“I had never seen his seforim before, even though I’m one of those curious types that likes opening seforim and looking into them, so I’m familiar with Acharonim. I went around Lakewood but I couldn’t figure out where his seforim were. Not one otzar had the sefer.

“So I called Rav Yaakov Forchheimer, one of Lakewood’s main poskim who consults regularly with Rav Shmuel. I told him the Rosh Yeshivah keeps quoting Rav Henkin and I asked if perhaps he owned his seforim. He was happy to lend me his copy, but suggested I check first in the massive library of Beth Medrash Govoha. Sure enough, BMG had the seforim on the shelf, but I literally had to blow dust off them. Hardly able to contain my excitement, I turned first to his discussions of zmanim and — what can I say? — he asks certain kushyos in the sugya that no one else asks and no one answers. And in his unique way, with his short, yet clear and piercing way of presenting things, he answers those kushyos.

“For example,” says Rabbi Kleinman, “it has become very popular to determine halachic times by measuring the number of degrees the sun is distant from the horizon. None of the classic sifrei halachah, nor the recent teshuvos seforim, discuss this method, which is considered very innovative nowadays. But Rav Henkin, writing in the 1950s, has an entire piece about this method, proving from gemaros that one can’t use it.”

On his next visit to Philadelphia to consult with Rav Shmuel, he had just one question weighing on his mind: How could it be, how could it be, that the Torah of this gaon of halachah has languished in such neglect — banished, as it were, from its rightful place in the beis medrash and the give-and-take of halachic discourse?

The Rosh Yeshivah’s reply was short, and poignant: “Doniel Osher, I know, and it bothers me too.”

At that, Rabbi Kleinman suggested, “Rosh Yeshivah, I know printers. Maybe we should have the sefer retypeset and we’ll just reprint it?”

Rav Shmuel Kamenetsky looked at him and said, “Why don’t you do it yourself?”

But Rabbi Kleinman demurred; he was already working around the clock on the Rosh Yeshivah’s seforim. Yet he couldn’t refuse the Rosh Yeshivah’s determined conviction: “The person who will do this will have a very great zchus,” Rav Shmuel told him. “He was both the gadol hador and the tzaddik hador.”

“I Also Want a Share”

Since that critical moment, Rav Shmuel has been the ongoing inspiration for Rabbi Kleinman’s indefatigable dedication to his mission, referring to the reclamation of Rav Henkin’s Torah as a case of “meis mitzvah.”

In fact it was Rav Shmuel’s own father — Rav Yaakov Kamenetsky — who was responsible for the initial publication of Rav Henkin’s writings in the 1980s, when he advised a yungerman in a difficult situation to work on the publication of Rav Henkin’s writings as a merit for his own yeshuah.

Then as Rabbi Kleinman’s project got underway, he sought the assistance of a certain askan, only to be taken aback by the response: “What? You’re printing Rav Henkin’s seforim? They were already printed 20 years ago. You want to know why his seforim aren’t used? Rav Moshe Feinstein was posek hador. He took over!”

Rabbi Kleinman hung up the phone, dejected. Then he called Rav Shmuel, who told him, “It’s dvarim beteilim. What’s this man’s phone number?” Rabbi Kleinman protested that he didn’t mean to burden the Rosh Yeshivah in that way, but Rav Shmuel dismissed his protest. “Der zchus iz azoi grois, az ich vil oich hob’n a cheilek in dem [the merit is so big that I also want a share in it],” he said.

At that point, the plan was simply to prepare a new, updated edition of the two volumes of Rav Henkin’s writings that had been published in the 1980s by Ezras Torah. Rabbi Kleinman paid for them to be typeset anew, he rearranged the various pieces into topical sections based on the order of the Shulchan Aruch, made paragraphs and provided source notes. He also decided to include the Ikrei Dinim U’Minhagei Beis HaKnesses, in which Rav Henkin sets forth the relevant halachos and minhagim of davening and other daily practices; this became the basis for the pocket-sized luach that Ezras Torah continues to publish each year.

Rabbi Kleinman relates that upon giving the newly reset seforim to someone for an expert opinion, “he recommended omitting this section, saying, ‘What do you need that for? It’s for simpletons.’ Contrast that with what Rav Shmuel told me three times quite emphatically, that I should print the luach. And when I started going through it, I saw that it’s a gold mine of rulings on questions left open by the Mishnah Berurah. Indeed, someone told me he once asked Rav Yaakov Kamenetsky a sh’eilah and Reb Yaakov sent him to Rav Henkin, telling him, ‘Ihr veist az Rav Henkin hot geshriben dem luach? Dos iz far unz a Mishnah Berurah [you know that Rav Henkin composed the luach? For us, that’s a Mishnah Berurah].’”

When Rabbi Kleinman sought a letter of approbation from Rav Dovid Feinstein, he demurred apologetically, saying that Rav Henkin was so big that anything even resembling a haskamah would be a bizayon, and any letter he’d write would look to people like a haskamah. Rav Dovid’s father — Rav Moshe Feinstein — and Rav Henkin, both of whom learned in Slutzk and lived near each other on New York’s Lower East Side, shared a close friendship and deep mutual respect as they jointly bore the mantle of halachic adjudication in America.

A close talmid of Reb Moshe recalls that one Erev Rosh HaShanah, Reb Moshe asked that he accompany him to Rav Henkin’s apartment. Once there, Reb Moshe asked Rav Henkin for a brachah for a gut yahr, spoke with him in learning for a few minutes, and left. Reb Moshe later told the talmid the entire purpose of the visit had been to get a brachah from Rav Henkin, “vail oif Erev Yom HaDin m’geit tzu an adam gadol az ehr zohl uhnvintchen a gut yahr [because before the Yom HaDin one goes to an adam gadol to receive a brachah for a good year].”

Finally, in December 2012, as Rabbi Kleinman was ready to go to press, an acquaintance told him of an e-mail he’d just received from someone in Eretz Yisrael named Reb Eitam Henkin, a great-grandson. “The family had heard someone was working on putting out Rav Henkin’s Torah and was really surprised no one had contacted them. I was shocked, and also concerned that they’d be upset at me. So I called Rav Shmuel, who told me, ‘You’re not in it for money or kavod. Rav Henkin’s Torah has to emerge. Give them the project, offer them everything you’ve done, let them take it and finish it, gezunter heit.’ And that’s what I did. I sent him the actual files and said, ‘My whole tachlis is that it should come out. Here, take it and print it.’

“But he sent the files right back and said, ‘No, we’re very happy you’re doing this.’ In fact, he sent me a few more pieces I hadn’t known about — and that opened up a whole new world. When Reb Eitam Henkin told me he had ten more unpublished teshuvos, I said to myself, ‘There’s more!’ In fact, he told me that in the family they know that Rav Henkin had authored thousands of teshuvos, but never made copies of what he’d sent. These teshuvos are now in the hands of those who asked the questions, or, much more likely, their descendants. But how does one trace them?”

The Hunt

For Rabbi Kleinman, this was no longer about reprinting existing seforim. Now it became a mission: to track down and unearth Rav Henkin’s Torah from around the world. Often, people searching for documents will place newspaper ads asking those having them in their possession to step forward. But the cost of such ads was beyond the reach of Rabbi Kleinman’s limited resources, and once again, it was Rav Shmuel who guided the next step: “It will be word of mouth. You’ll make phone calls and you’ll start receiving teshuvos.”

The hunt was on. Rabbi Kleinman started making phone calls to people over the age of 60 who might have corresponded with Rav Henkin, and to rabbanim in cities throughout the United States who might know of such people. He would ask two simple questions: Do you have any teshuvos, and do you know anyone who might have? And the list kept growing, city by city, to include many hundreds of names. Rabbi Kleinman, who was still working nonstop to produce Rav Shmuel’s latest halachah sefer, used the limited time available to him to make 12 to 15 phone calls a day, and each week would bring the discovery of a few more never-before-seen teshuvos. They sprang up in the most unexpected places — ranging from the Rebbe of Tzehlem, to a frum farmer in Monticello, to a councilwoman in Tennessee who had inherited a letter received by her great-grandfather.

“Every new find was its own simchah,” he says, “but it also brought the staggering realization that there was so much more out there. I can’t tell you how many American rabbanim there were who are lost to history and can’t be tracked down. I don’t know where their children are, where their archives are, nothing.”

He marvels at the constant siyata d’Shmaya he has experienced in the months since his painstaking search through the documentary haystack began.

“I learned that YIVO, the Yiddish archives in Manhattan, has the personal papers of various rabbanim, plus Ezras Torah’s correspondence going back to the 1920s. Rav Shmuel told me to take off two days to see what they might contain, and I decided to get an early start on my first day at YIVO by traveling into New York the night before.

“I got into the car at nine thirty that night, but before I left Lakewood I decided to stop off at the Judaica Plaza seforim store to see if Shnos Dor V’Dor, a collection of letters from gedolim, might include something from Rav Henkin. When I told the store’s seforim director, Reb Eli Meir Cohen, why I wanted the volume, a fellow standing within earshot said, ‘You’re collecting Rav Henkin’s ksovim? I’ve got three kisvei yad from him!’

“These were teshuvos about three very practical halachic issues: blood in eggs, the application of dina d’malchusa to rent control laws, and the proper way to structure a partnership with a non-Jew regarding Shabbos. I would never have had any way to know these teshuvos existed. But that’s not all: The next morning I went to YIVO, only to find that their Ezras Torah archives were closed long-term for technical reasons. So what did I accomplish with this trip? I went for YIVO, but I ended up finding three teshuvos while I was still in Lakewood, only because the Ribono shel Olam put in my mind to stop off on the way at Judaica Plaza.”

Although YIVO proved to be a dead end, Rabbi Kleinman did make a major find in the archives of the American Jewish Historical Society (AJHS), housed in the same building. One of the old-time, out-of-town rabbanim with whom Rav Henkin had corresponded, according to Eitam Henkin, was Rabbi Tuvya (Tobias) Gefen of Atlanta. Rabbi Gefen passed away in 1970 after leading his community for 60 years, yet his papers, all 32 boxes of them, are archived at AJHS.

“In general, researchers will come in and pore over three files for an entire day,” Rabbi Kleinman describes. “I came in and asked for Rabbi Gefen’s files. ‘Sir,’ said the lady at the front desk, ‘there are 32 boxes.’

“‘Great,’ I said. ‘I’ll take all 32.’

“‘But we have a rule that you can only go through one box at a time; you’ll be here all day.’

“‘No, I won’t.’ They brought out the first box and she asked me when I’d need the second one. I said, ‘In five minutes.’ Five minutes later, after flipping through the box and finding nothing relating to Rav Henkin, I returned it. ‘Next,’ I said.

“And so it went, box after box, until I opened box number 15, and there, sitting right on top, was a teshuvah from Rav Henkin about zmanim! I couldn’t take any pictures of those files, because Rabbi Gefen was the rav hamachshir of Coca Cola and the top-secret recipe for Coke is in those files. But they do allow taking notes, so I copied the teshuvah, typing away madly. And then the search continued. Box 16 was the first of five marked ‘Divorce Decrees.’ I thought to myself: ‘Boxes full of gittin? Should I, shouldn’t I? I’m here already, I might as well do it right.’ I opened the first box and quickly realized that Rabbi Gefen didn’t just keep a copy of each get he wrote, but all the correspondence relating to each get, too. That day I unearthed 14 precious letters from Rav Henkin pertaining to gittin, an area in which he was the acknowledged world’s expert. I came home and said Nishmas Kol Chai out of gratitude for the gift I’d received.”

“How Can You Compare?”

Often the rabbanim and roshei yeshivah Rabbi Kleinman has called have responded by saying, “I don’t have any teshuvos for you, but I’ve got a maiseh.…” For example, the current rosh yeshivah of Ner Israel, Rav Aharon Feldman, related that, at one point, when Rav Yaakov Ruderman had cataracts, he confided to Rav Feldman: “Chayai einam chayim. Without my sight, I have no cheishek to learn.”

Rav Feldman said, “The Rosh Yeshivah should get bochurim to learn with him Gemara, Rashi, and Tosafos.”

Rav Ruderman gave a chuckle, “Mit Gemara, Rashi, un Tosafos hob ich nisht kein problehm [with learning Gemara, Rashi, and Tosfos I have no problem], but when I learn a sugya, I need to delve into the Acharonim, and I can’t now.”

Rav Feldman tried again: “When Rav Henkin was blind in his last years, he would have bochurim read out to him, so when the Rosh Yeshivah has a kushya and wants to look into the Acharonim, he should do the same.”

At that, Rav Ruderman sat up straight and said, “Ihr zolt mir nisht dermonen tzuzamen mit Rav Henkin. Ehr iz gevein a kadosh v’tahor [Don’t mention me together with Rav Henkin. He was holy and pure].”

“That,” Rav Feldman concluded, “is how the gedolim looked at Rav Henkin.”

Rav Leibel Rand, today a rosh kollel in Far Rockaway, was just 17 when he spent a few months learning daily with the elderly Rav Henkin after he lost his eyesight late in his life. He recalls that, with the greatest sincerity, Rav Henkin used to call him “Harav Rand,” and finally, Rav Rand said to him, “Rebbi, ich bin a bochur!”

To which, undeterred, Rav Henkin replied, “Vos? Ihr kumt lernen mit an alter, blinder Yid. Ich lern fuhn eich. Harav Rand, avada [What? You come to learn with an old, blind Jew. I learn from you. Yes, Harav Rand, certainly].”

On one occasion, Rav Aharon Kotler’s name came up and he asked Rav Rand whether Rav Aharon had been a posek. When Rav Rand inquired as to why he was asking, he explained: “Rav Aharon used to call me all the time with sh’eilos, and if he knew halachah, why would he call me?”

One day in the middle of Shvat, Rav Rand walked into Rav Henkin’s apartment to find him sobbing heavily; he thought someone must have passed away. Finally, through his tears, Rav Henkin uttered one word, “Matzoh!” and again the tears poured forth. His son, standing nearby, explained that one of his father’s last teeth had fallen out and he was distraught over the prospect that on Pesach, two months hence, he would be unable to eat matzoh properly. Rav Rand tried to mollify him by noting that according to halachah, one who can’t chew matzoh can use matzoh shruyah (soaked in water). This set off Rav Henkin’s crying once more. “My whole life, I was careful not to use matzoh shruyah, and now …”

According to Rav Shmuel Kamenetsky, of all Rav Henkin’s sterling traits, his crowning middah was humility. Rabbi Kleinman included one letter in the forthcoming sefer just for this line: “I ask of his honorable greatness not to apply grossly exaggerated titles to me, which cause me anguish because they are a slight to true gedolim.” In yet another letter he registers a “strong protest” at the “vastly exaggerated titles” with which his correspondent addresses him, which, he writes, make it impossible for him to show others the letter and its important halachic content.

But as a genuine anav, Rav Henkin knew who he was and what his position required of him, and he didn’t hesitate to take strong halachic positions and protest when he felt that contrary views could lead to tragic results. He famously held that civil and Reform marriages have halachic validity and require a get to dissolve them, and in 1964, Rav Henkin sent Rav Moshe Feinstein a strongly worded teshuvah imploring him to retract his opposing view invalidating such marriages. He signed off “in particular pain that my letter may cause anguish to a great talmid chacham, but this is meleches Shamayim.” And he once confided to Rav Moshe Margolin, his assistant and successor at Ezras Torah’s helm, that he wouldn’t be embarrassed to present any of his halachic rulings before the Maharam Schick, a leading 18th century posek and talmid of the Chasam Sofer.

Halachah for a New World

Rav Henkin was a rav’s rav, an unquestioned authority who strove to bring halachic order to the US in all areas essential for the proper functioning of a Jewish community: gittin, eiruvin, kashrus, mikveh, Shabbos, and more. Countless rabbanim would receive his phone number along with their own ksav smichah. Rav Henkin would say that whatever Torah novella he published was only for the purpose of rectifying breaches in halachah he had identified. Even his Ikrei Dinim came about only because he wanted to print a luach with candlelighting times to prevent chillul Shabbos, and the minhag is to include brief halachos in a luach as well.

“To my knowledge, Rav Henkin gave smichah to only one person, a Rabbi Levine from Philadelphia,” says Rabbi Kleinman. “He is an einekel of Rav Aryeh Levin, with whom Rav Henkin had learned b’chavrusa in Europe, and so he merited special affection. All others he would push off, saying, ‘Me? Go to big poskim.’ But as Rav Ephraim Pessin of Monsey told me, his father, Rav Avrohom, actually almost received smichah. After the elder Rav Pessin persistently requested it, Rav Henkin had acquiesced, contingent on three conditions:

“The first was to follow Rav Henkin’s famous insistence on annulling the minhag, followed even in the great yeshivos of Europe, to eat before tekiyos on Rosh HaShanah, in keeping with the halachah prohibiting eating before performing a mitzvah d’Oraysa. Second, that the shaliach tzibbur in his shul must end the brachah of go’al Yisrael before Shemoneh Esrei audibly, contrary to the custom of some to do so quietly. And the third condition was that he would not personally bring Shabbos in early, because as a rav, one needs to be reachable by telephone to answer sh’eilos until the very last moment before Shabbos.”

This last stipulation (which Rav Pessin could not fulfill due to his father-in-law’s insistence on making early Shabbos) was quintessential to Rav Henkin: a rav must be available at all times. He would always answer the phone himself, at all hours, whether at home or in Ezras Torah’s office. His house was open to all, too; Rav Leibel Rand relates that homeless people would come up to his apartment, throw open the door and shout inside, “Rebbi, geb mir a brachah!” Rav Henkin would bless them and then add in all earnestness, “A yasher koyach oif kumen mechabed zein mit dein bazuch [thank you for honoring me with your visit].”

Yet his role as a preeminent posek never came at the expense of his commitment to Ezras Torah, which defied description. Only after long days at work, from which he never took a vacation, would he begin his nights devoted to arranging gittin, something he did hundreds of times, and responding to sh’eilos.He would retire for the night only after reciting Tikun Chatzos, rising again at 4 a.m., davening k’vasikin and spending three to four hours learning. And Rav Henkin didn’t daven Shacharis on Shabbos in the same shul more than once each year; with over a hundred shuls on the Lower East Side, he made sure to daven Shacharis and then Musaf in two new places each Shabbos so he could make appeals for Ezras Torah. For years, he refused a raise in his meager salary, and maintained a special pinkas in which he noted the few minutes he had used during his workday to answer halachah-related calls, in order to deduct the appropriate amount from his salary. When Ezras Torah’s board finally forced a raise upon him, he simply neglected to deposit some of his paychecks.

Who Will Greet Mashiach?

To date, Rabbi Kleinman’s efforts have yielded a bounty of close to 200 new teshuvos, which will appear in the soon-to-be-released volume and those to follow. But the knowledge that there surely are many more such manuscripts out there somewhere keeps Rabbi Kleinman from sitting back on his laurels.

Besides, he’s felt a special Providential push all along. He relates, for example, that he’d been relying on a certain funding commitment for the sefer, which unexpectedly didn’t materialize. He asked Rav Kamenetsky if perhaps this was a sign to put the work aside and instead finalize the Rosh Yeshivah’s own, nearly finished sefer on hilchos Shabbos. Rav Shmuel replied, “To the contrary, this is the doing of the Satan. There’s a commotion in Heaven over the emergence of Rav Henkin’s Torah and the Satan is afraid of this.” He assured Rabbi Kleinman the funding would be forthcoming, in Rav Henkin’s merit.

Two months later, with funds still lacking, Rabbi Kleinman went back to Rav Shmuel, who told him to make some hishtadlus. “I contacted an institute that publishes seforim, but they wanted full control over it, which, in the interest of the sefer’s success, I wasn’t prepared to give them. That same afternoon, a wealthy acquaintance came by. ‘I heard you’re working on Rav Henkin’s seforim. I’d like to give you a $10,000 sponsorship.’”

Forty years ago this month, Rav Yaakov Kamenetsky wept at Rav Henkin’s levayah as he said, “I was sure Rav Henkin would be the one to lead us in greeting Mashiach. Now who will do so?” Now, a generation later, Reb Yaakov’s son has inspired his devoted talmid to work single-mindedly to give Rav Henkin and his Torah back to Klal Yisrael. Is it too much to hope that we’ll go out to greet Mashiach with his seforim in our arms?

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 470)