I am writing this through tears. My rebbi, Rav Avrohom Turin ztz”l, has left us

(photos: abishvidoeproductions.com)

"Grown men do not cry.” Perhaps this adage seems valid to some.

I could never identify with it. Baruch Hashem, over the years I have had happy occasions when I’ve shed tears of joy — births of children, their milestones, weddings, and grandchildren. There have also been sad times, accompanied by the requisite weeping. Typically, the crying after a loss is dependent on the degree. No one is untouched by a passing of a neshamah to its Heavenly abode. But sometimes we are particularly affected because our connection to that individual was special and close.

I am writing this through tears. My rebbi, Rav Avrohom Turin ztz”l, has left us. I cry for myself. He was my rebbi in Scranton, 1969. My moving on to the next shiur a year later caused not the slightest distancing in our relationship. It was a common occurrence that our discussion of something I was learning and struggling to understand became a chavrusa hour. I would simply approach him, and he would schedule time to sit with me to review the entire subject. Not once or twice, but many times, usually late at night, following night seder. Years later, I was married, and my learning continued. From time to time, I shared a chiddush with him by mail. (Remember envelopes, postage stamps?) The rebbi’s replies came back a short time later, letters full of love and parental caring, sometimes his own chiddushei Torah.

Just two years after I learned in Rav Avrohom’s shiur, he became the mashgiach. This extended his role to the entire Scranton yeshivah. Becoming a father to more than 125 talmidim was a feat only he could manage. Aside from always knowing what to say, he had a knack for judging a situation with insight that was predicated on siyata d’Shmaya. I look back at several such episodes in awe.