But in his calculations only Hashem’s purposes counted.
There was never a person less likely to do what Reb Meir did than Reb Meir himself. Over the years there were others who patrolled the Kosel precincts in search of young Jews lacking knowledge of their heritage. All were more extroverted and flashy than Reb Meir. Most did valuable work. But none were able to match his impact or sustain the effort year after year.
In our first years in Jerusalem my wife and I used to take guests from among those picked up by Reb Meir at the Kosel nearly every Friday night. The phone would ring on Thursday night. Caller identification had not yet been invented but it was not needed: If I picked up the phone and there was silence on the other end I would ask “Hello Rabbi Schuster is that you?”
Reb Meir was so shy that he found it difficult to begin a conversation over the phone with someone whom he knew well. And yet virtually every day for decades he spent long hours trying to drag reluctant strangers to Aish HaTorah nearby in the Old City or further away to Ohr Somayach. In my two years at Ohr Somayach one of our diversions was waiting to see what hirsute recruits Reb Meir would bring through the door.
Yet he never tried to make the “sale.” That he left to others whom he felt could do a better job. He was content with the least glamorous stage of the process — schlepping backpackers from the Kosel to someone else’s shiur or in his words “to meet a wise man.” He never in my observation ever tried to do more. The goal was that the young backpackers would meet the figure most likely to have an immediate impact and not that Reb Meir should have the satisfaction of being the one to convince them of the Torah’s truth.
I FIRST ENCOUNTERED Reb Meir in the summer of 1976 as an ulpan student sitting on the lawn of Ulpan Etzion. How we laughed at the tall thin figure in the unfamiliar black hat. Most ignored him or told him sometimes rudely that whatever he was selling they were not interested. But he walked away with a fellow Chicagoan who went to yeshivah and has been the rav of a well-known moshav for nearly three decades.
I would guess that the percentage of those who responded positively to his entreaties to hear a class on Jewish philosophy or to meet a wise man was less than 20 percent and that of those who did agree to attend a class only a small fraction remained in yeshivah for more than a few hours. Yet he could not be deterred by rejection and never held up the white flag.
The appearance of an article about the early baal teshuvah movement in the bible of the counterculture Rolling Stone magazine marked one of the milestones in the movement. Every student who entered any of the baalei teshuvah yeshivahs in the ’70s or ’80s read “Next Year in Jerusalem ” Ellen Willis’s account of her trip to Jerusalem to try to understand what happened to her brother Mike (Chaim) Willis then a student at Aish HaTorah (and today director of Aish South Africa). 
And how did Mike get to Aish HaTorah? After a couple years in Asia he stopped in Israel on his way back home to New York. Reb Meir spotted him one morning at the Kosel and asked him whether he’d like to go to a yeshivah. Mike brushed him off. That afternoon Reb Meir ran into Mike at the Central Bus Station and repeated his question. Again the response was negative. But when Reb Meir approached him for the third time that day in the Machaneh Yehudah shuk Mike threw up his arms and joined him.
Once he had your address you had a pen pal for life. If he met someone in Jerusalem who was working on a kibbutz he would write them and on occasion even surprise them with a visit. His persistence wore down even the most obstinate who sensed the passion that underlay his pursuit.
One young Jew fled Israel for Egypt in part to avoid Reb Meir. When he turned on the TV in his hotel room he was shocked to see a news report from the Kosel in which Reb Meir’s gaunt figure could clearly be discerned. The same exact thing happened when he arrived in Spain. At that point he knew that he could run but he could not hide from Reb Meir. 
A young man learning at Harvard Business School was brought to speak to Reb Noah. Fifteen minutes into the conversation he said “Rabbi do you believe in G-d? Do you actually believe that G-d spoke to the Jewish People?” Reb Noah answered both questions in the affirmative which provoked the young man to blurt out “It’s amazing we’ve been talking for 15 minutes and I could have sworn that you were an intelligent man.”
Reb Noah did not get angry. “Who brought you to the yeshivah?” he asked. “I want to give a medal to the person who could convince someone who thinks only a moron could believe in G-d to set foot inside a yeshivah.” The Harvard student replied that no medal was necessary.
He told Reb Noah that he was then involved with a young woman from Sweden and as he was standing at the Kosel he had uttered the following tentative prayer: “G-d I want You to know I have nothing against You I just don’t happen to think You exist. But if You do please give me a sign.” At that precise moment he felt a tap on his shoulder. He jumped and when he turned around to see who had tapped him he saw a tall figure with a straw hat and his coat draped over his shoulders in the summer heat.
“Would you like to go to a yeshivah?” Reb Meir asked.
“What’s a yeshivah?” the business student replied.
“A place where you learn about G-d.”  
When he heard that the young Jew had to admit that the consanguinity of events made it pretty hard to deny that he had just received the Divine sign he had sought.
That story with minor variations repeated itself time after time over the years. Over 20 years ago I wrote a feature about Reb Meir in which I included a similar story. I gave the article to a friend who I knew was close to Reb Meir. As we were driving along I looked back in my rearview mirror and saw that my friend — who has been in full-time learning for 35 years — was crying. “That story about the guy at the Kosel asking for a sign — that was me ” he explained.
There are thousand of Jews who are only shomrei Torah u’mitzvos today because Rabbi Meir Schuster found them and their descendants number in the tens of thousands.
No story better captures the passion that drove Reb Meir than one that took place when he was sitting shivah for a three-year-old daughter who had been killed by a truck. As Shabbos drew near the thought that there would be wandering Jews at the Kosel on Leil Shabbos and he would not be there to help them gave Reb Meir no rest. In his eyes they were like drowning brothers whom he must do everything possible to save.
Reb Meir felt that his being there on Leil Shabbos to find Shabbos hosts for them was a matter of pikuach nefesh. The question was brought to the posek hador Rav Yosef Shalom Elyashiv. He said that Reb Meir was right but the community would not understand and therefore he must remain sitting shivah.
They would not understand for who else lived at that high level with the consciousness that bringing Jews into a connection with the Ribbono shel Olam through Torah is literally lifesaving work.—