“Well, the first thing is to recognize that Hashem needs every single Jew in order to reveal Himself. That is the message of the Four Sons, and the reason why our explanations have to be perfectly tailored to each. We have to become Brisker lamdanim in discovering the role that each Jew has to play.”

Ahavas Yisrael, he explains, means recognizing that Hashem values the contribution of every Jew. Honoring someone doesn’t mean that we view them as perfect, but that we focus on their strengths. Sinas Chinam, by contrast, means that we are uninterested in our fellow Jew and have no empathy for his situation. We treat him as “chinam — without value” and therefore unworthy of our attention and concern.

“I want to share a personal failure I had in this regard. I was at a levayah for an older woman, whose only descendant was a daughter who flew in from California. After the mittah had been covered, the daughter came and put two stones from California and two books on the kever. She then proceeded to take out her phone and snap a photo of the stones and the books.

“I was beside myself. Is there no limit to superficiality? After the daughter had passed by us and we were menachem her, however, she turned to me and said, ‘Rabbi, do you know why I put the books on the grave to photograph them? My father couldn’t travel to the funeral. But those books were always by my mother’s bed, and I felt that my father would feel she was at peace if he saw them on her grave.’ When I heard that, I started crying in shame at my hasty dismissal of this Jewish daughter.

“Let me give another example of taking a too narrow view of Klal Yisrael,” Rav Leuchter continues. “I have a talmid who is mad about doing kiruv, and he came up with a plan to get all kinds of major Jewish organizations involved in various chesed projects in order to get his foot in the door to do proper kiruv. But I told him that instead of just using chesed to open the door so you can throw in Shabbos and taharas hamishpachah, you should take a broader view of the Jewish people and Torah. Surely, just developing the connection between Jews, even at the level of their simple needs, is a worthy project for at least a year. The Torah also has a great deal to say about mitzvos bein adam l’chaveiro that is very different from what’s found in those superficial self-help books.”

Working on a Klal Yisrael consciousness also means recognizing that whatever talents you have were given to you on behalf of Klal Yisrael and should be fed back to Klal Yisrael. “The goal to become a talmid chacham, for instance, should not be self-serving, but rather placed in the context of the Jewish people — for instance, as a desire to be a posek who is constantly available to answer sh’eilos.”

I’ve heard that Rav Leuchter has plans to establish a cheder — a fact which he confirms. But I can’t imagine why he would want to embark on such a massive project, given the multiple demands on his time.  What does he feel is so lacking in the current system that he wants to create a model cheder?

“I have to think,” Rav Leuchter mutters, and puts his head down as he formulates a response. He begins with a story. “I once asked the Mashgiach [Rav Wolbe] how many techniques he knows to remember material. He could tell me only one: chazarah — review. I told him that I’ve had to come up with at least five more because review simply doesn’t work for me. What’s the point of this story? If a rebbi has only one way of teaching talmidim, it’s almost inevitable that he won’t be reaching over 50% of the class.”

So one of Rav Leuchter’s first goals in opening his cheder would be to arm the rebbeim with more arrows in their quivers.

“But even before that there is one fundamental principle that every rebbi needs to know: In order to make it possible for a talmid to learn from you, you have to show that you’re capable of learning from him. If a rebbi can also learn from his talmid — from the questions the talmid asks or how he understands certain texts   — he shows the talmid that he’s really connected to Torah,” says Rav Leuchter. That rebbi’s task is not only to give over Torah, but to listen attentively to the talmid as he teaches.

To illustrate the process of learning from a talmid, Rav Leuchter relates how as a young bochur in Mir, Rav Wolbe was once part of a minyan in the home of Reb Yerucham Levovitz, who was very ill. As he was davening one morning, he looked up during Pesukei D’zimra and saw Reb Yerucham staring intently at him, with his chin cupped in his hands. Reb Yerucham had been “learning up” the young bochur.

With the knowledge gained, Reb Yerucham pushed Rav Wolbe to start speaking in public, even though the German-born and educated young man was, at that time, one of the least learned bochurim in the Mir.

We can’t all be Reb Yerucham. But we can all develop the ability to learn from others. Rav Leuchter gives an example of learning from a baby. “I was recently sitting with a ten-month-old grandson on my lap, and I noticed that he was holding his blanket in one hand and stroking it with the other. I learned something important from watching him: that every once and a while we all have to make ourselves comfortable.” To demonstrate, Rav Leuchter puts his long legs up on the table and leans back.

Rav Leuchter’s theories about chinuch are closely related to those about parenting. He says that his degree of closeness to each of his ten children is directly related to “to the degree I listened to what they said, and treated what was important to them as important to me.

“As an example, I have a son who is an excellent athlete and was a very good soccer player. Someone once told him that he was good enough to be a professional soccer player, and asked him why he didn’t go for it. He answered without hesitation: ‘Since I was five years old, everything I said was important to my father. I’m not going to disappoint him.’”

Does that mean Rav Leuchter treated his son’s soccer abilities as something important? “As worthy of respect,” the Rav replies. “He used to play with the less frum element in our neighborhood, and everyone warned me that he would be led astray by them. So I went to Rav Wolbe and asked him what I should do. He told me to let my son play, and that he would be more likely to influence the other boys than vice versa.

“He did say, however, that I should impose some time limits, and that’s what I did, without any problem. The fact that I had gone to speak to Rav Wolbe about the soccer playing, instead of just telling my son something like ‘it’s not yeshivish,’ gave him the message that I valued his abilities and understood why soccer was important to him. In the same way, Rav Wolbe encouraged me personally to keep playing the piano.”

So many parents today, though, feel they can’t set any limits for their children. They are told that their children must be happy, and if they’re not happy, they might go off the derech. Parents are afraid to say “no” when their child tells them that all the other parents let, and this becomes a slippery slope, especially regarding issues connected to technology.

“For sure, it’s important for children to be happy,” Rav Leuchter opines, “but these parents who are afraid to set limits have a serious misconception about what happiness is. Happiness is not having all your desires fulfilled. Happiness comes from feeling important, from knowing that all your actions, words, and thoughts are important to Hashem. That infuses a child with self-confidence. When you make a child feel important in this fashion, setting boundaries is no longer such a challenge. Every home should have its particular red lines. In ours, for instance, it is any form of teasing or humiliating someone else. But, of course, helping a child feel important requires effort, and means making time for your children in order to learn what’s important to them and what’s on their minds.

“The more we pay attention to our children and treat their thoughts and words as important, the easier it is for them to believe that they are important to Hashem as well. That is a one way of fostering a close connection to Hashem.”

As one of the leading disciples of Rav Wolbe (“the Mashgiach”), Rav Leuchter continues to emphasize self-knowledge and the avodah of personal growth that were the hallmarks of the Mussar movement founded by Rav Yisrael Salanter nearly 200 years ago. But he admits that not all the specific techniques developed by Rav Salanter to forge an emotional attachment to particular Torah texts work today. His kollel, for instance, has no formal mussar seder.

One of the main barriers to the intensity that the Mussar movement once generated, says Rav Leuchter, “is that growth cannot take place in an environment where one is comfortable. It entails, among other things, a willingness to open oneself up to self-criticism and criticism from others. People today are flimsy. They cannot tolerate rebuke or criticism in any form, and therefore cannot discover their own self-worth, warts and all.

“The reason I started my kollel was to provide young avreichim, under 30, the opportunity to speak about anything they want to someone older and more experienced than they are. Many of them have never had that, and as a consequence, they have never been offered an outside perspective on themselves or had someone who can help them work on their individual ‘givens.’ To discover one’s givens, a person must have the courage to spend time alone with himself, and today most people don’t have that.

He gives examples of what he means by helping someone work with their ‘givens. “I have a very talented learner in my kollel,” Rav Leuchter says, “who also happens to be very gifted with his hands. He once told me how he took an awkward, basically unusable space in his apartment, carefully measured it in every direction, and then came up with a plan to build a bunk bed for that space. He turned dead space into another child’s bedroom. I showed him that in a similar fashion, a maggid shiur organizes the time of an hour-long shiur to present his main chiddush in the most effective way – that his ability to organize space is equally applicable to giving chaburos.

“I had another avreich, who is a very practical-minded person. I was sure he’d be in business in a year’s time. But because he’s so practical minded, I suggested that when learning Gemara, he try to imagine all the possible cases where the principles derived from the Gemara might apply. Today, he wants to become a posek.”

One can also work with faults, the Rav notes.  “Look, I’m naturally anti-social. But if I spend all my time alone in my own kishkes, working on my personal avodah, even that avodah would be worthless. I’ve had to force myself to use my avodah to help others.  Because I had to overcome myself, my chisaron (deficiency) became a maileh.”

Another barrier to self-knowledge is that most people today prefer to live with their fixed assumptions about themselves and others, and once fixed, those assumptions are very hard to break. But just as a plant only grows after the seed rots, so destroying all our previous assumptions is often the pre-condition for growth.

“I prefer uncertainty and surprise — that capacity for astonishment is very important.  Think about the Tam of the Haggadah.  He is not mentally defective, as most people think. He fully participates in the Seder. He is only lacking one thing — the capacity for astonishment — and therefore he does not ask.”

I ask Rav Leuchter to give an example of what he means by a capacity for surprise. “Let’s say I have a certain idea about Yonoson Rosenblum,” he tells me. “But now I test that against all I know. I throw my idea of Yonoson Rosenblum against various walls — the Yonoson Rosenblum whose articles I read, the Yonoson Rosenblum whom I meet abroad, the Yonoson Rosenblum sitting at my table now. And I find that my concept doesn’t stand up. There are dissonances between my concept and the waves created by each throw; they don’t necessarily align. I must now rework my concept of Yonoson Rosenblum. Fortunately, I enjoy upshlugging myself and being surprised by the need to revise my judgments, whether about myself or others.”

When it comes to avodah though, Rav Leuchter is no fan of the American Dream, the idea of setting very ambitious long-range goals, and telling oneself “nothing can stop me from realizing my dreams if I’m sufficiently determined.”

But what could be wrong with being ambitious? “It’s a tricky message,” says Rav Leuchter. “For example, many bochurim today have an aspiration to become like Rav Elyashiv. But the goal to be Rav Elyashiv is false. The goal is never to be someone else, but rather to work with your unique self. Trying to be someone else can be both damaging and depressing.”

Rav Yerucham writes that the statement of Chazal, “One who has a hundred wants two hundred; one who has two hundred wants four hundred,” is not just an explanation of why no one dies having his desires fulfilled; it’s a blueprint for growth in ruchniyus. Only when one already possesses a certain quality or has reached a certain madreigah, can he then aspire to the next level. For the Rav Elyashiv aspiration to be meaningful in any sense, one would first have to be half Rav Elyashiv.

“The key,” says Rav Leuchter, “is to develop a growth orientation. The Alter of Kelm left a letter in which he wrote that there should always be trees growing in the yard of the beis medrash because when people see growing things they too want to grow. We often find that people beginning the process of returning to themselves start with something like weight-lifting, where they can experience gains in incremental steps. And growth in one area fosters the desire for growth in other, more intrinsically meaningful areas.

“Our avodah, however, always has to be rooted in the present, where we’re holding now, and should not just be perceived as a stepping-stone to some glorious future.”

In addition, the idea that “I can be anything I want to be” is a self-absorbed focus on oneself. “As Jews, we always need to place ourselves in a larger context,” he says. “Our goal is to bring the Shechinah down to the world, and, as Rav Chaim of Volozhin writes in Nefesh HaChaim, the Shechinah only relates to the collective neshamah of Klal Yisrael.”

And this brings us back to where we began — with the Haggadah as the story of Hashem’s creation of His unique people. One of Rav Leuchter’s major themes in his commentary is that the creation of Klal Yisrael is a supernatural event, outside the realm of natural history. That, for instance, is why Egyptians imposed their harshest decrees. They saw in the unnatural fecundity of the Jewish women the birth of a people with a Divine mission who would end their reign as the dominant nation in the world. And they wanted to end that threat before it fully materialized.

Hashem fashioned us as His nation, not as citizens of the world, but rather as ambassadors from Hashem to the world. And because we are not naturally rooted in the world, our security is contingent on our loyalty to Hashem and His Torah. That contingent nature of Klal Yisrael is what has left us ever vulnerable to those who rise up in every generation to destroy us.nd this brings us back to where we began — with the Haggadah as the story of Hashem’s creation of His unique people. One of Rav Leuchter’s major themes in his commentary is that the creation of Klal Yisrael is a supernatural event, outside the realm of natural history. That, for instance, is why Egyptians imposed their harshest decrees. They saw in the unnatural fecundity of the Jewish women the birth of a people with a Divine mission who would end their reign as the dominant nation in the world. And they wanted to end that threat before it fully materialized.

Now, after so many hours in Rav Leuchter’s company, I’m more eager than ever to enter on Seder night into the story of the love between Hashem and the people He created m’ayin — an unfolding story in which each of us is called upon to write his own chapter.

(Originally Featured in Mishpacha, Issue 756)