This grandson of the Chofetz Chaim stood out, for the way he turned abstract Torah into joyous real-life practice and for the love and giving he showered on all who crossed his path

Elysha Sandler had just made it through the gauntlet of four tests to gain admission to Yerushalayim’s famed Yeshivas Chevron — a rarity for an American bochur — but he had not yet met Rav Hillel Zaks, the one rosh yeshivah who hadn’t tested the 19-year-old newcomer. And so Elysha made his way to the nearby Zaks home, but nothing could have prepared him for the scene that greeted him: It was bein hazmanim, and Reb Hillel was on the roof of his building, busy at work welding a break in the ma’akeh (gate required by halachah) around its perimeter.

“There he stood,” recalls Rabbi Sandler, “tzitzis over his shirt and under his vest; his long peyos — usually neatly tucked under his oversized yarmulke — were flying. Wearing these huge goggles, he expertly wielded his soldering gun, the sparks flying every which way.”

It was, says Rabbi Sandler, a memorable introduction to an impossible-to-forget adam gadol at his unconventional and unpretentious best.

Over the next two years, Elysha Sandler would become a talmid-for-life, learning to appreciate the multiple facets that made Reb Hillel such a rare diamond of the Torah world until his passing on the 22nd  of Teves just one year ago. As a talmid and chavrusa, and even more so from the countless hours he spent in the Zaks home that was ever-open to bochurim or anyone else who needed a meal or a listening ear, those lessons still animate him a quarter century later. For Rabbi Sandler, now a highly regarded mechanech in New York’s Five Towns area, not a day passes on which his thoughts don’t return again to his rebbi’s thirst for real-life Yiddishkeit, his lucid, uncompromising hashkafos, and his open heart and hand — always refracted through the unique prism of his creative genius and genuine simchas hachayim.

His rebbi’s originality, says Rabbi Sandler, had nothing to do with wanting to be a maverick. Ultimately, Reb Hillel’s goal was simply to put everything in Torah into real-life practice, even if that meant doing things a little differently.

Years Ahead

Reb Hillel’s mother, Rebbetzin Faiga Chaya, was the Chofetz Chaim’s youngest child, born to the tzaddik’s second wife when he was 64. A lively girl who had a good sense of who’s who among the bochurim in her father’s Radin yeshivah, she chose Mendel Zaks, who had previously learned under Rav Boruch Ber Leibowitz and Rav Reuven Dessler in Kelm and had also spent some time learning with the mekubal Rav Shlomo Elyashiv, the Baal HaLeshem.

Rav Mendel spent many years learning in the attic of his shver’s home, where he gained a mastery of the entire Torah, and gave shiurim to the Chofetz Chaim’s elite Kollel Kodshim, whose members were fluent in Shas. Eventually, der shtiller gaon (the quiet genius), as he was known, assumed the helm of the yeshivah, guiding its hundreds of students through the turbulent years leading up to and during World War II.

The Zakses had six children, yet Hillel (named after the Chofetz Chaim’s second father-in-law, Rav Hillel Lapa), the third son, was the last to merit being born while his holy zeide was still in This World. But Reb Hillel’s birth on Tu B’Shevat of 1931 was not without its suspense. The doctors at the Vilna hospital where Rebbetzin Faiga Chaya had gone to give birth were unable to rouse her in her mid-labor state from her anesthesia-induced slumber.

Reb Mendel sent someone to call the Radin post office in an effort to alert the Chofetz Chaim to the grave situation. As the Chofetz Chaim was delivering a drashah following Shacharis, his youngest son, Aharon, burst into the beis medrash shouting “Tatte, Faiga needs groyse rachamim. They said she’s in a critical state!”

The Chofetz Chaim replied calmly, “Yes, we must daven,” and with that, he recited two kapitlach Tehillim with the tzibbur, made a Mi Shebeirach, and continued on with his drashah. Fifteen minutes later, news arrived of the birth, with mother and son both doing well. The Chofetz Chaim cried at the good tidings, clapping his hands and exclaiming “bameh akadem Hashem, ikaf l’Elokei marom.”

In February 1941, the Zaks family fled war-torn Europe, setting out on a five-month journey halfway across the world: First, on the trans-Siberian railway from Vilna to Vladivostok by way of Moscow; next, by freighter to Kobe, Japan, and finally, on to Seattle, Washington, by boat. From there, they made their way across America by train, arriving in New York in June 1941.

Precocious ten-year-old Hillel was enrolled into Mesivta Tiferes Yerushalayim, where Rosh Yeshivah Rav Moshe Feinstein took a strong personal interest in the exceptionally bright child who was studying alongside boys several years his senior.

“I recall Reb Hillel chuckling,” says Rabbi Sandler, “as he told me that after a few days at MTJ, Rav Moshe contacted his mother to say that since he was now in mesivta with older bochurim, he’d need to start coming to the yeshivah in long pants.

“Although he was on the others’ intellectual level, it was socially challenging for him to become friends with them since he was several years their junior. Lonely and needing something to do during recess, he learned how to play handball against the exterior wall of the yeshivah. One day Rav Moshe walked by while Hillel was playing, and feeling embarrassed, he surreptitiously tucked the ball into his pants. It rolled out from the bottom and the venerable Rosh Yeshivah bent down and picked it up, proceeding to engage his young talmid in a Torah discussion in order to assuage his discomfort.”

Rav Aharon’s Shidduch

Reb Hillel eventually transferred to Mesivta Torah Vodaath, studying under Rav Reuven Grozovsky, whom he considered his rebbi in hashkafah and whom he later followed to the newly established Beis Medrash Elyon in Monsey. Reb Hillel would reminisce about how Rav Reuven prepared for his weekly shiur klali by placing his hands on a table and resting his head on his hands, remaining that way for the next eight hours, deep in thought.

From Monsey it was on to Lakewood, where he spent eleven years of tremendous hasmadah and growth in Torah under Rav Aharon Kotler’s tutelage.  learned b’chavrusa with Rav Shneur Kotler, Rav Elya Svei and, yibadel l’chayim, Rav Shmuel Kamenetsky, and with one particular chavrusa, Reb Hillel would learn straight from Thursday night through Motzaei Shabbos, pausing only for davening and the Shabbos seudos.

His relationship with Rav Aharon, however, extended far beyond that of rebbi and talmid; he was also the Rosh Yeshivah’s gabbai and, as one of the few to own a car, his regular driver, too.

It was Rav Aharon who proposed the match between Reb Hillel and his wife, Ahuva Esther, the daughter of Chevron Rosh Yeshivah Rav Moshe Chevroni. They married in 1955 and lived in Lakewood for the next five years.

Rav Elya Ber Wachtfogel related that his father, the Lakewood mashgiach, Rav Nosson, noticed that Reb Hillel was coming late in the mornings, and eventually confronted Reb Hillel about his tardiness. Reb Hillel assured the Mashgiach that he wasn’t oversleeping. It was just, he said, that there’s a woman in his building with many small, crying children and no one to help her, and on many mornings he feels compelled to help her to feed and dress her children. Visibly moved by Reb Hillel’s selflessness, Reb Nosson  asked Reb Hillel who that young woman was. Reb Hillel replied, ‘My wife.’ ”

Rav Zaks and his young family moved to Eretz Yisrael in 1960, where he joined the staff of Chevron, eventually becoming one of its principal roshei yeshivah; and after the passing of Rav Simcha Zissel Broide and Rav Avrohom Farbstein, he became the senior one. In 1996, after decades at Chevron’s helm (and while still retaining his post there), Reb Hillel founded Yeshivas Knesses Hagedolah in Kiryat Sefer, which now numbers well over two hundred talmidim.

Uncommon Mitzvos

Although Reb Hillel had no recollection of seeing his holy zeideh, a newspaper article by a Radiner talmid described the scene at the Chofetz Chaim’s Pesach Seder with the active participation of his three eineklach, including “the bright little Hillel’ke. But he did remember the first day in the Radin cheder, where all the children were given a piece of graph paper with instructions to fill each of the many boxes with the letter vav. Hillel, who had already taught himself to read, was having none of it — he took his pen and wrote six long vav’s down each column of boxes and announced he was done. When Reb Yudel the melamed patiently explained that each box required its own letter, Hillel blurted out, “Am I crazy? I’m going to put a vav in each box?” and bolted from the room, never to return.

And, indeed, from age three to 83, Reb Hillel was never one to be kept “in the box.” Rabbi Sandler remembers his rebbi as a “great medakdek b’mitzvos, with many chumros and hiddurim, whose avodas Hashem was always vibrant and thought-out. He had a complete shlittah in Shas and Poskim, and his hanhagos were the outgrowth of his conclusions from delving deeply into the relevant sugyos, organizing the various shittos, and reaching specific conclusions as to their practical application, even if they were not conventional.”

For a period of time, he would shecht his own chicken and meat and press his own wine. All food in the Zaks home consisted of unprocessed, homemade ingredients and needed to have terumos and maasros removed regardless of their source. During his years in Lakewood, he once accompanied Rav Aharon Kotler to Eretz Yisrael, where they paid a visit to the Gerrer Rebbe of the time, the Beis Yisrael. The Rosh Yeshivah introduced Reb Hillel as an einikel of the Chofetz Chaim, whereupon the Beis Yisrael took an apple to give to Reb Hillel. But due to his halachic standards regarding produce, he declined, moving the Rebbe to remark, “Ehr vet kein mohl nit zein ah chossid” [He’s never going to be a chassid]. At that, Rav Aharon turned to Reb Hillel with a mischievous look: “Gich, gich, ah tzaddik git dir ah bracha, zog omein [Quick, quick, a tzaddik’s giving you a brachah – say amen!]”.

But never did he impose his chumros on others, nor were  those stringencies accompanied by tenseness or anxiety. He was, says his talmid Rabbi Sandler, “poshut enjoying life, living it with halachah interwoven throughout.” He had a huge Kiddush cup, the likes of which I’ve never seen. It held about three-quarters of a liter and it could be flipped upside down since the stand was also shaped like a becher that held a Chazon Ish shiur. Which side he used depended on how many people were there for the seudah.”

Reb Hillel actively pursued a variety of uncommon mitzvos, such as shiluach hakein, pidyon peter chamor, and reishis hageiz. But his performance of the more common mitzvos was remarkable, too, for the fresh and novel ways in which he fulfilled them.

“Succos by Reb Hillel was an extraordinary experience that continues to inspire me each year,” Rabbi Sandler says. Reb Hillel’s succah, built without any metal whatsoever, was huge, with a main room containing the breakfront and a bookcase filled with seforim, and a separate bedroom. Reb Hillel virtually never left the sukka throughout the seven days of the Yom Tov. The minyanim, the seudos, receiving all those who came to spend time with him, even the reading of Mishneh Torah on Leil Hoshana Rabba -- all took place in the succah.

He also had his own esrog pardes where he grew eight or nine different types of esrogim, to be certain he would be fulfilling the mitzvah. After he finished using his arba minim, the mispallelim would line up to use all of his different esrogim as well.

“I remember coming into the apartment one day and seeing dozens of lulavim from Ein Gedi that someone had given him. He was almost finished going through them all, not having found one that met his standards, when there was a knock on the door and a gannenet came by to ask if the Rosh Yeshivah by any chance had a pasul lulav that she could use for her kindergarten. He said, ‘A pasul lulav? Let me check.’ He reexamined the entire pile and apologized for not having a single pasul lulav. He then turned to us and explained the difference between strict halachah and chumros.”

I Love Money

In all his hanhagos, Reb Hillel saw himself as merely following in the footsteps of the quintessential baal halachah — his own grandfather, the author of the Mishnah Berurah himself. Rabbi Sandler says Reb Hillel once discussed the famous story of the Chofetz Chaim running down the street, shouting “I’m mochel you!” after a thief who had just pickpocketed him. “Reb Hillel told me, ‘The first part of the story is true — there was a thief. The second part is also true — he chased after him. But do you know what he probably was shouting as he ran? ‘A ganef! Chap ehm, s’iz a ganef!’

“The Zeide, Reb Hillel would say, wasn’t just indiscriminately warm and fuzzy. He was medakdek in halachah and if he didn’t speak lashon hara, it’s because that’s the halachah; if he was exquisitely refined in middos, it’s because that’s the halachah. The story about him ripping up a stamp when he found someone to take the letter? If it says in halachah to do that, then he did it. But nowhere in halachah does it say you have to be mochel a ganev.”

Nevertheless, Reb Hillel once shared half-jokingly with his talmid that there was one halachah he’d probably never get to fulfill — that of hating a Jew who knowingly violates the Torah. “Nowadays, he told me, the vast majority of Jews who do so are acting out of ignorance, and he was always looking for someone regarding whom he could actually fulfill this mitzvah. He finally came up with three candidates, but layde one had died that same day, one became a baal teshuvah, and as for the third, he said, ‘I started to feel bad for him, and there went the hate.’ ”

Yet just as his grandfather had authored not only Mishnah Berurah and Chofetz Chaim, but also the guide to giving called Ahavas Chesed, Reb Hillel’s devotion to giving to others was extraordinary. Rabbi Sandler recalls with awe how “he was always raising money — from people of means, from alumni, from whomever he could. Incredible sums of money passed through his hands on a regular basis. He once said to me, ‘Elysha, I love money. There are so many amazing things you can do with it.’ Money would come in and go out, to aniyim, to chassanim, to cholim. I just saw a fraction of what went on there, but it was wild, constantly sending people on missions with envelopes stuffed with money.”

Reb Hillel himself, however, lived exceedingly modestly. His insistence on teaching Torah without recompense meant he refused a salary from the yeshivah, living instead from the modest rental income from his first apartment on Rechov Tzefaniah and his wife’s meager earnings.

Chassanim in need received full wardrobes of new clothing, and when talmidim of means got married, he would ask their parents to sponsor the expense of a wedding and of setting up the home of a needy chassan. Once, Reb Hillel personally undertook to make the wedding of a baal teshuvah, which was held during bein hazmanim in the yeshivah’s dining hall. “There he was with his sons, me, and a few others, setting up for the wedding,” Rabbi Sandler remembers. “Dozens of tables in the dining hall needed to be moved and we were running out of time. Reb Hillel just got behind the wheel of a car, drove inside, and gently pushed the tables to the side.”

On another occasion, Rabbi Sandler  accompanied Reb Hillel to Baltimore, where he was the mesader kiddushin for a former Chevron talmid  in his mid-30s. Approaching the chassan’s tish, Reb Hillel suddenly grabbed Rabbi Sandler’s arm and proceeded to limp.

“I asked him what he was doing,” Rabbi Sandler recalls. “He told me to just look serious, explaining that since the chassan was already older, he didn’t want the girl’s family to think that there was something wrong with him. By creating a whole matzav out of his entry, he felt people would say, ‘Look, an elderly rosh yeshivah who can barely walk came all the way from Eretz Yisrael just to attend the wedding. This must be a choshuve bochur!’ I was flabbergasted at how far  he would go to build the prestige of a talmid, even at the expense of his own dignity.”

Own Your Couch

When Elysha Sandler got married in New York, he wasn’t in a position to bring Reb Hillel in from Eretz Yisrael to be mesader kiddushin, but the Rosh Yeshivah flew in anyway at his own expense.

“Reb Hillel had noticed that in Chevron, I had limited funds and therefore rarely bought seforim,” Rabbi Sandler says. “So two days before the chasunah, he asked me whether my seforim collection contained the standard Rishonim and Acharonim on Shas. When I told him I’d buy them when I could, he handed me $1,000 and insisted that I go right away and buy a Ramban, Rashba, Ritva, Shittah Mekubetzes, Pnei Yehoshua, Chiddushei Rabi Akiva Eiger, and more. ‘An avreich needs to have the basic seforim at his disposal,’ he said. ‘It will be good for you as a ben Torah and it will be good for your marriage.’ ”

Before the wedding, Elysha Sandler brought him the kesubah he’d bought at Eichler’s for $35, but the Rosh Yeshivah didn’t want to use it. He said that a kesubah is a shtar his’chayevus, and that with the fancy design, the chassan and kallah might not see it as such. “So Rebbi took out a piece of lined loose-leaf paper and started writing a new kesubah from memory,” saysRabbi Sandler. “Only after I reassured him that I’d clarify the content of the kesubah to my kallah, did he agree to use the one I had bought.”

Shortly after the wedding, the new Sandler couple met with Reb Hillel for hadrachah as they embarked on married life. Over the years, Rabbi Sandler has shared one particular lesson from that evening with many of his own just-married talmidim and their wives: “Rebbi blessed us that when we buy things, we should try to fully own them. We didn’t know what he meant, and so he explained that when he was a newlywed in Lakewood, both he and his neighbor bought couches on the same day — he spent $80, while his neighbor spent $800.

“Yet he fully owned his couch, while the neighbor only owned limited rights to his. The neighbors wouldn’t sit on the actual couch, only on top of its plastic cover. The neighbors wouldn’t eat, drink, or sleep on the couch, and certainly wouldn’t jump on it, despite having spent $800 for it. The Zaks family, on the other hand, fully owned every bit of their couch, eating and sleeping on it, stepping on it to reach things from the top of the closet, even lending it out... and all for just $80. ‘Enjoy the things you have,’ Reb Hillel told us. ‘Be flexible, not rigid. It’s a transient world.’ ”

Open House

The always-extended hand to the needy was matched by a home that was literally open to all, talmidim, the down-and-out of society, anyone, at any time of day or night. At the start of the zeman, Rav Hillel would announce that his home was open from 7 a.m. to 3 a.m. for all the boys’ needs, and they knew he meant it.

Every bochur knew where the Rosh Yeshivah’s tools were kept and where to find the Rebbetzin’s freshly baked cakes and cookies. There was a gemach for Walkmans for those sick in bed and another one for tefillin for when boys were having their tefillin checked.

“As an overseas talmid who often felt lonely in the predominantly Israeli Chevron,” Rabbi Sandler says, “I took advantage of the open-door policy, with the Rebbetzin regularly making me an omelet or something for me to take back to my dorm room. Sometimes on a late Motzaei Shabbos, it was just Reb Hillel and me sharing a small Melaveh Malkah meal before chatzos.”

Only once does Rabbi Sandler recall Reb Hillel locking the door on him — and it was his own fault. It happened when he tried to verify the following story he’d heard from a friend (and which he later verified with its source): Reb Hillel had received a volume of the Biur, a commentary on Chumash written by Moses Mendelsohn of 18th-century Haskalah fame, which  had apparently had once belonged to Rav Zundel Salanter.  Reb Hillel put it in his bookcase and gave it no further thought.

Not long after, however, his mother Rebbetzin Faiga Chaya dreamed that her father, the Chofetz Chaim, was in her son Hillel’s apartment in Yerushalayim looking intently for something. Awakened by this disturbing dream, she called her son Rav Yaakov Yehoshua (currently a rosh kollel in Kiryat Sefer) and asked him to call his brother to say that “he’s disturbing the Tatte’s rest in Himmel.” Reb Hillel called a talmid right then and there with a simple but urgent request: “Just come here immediately and get rid of the book. I refuse to touch it — it’s shterring the Zeide.”

“Hearing this amazing story, I decided to find out if it was true,” says Rabbi Sandler. “So I went to Rebbi’s apartment, but I couldn’t ask him directly, so the conversation went like this: ‘That story of the dream the Rebbi’s mother had… when did it happen?’

“ ‘Elysha, we were machlit that the story would be nignaz.’

“ ‘So…it actually happened.’

“ ‘Sandler, arois!’

“He shooed me out and locked the door.”

No Fear of Emes

Reb Hillel fled from honor as from the plague and eschewed publicity of any kind; one will search in vain for photos of him seated on the mizrach vant, or anywhere else, at communal events. He was impervious to personal slights and reticent about his attainments.

It was known, for example, that he had deep knowledge of the esoteric areas of Torah, yet he was never seen learning from the numerous sifrei kabbalah he owned. One Leil Yom Kippur, however, Rabbi Sandler recalls going to the Zaks home an hour after davening had ended to discuss an issue he was struggling with. The policy was that if the door was unlocked one just walked in, and so he did — only to find Reb Hillel sitting in his pajamas at the dining room table, immersed in the multiple sifrei kabbalah that lay open in front him. Looking up and seeing Elysha standing there, all he could say was, “Sandler, even tonight?!”

It was the total absence of ego that enabled him to give both his children and talmidim the genuine sense that they were free to follow the path in avodas Hashem that best suited them, even if different from his. Rabbi Sandler observes that “Rebbi was very close to his kids, and each one is very different. His son Rav Itzel, who was chosen by his siblings’ consensus to succeed his father as rosh yeshivah of Knesses Hagedolah — is not at all a carbon copy of his father, but that wasn’t important to Reb Hillel. Actually, I don’t think he expected his kids to be like him.”

At the same time, Reb Hillel’s detachment from self made him completely comfortable expressing viewpoints that put him at odds even with the frum mainstream. His views on Zionism and other topics in hashkafah were crystal clear and deeply held, and he imparted them without qualms to his talmidim. He made a point of speaking only classical Lashon Hakodesh, without a single word coined by Ben Yehudah or his acolytes mixed in, and counseled bnei yeshivah to boycott the elections (although not in the event their parents insisted they vote).

“Once, in a vaad Reb Hillel was giving, I had a very hard time dealing with what I perceived to be an extreme worldview, and — I’m embarrassed to say — I even closed my sefer and began to walk out,” Rabbi Sandler admits. “Reb Hillel noticed and called out to me, ‘Amerikaner! You’re weak. You can’t run away from the emes!’

“Later, I went to his apartment to explain how much it bothered me that he was so unswerving and seemingly radical. Despite my chutzpah, he patiently showed me a letter of the Chazon Ish about not compromising on absolute truth. He also lent me his copy of Ba’ayos Hazman by his own rebbi, Rav Reuven Grozovsky, so that I could begin to relate to his outlook. And yet, even when I returned the sefer, he never asked me if I had seen the light. That was his shittah: He had exposed me to a glimpse of his worldview and now it was up to me to develop mine.”

Last Light

Shabbos day, the 19^th of Teves, 5775, was the 41^st yahrtzeit of Rav Mendel Zaks, ztz”l. Reb Hillel gave a  drashah which he concluded by saying, “I want you to know that whatever I have is from my father, and probably whatever he had was from the Chofetz Chaim.” These were to be his last public words.

Later, when a grandson asked Reb Hillel a question, he replied, “I am not the Rosh Yeshivah anymore.”

The grandson asked, “Since when?” and Reb Hillel responded, “Since now.” Sunday night, Reb Hillel lit a candle in every room in his house, and when the Rebbetzin asked why, he simply shrugged it off. By Tuesday afternoon, his soul had departed.

At the massive levayah, his close friend Rav Boruch Mordechai Ezrachi said, “This that Reb Hillel was a grandson of the Chofetz Chaim and had unfathomable brilliance, was the work of the Master of the Universe. But this that Reb Hillel encompassed the Chofetz Chaim within him, was the work of Reb Hillel.” And only then did the extent of this incalculable loss, — of holy zeide and beloved einekel fused in greatness past and present — first begin to dawn.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 591)