In tribute to Rav Noach Heisler ztz"l

Photos: Mattis Goldberg

One can command respect for being powerful or intimidating, for being wealthy, or for being “the smartest person in the room.” But while Rav Noach Heisler ztz”l, the recently departed rav of Sanhedria Murchevet was certainly knowledgeable and, indeed, commanded respect just for coming into the room, there was something more.

There was an aura about Rav Heisler, something akin to a holiness and a gentleness, a sense of coming from a different world, of living on a higher plane. He was stately and derived his quiet charisma from his vast Torah knowledge.

The Heislers were our neighbors for a decade, beginning in the early 70s. Rav Heisler was completing his dayanus tests then, and relished showing us his scores, always A+. Somehow, though, this didn’t detract from his humility. He could speak strongly when the occasion demanded, but it wasn’t Rav Noach Heisler being forceful. It was the Torah which spoke through him.

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av Heisler became the community rabbi of Sanhedria Murchevet, then a new neighborhood in northern Jerusalem, a year or two after it opened in late 1972. His knowledge more than qualified him for the position, but a noble soul isn’t always temperamentally suited for the rough and tumble of politics that could erupt in a new neighborhood. Here though, it was precisely his refined character that attracted a coterie of admirers and disciples, that had them singing “Or zaru’a latzaddik” on the way home from a very long, very animated and elevated Simchas Torah.

Our families were close. Most of our children were younger than his, and our daughters looked up to his daughters, who were role models of friendliness, piety, humility, and learning. They were all very skilled, as were his sons. Decades later, when we met Rav Heisler’s son Meir, who had since become an esteemed dayan on Rav Nissim Karelitz’s beis din, the years fell away in an instant.

One could not separate the nobility of Rav Noach Heisler from his wife, a scion of an old Yerushalmi family and as welcoming and organized a person as one will ever meet. The Rabbanit’s inherent dignity and middos enabled her to befriend anyone in the extremely diverse neighborhood.

The Heislers raised nine children in two bedrooms, but their small apartment was always spotless. Rabbanit Heisler sewed her daughters’ clothing because that’s how one made ends meet.

In the condominium apartments built too small for growing families, our relationship with the Heislers wasn’t just Torah and spirituality; it spilled over to daily life. It was borrowing a cup of sugar in a pinch, and our Mattis and the Heislers’ son Shuki becoming fast friends. Left to their own devices after a school day that ended at 1 p.m., the rambunctious pair got into all kinds of mischief that, fortuitously, their parents found out about only afterward.

I remember when the Heislers’ youngest son Zev Wolf was born. I asked Rabbi Heisler whether he was named after a known tzaddik in Jerusalem who lived a couple of generations earlier, Zev Wolf Ashkenazi. He was. It was a point of connection between me and Rav Heisler as I began to feel my way into the traditions of the old Yerushalmi communities that preceded and then existed alongside the modern ones.

The Sanhedria Murchevet residents spanned the religious, ethnic, and linguistic spectrum, with immigrants from Russia, North and South America, Angola, Sweden, and Iraq. Ironically, the diversity did not divide the community; it unified it. Chassidim, Modern Orthodox, chareidim, full-time Torah students, professors, laborers, Zionists, non-Zionists, reciters of Hallel on Yom Ha’atzmaut, non-reciters of Hallel on Yom Ha’atzmaut, all lived side by side and lived in peace. Vigorous debates there were, but we lived in peace, attended each other’s simchahs, and shared an enormous thirst for Torah. This is the community over which Rav Heisler presided and Rabbanit Heisler made all feel welcome.

Like the Rabbanit, Rav Heisler was a people person. He was with you in your simchah and with you in your pain. And he stood up for you. Once an unkind remark hurt a black convert in the neighborhood. Rav Heisler spent the entire Shabbos going from one minyan to the next lecturing on the topic of “loving the convert,” noting (among other things) that all born Jews are descended from our ancestors who converted at Mount Sinai.

Once, he learned on the day before Pesach that a widow had no provisions for Yom Tov. Rav Heisler made it happen, top to bottom — not only the Pesach provisions, but the Pesach cleaning.

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wasn’t just Rav Noach Heisler who was a special persona; his father was, too. Rav Zeidel Zalman Heisler traveled the world raising funds for Chinuch Atzmai schools in Israel. I met him at the funeral of Sarah Kauvar, outside the Sanhedria cemetery, and somehow we struck up a conversation. I learned that while on his travels, Rav Zeidel Zalman had met the late Rabbi Eliezer Hillel Kauvar, the long-time rabbi of BMH synagogue in Denver, and had greatly admired him. So the senior Rav Heisler paid his respects at Mrs. Kauvar’s funeral, although it was likely that no one knew who he was. That was the Heislers. Doing the right thing for its own sake, and trying to reach upward to the Creator through obeying his mitzvos.

My friendship with Rav Noach Heisler’s father renewed itself at least twice yearly. Both of the Heislers, father and son, were well respected in the top echelons of rabbinic circles in the Holy City. Somehow, I learned that they both visited Rav Yosef Shalom Elyashiv, the preeminent Ashkenazi Torah scholar; Rav Ovadiah Yosef, the preeminent Sephardi Torah scholar; and Rav Bezalel Zolty, the chief rabbi of Jerusalem, on Chol Hamoed Succos and Pesach. I volunteered to drive them.

Back in the 1970s, there were so few cars that one could easily do a mitzvah with one’s car. The Heislers much appreciated the lift, and I certainly did, too, for I had the opportunity to visit these eminences twice a year. As things turned out, I was tested later for rabbinic ordination by both Rav Yosef and Rav Zolty.

I also learned that the senior Rav Heisler and Rav Elyashiv were mechutanim. And as Rav Elyashiv became very well-known, one also heard much about his mechutanim and their achievements. But I don’t once recall the self-effacing Rav Zeidel Zalman Heisler being mentioned as part of that honored cohort. That was the Heisler way: quiet and humble.

I also learned what happened when Rav Noach was studying for his dayanus tests. His father sat with him five hours a night — from 7 p.m. to midnight — reviewing the material with his son. Rav Zeidel Zalman Heisler did not carry his vast learning lightly, he carried it silently.

Long after I had met the two Heislers, father and son, I learned that another son of Rav Zeidel Zalman — Rav Yosef Heisler — also became a dayan. Keep in mind that the curriculum for this position is longer than that of any other profession I am aware of — longer than for medicine and law, for example. Years and years of study go into this, based on prior years and years of mastering Shas. Rav Zeidel Zalman raised two sons who achieved this lofty scholarly plateau.

I remember once coming to visit Rav Yosef Heisler for reasons I no longer recall, and he wasn’t home yet. This is what sticks in my mind: As I was waiting for him, one of their younger sons, not yet bar mitzvah, perhaps eight or ten years old, had apparently not davened Maariv. His mother gently yet insistently urged him to do so, and he did. The women and the men were equally the educators in the Heisler families.

I asked many halachic questions of Rav Noach Heisler between 1973 and 1983, the years we lived in Sanhedria Murchevet. He had everything at his fingertips, and it didn’t matter what the subject was. I remember how once, as I was studying for semichah, he wondered whether I had noticed an intriguing observation about the Shema at the end of the page-long comment by the Shach on the laws of salting meat. I was immersed in studying this topic; he wasn’t. Didn’t matter. As I said, the whole Torah was at his fingertips.

Rav Heisler’s way of relaxing, from the late hours of the evening into the wee hours of the morning, was to study responsa by preeminent sages such as the Noda B’Yehudah, widening his knowledge in areas of Torah that did not necessarily impinge on his professional obligations as a community rabbi or a dayan. That’s how he relaxed.

I remember once being in Rav Heisler’s office as he was on the telephone speaking to one of his grandchildren, putting on a false front of sternness, very much unlike who he was, urging his grandson to study Torah seriously, all the while smiling at me. I suspected the grandchild intuited the smile behind the stern words.

I remember proudly showing him my semichah from the Beis Din of Agudas Israel, and how he reacted with alarm. I didn’t understand; I had done well and this was reflected in the certificate. Rav Heisler pointed it out: The certificate contained every important credential except… my name. It was worthless. I went back the next day and was reissued the same certificate, this time with my name.

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remember when our neighbors’ eldest daughter got engaged. She was but 17. Rabbi Heisler was thrilled, as he had helped this family out of a difficult spot years earlier. He was also wondrously happy that our neighbors had merited seeing their oldest child engaged at such a young age, evading or transcending all of the stumbling blocks that so often loom in trying to marry off one’s children. That 17- year-old daughter now has 12 children and is a grandmother countless times over. She is refined, accomplished, embracing, and humble, truly a pious servant of the Creator. The proverbial village it takes to raise a child was, under Rav Heisler and his pleasant ways, an inspired village.

Just by being who he was, Rav Heisler nurtured a love and thirst for Torah, not only in his children, but in the whole neighborhood. I could cite many examples, bolstered by hindsight. There were the four Petroff boys, the Heislers’ neighbors. Their father, Yaakov Petroff, was a Professor of Classics at Bar Ilan University, but we never saw him talk about his work because he was always immersed in Torah study. Their mother, Devorah Petroff, stemmed from the family of the Alter of Novardok. All four sons of these American immigrants to Israel went on to master the entire Shas. Yisrael Shachor, then a kollel student, went on to become an eminent dayan in Haifa.

There was Henoch Gross, secretary of the Chevron yeshivah, who mastered the Mishnah Berurah and knew it cold. Working all day didn’t keep him from attaining this level of mastery.

Reuven Miller, a Professor of Social Work at Bar Ilan, perceived a need to build bridges between the higher world of Rav Heisler and the larger world “out there,” and devoted his professional energies to the task. Meanwhile, he grew into a Torah scholar himself, inspired by Rav Heisler.

His influence reached not only the residents of Sanhedria Murchevet, but also their children, who decades later became roshei yeshivah and roshei kollel.

Conventional wisdom has it that Rav Yosef Shalom Elyashiv never had chavrusas. But this isn’t true. Rav Noach Heisler was his chavrusa on Erev Shabbos. They would begin their Torah study early Friday morning and continue until shortly before Shabbos, leaving just enough time to prepare for Shabbos. It’s so typical of the Heislers that one does not hear of the esteem in which they were held by Rav Elyashiv.

The last time I saw Rav Heisler was a few years ago, when I visited the Holy City for the bar mitzvah of a grandson. I came to Rav Heisler’s home but the Rabbanit told me he was in shul. I found him there with his sons and grandsons, studying Torah in the merit of the soul of Rav Zeidel Zalman Heisler, whose yahrtzeit was that day.

I fit right in.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1098)