T he pasuk in Koheles (1:5) states: “V’zarach hashemesh u’va hashemesh — the sun rises and the sun sets” based on which Chazal (Kiddushin 72b) teach that before one tzaddik leaves the world — a metaphorical sunset — another will have risen to take his place in the firmament.

The other week in New York we witnessed this phenomenon come to life. Monday May 15 brought the tragic scene of a fire set by an arsonist a teenage punk ripping through one of the oldest shul buildings in America. The Beis Medrash HaGadol although unused for a decade now had stood majestically for over a century and a half on Norfolk Street in the storied birthplace of so much of Jewish life on the Lower East Side.

It wrenched the heart to see those leaping flames destroy the roof and much else of what remained of the building a national landmark since 1967. To witness a shul in flames always triggers the traumatic feelings stored in the historical memory bank of every Jew from a thousand such torchings over the course of galus all the way back to the destruction of the prototype of them all the Beis Hamikdash.

For me there was a personal twinge of pain in seeing the shul consumed in fire. It was a beis knesses suffused with litvishkeit —it’s where New York’s only Rav HaKollel Rav Yaakov Yosef had tried mightily to bring some of Vilna to America and where a later rav Rav Ephraim Oshry found solace after the horrors of the Kovno Ghetto. And thus it was a magnet for litvishe Yidden.

My zeide Reb Yosef Chaim Eliezer Kobre z”l was one of those Yidden and he could be found every Shabbos afternoon on one of those benches at the rav’s shiur. He was not a learned Jew having left Lita as a youth for these shores after not many years in cheder and once my father z’’l asked him “Papa why do you go do you really get anything from the shiur?” My grandfather man of few words replied with just nine of them “A rav has to have whom to talk to.” It has always seemed to me that my father’s lifelong deep-bred reverence for gedolim had its roots in his upbringing by a father who spoke that way.

And now those benches lie in charred ruins.

But many months earlier another luminous space of kedushah was already preparing to rise and shine. The Millinery Center Synagogue a fixture in Midtown Manhattan’s Garment District for 90 years was nearly defunct limping along in sorely dilapidated condition barely managing a Minchah minyan. Then a dedicated group of Jews approached Rabbi Avrohom Dov Kahn an eminent talmid chacham (and full disclosure my mechutan) whose Center for Return has over three and a half decades helped many hundreds of Jewish families and individuals embrace Torah observance. They asked him to take the helm of a shul they saw as a diamond in the rough and spearhead its restoration to spiritual and physical health.

And in the very week that one sun appeared to set on Norfolk Street just a few miles north the bright sun of a revitalized Millinery Center Synagogue broke through over spiritually beclouded Midtown Manhattan illuminating all of its surroundings. Rabbi Kahn became the shul’s rav determined to guide its development into a center of Torah kiruv and tefillah. The shul’s incomparable heart-of-the-city location on Sixth Avenue and 35th Street renders it an oasis in which the tens perhaps hundreds of thousands of unaffiliated Jews who pass there each day will be given an opportunity to take soothing refuge to still the pangs of hunger for meaning and partake for the first time of the Torah’s delights.

SEE YOU AT SINAI The approach of Shavuos always summons for me precious early memories of this time of year. As a talmid long ago in the Yeshiva of Staten Island I merited to spend this Yom Tov in the presence of Rav Moshe Feinstein ztz”l whom the generation as a whole lovingly called Reb Moshe but to us was “the Rosh Yeshivah.” He joined us each year for Shavuos and the Yamim Noraim.

We stayed up through the night but the Rosh Yeshivah did not. He would appear in the beis medrash at around 4 a.m.; that’s when he would begin learning every morning of the year continuing on until davening at seven. On the second night of Shavuos too the handful of bochurim who stayed up to learn would see the Rosh Yeshivah enter at four his countenance beaming as he caught sight of them at their Gemaras.

In an article six years ago commemorating the Rosh Yeshivah’s 25th yahrtzeit I quoted a Staten Island talmid Reb Eli Meir Cohen as saying that “the Rosh Yeshivah didn’t sleep very much. When he was younger he slept two hours a night and when he became older four hours. In his youth he once stayed up all night on Shavuos and saw that it shterred his learning so he didn’t do it after that.”

Another talmid Reb Pinchos Gershon Waxman shared this memory: “One Shavuos morning when it came time for birchos hashachar nobody wanted to recite them aloud at the amud because everyone would know the one saying them hadn’t stayed up. The Rosh Yeshivah said that if no one else would go he would. That did it — I quickly ran up to start brachos.”

In many frum homes Erev Shavuos represents the calm before the storm when men and boys take long naps in preparation for a much-anticipated marathon of Torah learning that evening. Even in yeshivos an uncharacteristic quiet reigns throughout in the near-empty beis medrash and near-full dorm rooms alike (although the “night seder” to come isn’t really all that much longer than a regular yeshivah morning seder).

But something that Rav Moshe Mordechai Shulsinger observed (in his sefer Mishmar Halevi on Chumash) gives us a whole new appreciation of Erev Shavuos and of the Rosh Yeshivah. He begins by noting a seemingly minor detail in a teshuvah the Rosh Yeshivah authored 65 years ago — its date. Appearing at its outset are the words “B’ezras Hashem Erev Chag HaShavuos 5712” (1952).

The teshuvah divided into two simanim taking up nearly 13 pages in Igros Moshe (Orach Chaim 1:138–139) famously addresses the complex topic of the permissibility of constructing eiruvin in Brooklyn and Manhattan. It is Rav Shulsinger wrote a halachic tour de force that causes anyone learning Eiruvin and possessing some familiarity with the topics to stand awestruck at the Rosh Yeshivah’s astounding command of the area including all of the Rishonim and his own chiddushim.

Rav Shulsinger marveled at the ability not just to learn and be mechadesh it all but simply to write it all down; he was certain the Rosh Yeshivah would conclude with a reference to having finished writing the teshuvah months after its opening date. But in fact just before signing his name the Rosh Yeshivah ended off by bestowing a brachah upon his correspondent for “a chag samei’ach and kabbalas haTorah with a complete heart and to merit on the upcoming Yom Tov to fulfill the mitzvos of re’iyah chagigah and simchah in the Beis Habechirah to be built speedily by the Goel Tzedek.”

In other words the Rosh Yeshivah had started writing this massive intricate teshuvah on Erev Shavuos 5712 and finished it the same day. Nor was this an anomaly except in its length. Looking through this very volume of Igros Moshe one comes upon teshuvos of varying lengths written on Erev Succos Erev Rosh Hashanah Purim Shivah Asar B’Tammuz Asarah B’Teves. Days of feasts and of fasts days when there were Yom Tov preparations to be made and of course sh’eilos to be answered. But through it all the Rosh Yeshivah learned — and wrote — on.

As we enjoy our well-deserved naps ahead of that Leil Shavuos all-nighter (and prepare our stocks of the cut-up melon and cake and coffee) we should remember that there are Jews for whom every day bar none is a true zeman matan Toraseinu.

Originally featured in Mishpacha Issue 662. Eytan Kobre may be contacted directly at kobre@mishpacha.com.