A SON OF FRANKFURT

Germany, 1908

“Moses Loeb Schwab, my great-grandfather and my namesake, was a young talmid of Rav Samson Raphael Hirsch, who wrote down his lectures on Chumash in shorthand…”

“MY

father was born in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, on December 30, 1908,” begins Reb Moshe, the dates, times, and personalities perfectly preserved. “He was the eldest of the five sons born to his parents, Leopold and Hanna Schwab, who was an active member of the Frankfurt IRG — Hirsch Breuer kehillah.”

Rav Schwab’s roots as a faithful member of the Frankfurt kehillah ran deep. He lived through the most storied — and stormy — periods in the history of that community. In 19th century Germany, religious communities had to be officially sanctioned by the authorities. According to the law, all Jews were automatically considered to be members of a single, united Jewish community. When the Reform movement took over the official community board in the 1850s, Rav Samson Raphael Hirsch led the religious community out of the Grossgemeinde (the main community), and declared that it was absolutely prohibited to associate with Jews who did not recognize the binding nature of Torah and Talmud. His position became known as “Austritt,” meaning secession or withdrawal.

Rav Hirsch viewed Austritt as an obligation because joint communal membership with Reform was a form of tacit approval of their kefirah, and in time, principle became a hallmark of Rav Hirsch’s hashkafah.

Rav Hirsch took his fight to the Prussian Landtag, which passed, at his behest, a law that allowed religious Jews to form their own, independent, government-sanctioned kehillah. Yet despite his success, formation of a separatist Orthodox community in Frankfurt am Main, known as the Israelitische Religionsgesellschaft (IRG), the Rav faced internal setbacks. Another prominent German rav publicly argued that one was not obligated to formally renounce his membership in the broader, nonobservant community. That opposition caused a terrible rift in the German kehillah that lasted until its decimation by the Nazis in the 1930s.

Baron Wilhelm Carl (“Willy”) von Rothschild, one of the wealthiest and most influential Jews of his day, committed vast resources to Rav Hirsch and the Austritt movement — yet personally did not revoke his own membership in the Grossgemeinde. As a result, neither did the majority of Rav Hirsch’s congregants, a fact that caused him no small amount of personal anguish.

Out of a kehillah of about 350 families, only 115 formally seceded. But one family that did was that of Moses L. Schwab, a devoted disciple whose notes on Rav Hirsch’s Chumash shiurim were used to compile his magnum opus, Commentary to the Torah. Moses L. Schwab was Rav Shimon’s grandfather, and the namesake of Reb Moshe.

A GREAT MAN OF THE WEST

“He was very broad-minded. He absorbed his yesodos from the teachings of Rav Hirsch, Rav Shlomo Breuer,  and the great Gedolim of the Lithuanian  Yeshivos  including Reb Yerucham Mashgiach of Mir, Horav Chaim Ozer Grozensky, and the sainted Chofetz Chaim. ”

L

ike his father and grandfather before him, young Shimon Schwab enrolled in the venerable Hirsch-realschule in Frankfurt.

“My father had a clear and unwavering desire to become a talmid chacham and to eventually serve as rabbi,” says Reb Moshe. “He had no interest in sports or other extracurricular activities that would not contribute toward his goal of becoming a talmid chacham.”

At the age of 14, he enrolled in the Yeshivah of Frankfurt, then headed by Rav Shlomo Breuer. Two years later, he made a move that changed the course of his life.

In 1926, the Ponevezher Rav, Rav Yosef Kahaneman, arrived in Frankfurt to raise money for the Ponevezh yeshivah. During the course of his stay, he was invited to deliver a shiur in Rav Breuer’s yeshivah, and Shimon Schwab was in attendance.

“My father was extremely impressed with the litvishe derech halimud and wanted to go to a yeshivah that followed that style,” says Reb Moshe.

Young Shimon, then 17, consulted with the Ponevezher Rav on which yeshivah he should attend. “The Rav suggested that for a Frankfurter bochur of his age, the Telzer yeshivah would be a good fit,” says Reb Moshe. Its emphasis on seder and its approach to education would make it an appropriate setting for a Frankfurt bochur. So Father left the Frankfurter yeshivah — to the great disappointment of his rebbi, Rav Shlomo Breuer — and transferred to Telz.”

In so doing, he became one of the first German bochurim ever to cross the borders with Poland and Lithuania to learn Torah. He learned under the great Telzer roshei yeshivah Rav Yosef Leib Bloch and Rav Chaim Rabinowitz for some three years.

“Father would refer to these years as the happiest of his youth,” says Reb Moshe.

But not everyone back in Germany was pleased. A young student determined to enter the rabbinate in Frankfurt was expected to graduate high school at the very least, and possibly even earn a degree. Both Rav Shlomo Breuer, who succeeded his father-in-law Rav Hirsch as rav of the IRG, and Rav Shlomo’s son Rav Yosef Breuer, who founded the successor kehillah in New York, had earned doctorate degrees.

“Many criticized my father, saying that even as a rabbi, he wouldn’t amount to much without a secular education,” says Reb Moshe. “People said he’d be a verschüttete Besomim Büchse — a spilled spice box — a German-Jewish expression for someone with great potential who never developed into anything.”

Not that it deterred Rav Schwab in the least. He was in love with the blatt Gemara, and the yeshivah world had opened new horizons. In 1929, Rav Schwab took a part-time teaching position in Montreux, Switzerland. Rav Chaim Ozer Grodzenski was also staying there at the time, and Rav Schwab served as his shamash that summer. With Rav Chaim Ozer’s encouragement, at the next Elul zeman Rav Schwab transitioned to the Mirrer yeshivah, where he imbibed the Torah and mussar of Rav Eliezer Yehudah Finkel and famed mashgiach Rav Yerucham Levovitz. Rav Schwab would quote the derashos he heard from Rav Yerucham for the rest of his life.

AN ENCOUNTER

Radin, 1933

AS

young Shimon traveled home for Pesach in 1930, he decided to stop in Radin, where he spent Shabbos at the home of the Chofetz Chaim. In a postcard to his parents, sent immediately after he met this world-famous gaon, Rav Schwab described him as having the “radiance of the Shechinah on his face.” When the Chofetz Chaim heard that this Frankfurt boy was now a Mirrer yeshivah bochur, he took his hand in his own and caressed it gently.

“A yeshivah bochur — how fortunate!” the tzaddik exclaimed. “So many are drowning today. Only through Torah can one survive. How fortunate that you are learning!”

It was Parshas Hachodesh — the Shabbos before Nissan — and the Chofetz Chaim spoke about the imminence of Mashiach, quoting the Gemara in Rosh Hashanah (11a) that, “In Nissan we were redeemed and in Nissan we will again be redeemed.” The experience stayed with Rav Schwab forever and became a recurring theme in many of his later speeches. In a lecture to the KAJ Sisterhood in 1989, Rav Schwab recalled what the Chofetz Chaim said about Mashiach that Shabbos.

“Now for the first time,” he said, “I was struck with the realization that the mitzvah of emunah requires that I believe that there is a distinct possibility for the arrival of Mashiach to become an immediate reality.”

One exchange between the young German bochur and the gadol hador has become a staple in yeshivah lore. Rav Yissocher Frand of Ner Yisroel recounts a conversation in which the Chofetz Chaim said it was a pity that Rab Schwab was not a Kohein or Levi, since he would miss out on those privileges when Mashiach comes:

The Chofetz Chaim then asked Rav Schwab a very strange question: “Why are you not a Kohein?”

Rav Schwab gave the obvious answer. His father was not a Kohein.

But the Chofetz Chaim persisted. “Why wasn’t your father a Kohein?”

By this time Rav Schwab grasped that the Chofetz Chaim was leading to a concept that had nothing to do with yichus [lineage] or genealogy.

The Chofetz Chaim asked, “Do you know why your father was not a Kohein and my father was a Kohein? Because there was once a time in Jewish history when our teacher Moshe called out, ‘Who is for G-d? Let them gather to me.’

“My great-great-grandfather answered the call, and your great-great-grandfather did not. That is why my father was a Kohein and your father was not a Kohein.”

A RETURN TO HIS ROOTS

Germany, 1931

A

fter his sojourn into the great yeshivah world of Eastern Europe, the newly ordained rabbi returned to Germany — in both a physical and a spiritual sense. While some German bochurim who went to learn in the great litvishe yeshivos abandoned the mesoras Ashkenaz in which they’d been raised, Rav Schwab took hold of both the hallowed Hirschian hashkafah and the intense learning of Eastern Europe. He maintained that synthesis for the rest of his life.

In May 1931, Rav Schwab took his first rabbinical position, “Rabbinatsassessor” (rabbinical assistant) to Rav Yonah Mertzbach in Darmstadt, Germany. (Rav Mertzbach would eventually escape Germany for Jerusalem, where he founded Yeshivah Kol Torah.) It was in this position that Rav Schwab sought the opinion of the era’s recognized gedolim about Rav Hirsch’s Torah im derech eretz. He penned a letter to four gedolim: Rav Boruch Ber Leibowitz, Rav Elchonon Wasserman, Rav Avraham Yitzchok Bloch, and Rav Avraham Mordechai Alter (the Imrei Emes), asking them about the permissibility and advisability of implementing the Hirschian program outside of Germany.

In his famous answer, Rav Boruch Ber wrote unequivocally that Torah im derech eretz was a hora’as shaah, and permissible only to combat the influence of Reform, a position Rav Elchonon concurred with. Rav Avraham Yitzchok Bloch responded that such a question would have to be decided by each community rav and that there was no clear-cut universal answer. The Imrei Emes did not respond.

Later, when Rav Schwab met the Imrei Emes, he repeated the question. The Rebbe heard, and a few minutes later, he instructed his gabbai, “Reef tzurik dem Deitsche boocher, call back the German bochur.”

The young man came into the Rebbe’s room.

“Boocher, while we have a different opinion than Rav Hirsch, always remember: Rav Hirsch was a living mussar sefer! One must always be very careful with his kavod.”

In 1931, several months after assuming his first position, Rav Schwab married Recha Froehlich of Gelsenkirchen, Germany, the daughter of Abraham and Gutel Froehlich (née Seewald of Babenhausen). A year after the chasunah, Moshe Schwab was born. The young rav was then offered a full-time position as district rabbi (“Bezirksrabbiner”) of Ichenhausen, Bavaria (population 350), an ancient Jewish kehillah in Southern Germany. As Bezirksrabbiner, the Rav would be responsible for the educational needs of the town residents, but also those of several older small kehillos in the hamlets and villages in the surrounding countryside.

In 1934, Rav Schwab announced his intention to open a yeshivah with a dormitory for German bochurim in Ichenhausen, to be modeled after the institutions in which Rav Schwab himself had learned and which had vanished from the Germanic scene since the 19th century. But it was a year after Adolf Hitler had been appointed chancellor of Germany, and the country was starting to unravel. A local Hitler Youth group decided the rabbi was open game.

“They organized tours that stopped in front of our house, and they shouted at us that we were the cause of all their problems and things like that,” recalls Reb Moshe.

On the yeshivah’s second morning, Nazi thugs posted anti-Semitic posters around town decrying this new Jewish provocation. The local police chief, himself not affiliated with the Nazi party, warned Rav Schwab that he could not guarantee their safety. Rav Schwab personally appealed to the Gestapo chief in Ichenhausen — who was seated between two snarling dogs. He offered no help.

In later years, Rav Schwab would sadly recall how, after his meeting with the Gestapo, he proceeded immediately to the beis medrash, the air vibrant with his unsuspecting talmidim’s kol Torah, and told them to close their Gemaras, pack their belongings, and head immediately for the train station. The yeshivah that he spent over a year planning closed after less than 24 hours.

Later, Rav Schwab would discover that Rav Yehudah Hachassid predicted in his famous tzava’ah, dated 1217, that “a man in the land of Schwaben (where Ichenhausen is located) would not be successful in educating young boys as yeshivah students.” That traumatic event was a precursor of what was to come.

In a derashah on parshas Ki Sisa that year, Rav Schwab used the German word “vermittler” — meaning mediator — when talking about the Cheit Ha’eigel. A spy heard the term and immediately reported to the authorities that Rabbiner Schwab had maligned Hitler in a public sermon. The Gestapo duly summoned him for questioning. The noose was tightening, and Rav Schwab sought a way out.

BADGE OF HONOR

1936

“Among our father’s papers, we made an amazing discovery. On the bottom of one of his bookcases, covered by some worn out seforim and a frayed tallis, we found an old snap-shut cigarette case containing three things. There was a yellow sheet of paper, with ‘Ichenhausen’ written in red across the top, containing a lengthy heartrending tefillah for rachamei Shamayim for himself and his family.

“This tefillah was apparently written in 1936 when Father was in grave danger because of a false accusation that he had maligned Hitler yemach shemo in one of his speeches. The second item was an infamous yellow star that the Jews later were forced to wear in Germany. And the third item was his old identification badge of the City of Baltimore’s ‘Bureau of Kosher Meat and Food Control,’ of which he was an official.

“The symbolism was obvious and powerful. Father’s tefillah was answered. And instead of having to wear the yellow badge of shame, whose purpose was to identify and destroy Jews and Judaism, Rav Schwab was, b’Hashgachah pratis, saved and brought to America. There he was privileged to continue his life’s mission and to wear a badge that identified him as one who promotes Torah and mitzvos”

IN

1936, Rav Schwab met Rabbi Leo Jung of New York in Zurich. Rabbi Jung was familiar with Rav Schwab from the Rav’s recently published Heimkehr ins Judentum (“Coming Home to Judaism”), in which he urged the Jewish People to study Torah more deeply and to reject modern culture. Rabbi Jung suggested Rav Schwab apply to be the Rav at Congregation Shearith Israel, a fiercely Orthodox shul in Baltimore, Maryland. In the summer of 1936, the Rav arrived in America for his probeh at the shul. He gave derashos both in English and Yiddish.

“They hired him on the spot,” says Reb Moshe. “He was told that they needed to officially have a vote, but that he could assume he had the position.”

Just two days before Yom Kippur, Rav Schwab received a telegram from Baltimore. Reb Moshe recalls his father opening the letter.

“It said just two words — ‘unanimously elected.’ My father knew what elected meant, but the first word, ‘unanimously,’ was beyond him. Judging by the prefix ‘un,’ he thought maybe he had been ‘un-elected’ — not elected. He quickly looked up the word in his dictionary, and saw that unanimous means einstimmig — that everyone agrees, and he made a brachah of Hatov Vehameitiv and made arrangements to come to America.”

In his short biographical notes printed in the introduction to Rav Schwab on Prayer, Reb Moshe wrote that “an entire book could be written about the events that occurred between the American congregation’s acceptance of their new 27-year-old rabbi from Germany, whose English left much to be desired, and [his] actual arrival. Suffice it to say, this three-month period was full of events that can only be explained as outright miracles.”

What kind of miracles? Reb Moshe graciously indulges.

“In order to obtain an American visa, Father had to pass a physical exam by an American doctor at the US consulate in Stuttgart,” he says. “However, the doctor who examined my father was a rasha, an anti-Semite. He said he found a lesion on my father’s thigh that was cancerous, so he denied the application. This was obviously an excuse, because my father was then in excellent health and he had had that harmless lesion since birth. His German doctor in Frankfurt examined him and laughed at the American doctor’s ‘diagnosis,’ which he said was obviously nonsense.”

But a German doctor’s laugh wasn’t enough. “Father wrote a letter to the congregation in Baltimore explaining his predicament, asking if they could intercede on his behalf in Washington. It so happened that one of the congregants had a connection with Senator Millard E. Tydings from Maryland. The good senator asked the consulate in Stuttgart to expedite Rabbi Schwab’s application. The next thing my father knew, a telegram arrived to Rabbiner Schwab in Ichenhausen from the US consulate in Stuttgart: ‘Application approved — come and pick up your visa.’

“No question,” says Reb Moshe, “this was a great neis and Hashgachah pratis to enable the family to escape the forthcoming disaster.”

Reb Moshe remembers the family packing up their belongings in what he as a four-year-old perceived as a massive box and having it shipped to Baltimore.

Reb Moshe laughs. “The lift was so big that we put in our backyard that year and used it for a succah,” he says.

The Rav’s 21 years in Baltimore were marked by a strict commitment to halachic integrity and expanding Torah opportunities for the community. Almost immediately, he faced challenges: The congregation had gone five years without a rabbi, and one of his first directives was to enforce a longstanding but unwritten rule that only Shabbos-observant Jews could be full members.

Rav Schwab also strengthened Jewish education in Baltimore. He joined the board of Talmudical Academy and taught at Ner Yisroel Yeshivah, even without compensation. Together with a group of lay leaders, he founded Bais Yaakov of Baltimore, which later became the largest such school in America outside New York. He helped establish high kashrus standards and led the formation of a chevra kaddisha. Rav Schwab was also deeply involved in rescue efforts before and during World War II, securing affidavits for Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi persecution.

A powerful orator in both English and Yiddish and a talmid of the major Torah centers of Europe, Rav Schwab emerged as a leading voice for Torah-true Orthodoxy. He organized the 1941 Agudath Israel convention in Baltimore, bringing together leading rabbanim and activists, including Rav Aharon Kotler and Moreinu Yaakov Rosenheim. An American star was rising.

HOSTING GIANTS

“There were many more Torah and lay leaders who graced our home and shul. These people, their greatness, and the thoughts they expressed contributed greatly to our education and growth in the home of my parents”

F

or Reb Moshe, the highlight of his father’s tenure in Baltimore were the gedolim that graced their home during that time. His father had known them back in the Old Country, and they had come to America to fundraise. At the table next to his desk, there is a letter-sized paper at the head, tucked neatly under the glass.

“Rav Elchanan Wasserman Hy”d ztz”l sat at this table in our house in Baltimore 1938” reads a caption for the famous photo of the Baranovich Rosh Yeshivah, Rav Elchonon Wasserman, who was in the United States on an epic fundraising mission for his poverty-stricken yeshivah back in Europe.

“I remember him arriving home from shul on Friday evening, and my father wanted to honor him by giving him his seat at the head of the table,” says Reb Moshe. “Reb Elchonon would have nothing of it. Nevertheless, my father insisted, until a compromise was reached. My mother, with her womanly intuition, set up two places side by side at the head of the table.”

After the seudah, many Baltimore residents joined the Schwabs, where Rav Elchanan relayed stories and divrei Torah. Later that night, Rav Schwab glanced into the room where their guest was sleeping (he had left the door open) and saw him sleeping peacefully, his two hands folded under the side of his head.

“My father compared his look of total trust and bitachon in Hashem to that of my infant brother Myer, who was also peacefully sleeping nearby with full trust that all of his needs would be taken care of by his parents,” recalls Reb Moshe. “To us, this was a vivid lesson in bitachon.”

The Ponevezher Rav, who had first encouraged a young Shimon Schwab to attend the Eastern European yeshivos, also visited. He was a gifted orator, a visionary and dreamer who could hold audiences spellbound. “Many people came to hear him, both in our house and in shul, when he spoke on several occasions. He was a master storyteller, especially about his recollections of the Chofetz Chaim.”

The Mirrer Rosh Yeshivah, Rav Eliezer Yehuda Finkel, from whom Rav Schwab received semichah, also spent a week in the Schwab house. Here, too, Reb Moshe has an interesting recollection. “He always davened Shacharis k’vasikin, in which the Shemoneh Esreh is said exactly at the moment of sunrise. In conformity with this timing, he davened Shacharis privately in his room in our house. Otherwise, he davened with us in shul.”

Another frequent guest was a young, recently married Rav Mordechai Gifter, who had grown up in Baltimore, attended the city’s public school system as “Max Gifter,” and returned as a ben Torah of the highest order after his own Telz yeshivah experience.

(Rav Gifter’s stay in Baltimore was somewhat unplanned. In 1939, he became engaged to Shoshana Bloch, the daughter of Telzer mashgiach Rav Zalman Bloch. Prior to his wedding, the chassan returned to the US to visit his parents in Baltimore, fully planning to return to Lithuania for his wedding and join the yeshivah as a yungerman. When gathering storm clouds made it obvious he couldn’t return, the chassan arranged for his kallah’s family to join him in the US. But only the kallah came; her parents chose not to abandon their community. The chasunah took place in Baltimore, with the Bloch family still in war-torn Lithuania.)

After marrying, Rav Gifter stayed in Baltimore, landing positions as a rav and as a rebbi in Ner Yisroel. As a guest at the Schwabs, the fiery Torah luminary enjoyed sparring with Rav Schwab’s determined 15-year-old bechor over hashkafic nuances.

“I remember having quite a spirited discussion with him at one Shabbos lunch concerning the topic of Torah im derech eretz,” Reb Moshe says, smiling. “My father kept wisely silent and smiled at my sophomoric efforts in attempting to argue this great philosophical issue with one of the great Torah leaders of the day.”

MESORES ASHKENAZ

New York, 1958

Rav Breuer was aging and he wanted a successor who was younger and able to relate to the Mesores Ashkenaz in the new American setting which was influenced by the yeshivah world.

He chose my father as a worthy proponent of these ideals

IN

1958, Rav Schwab received an invitation from Rav Yosef Breuer of K’hal Adath Jeshurun in Washington Heights, New York, the successor kehillah to Rav Hirsch’s Frankfurt kehillah in the hallowed mesorah of Ashkenaz Jewry, to join him in the rabbinate. Rav Breuer, whose wife had passed away shortly before, asked his shul’s board to hire a “second rav” — not an assistant — since he could no longer lead the flourishing kehillah by himself.

There was another reason Rav Breuer wanted Rav Schwab. The KAJ Kehillah was originally comprised of German refugees, led by Rav Breuer, a grandson of Rav Hirsch, who was devoted to Torah im derech eretz as the ideal path for all Jews to follow. Rav Breuer felt that his responsibility was to his own kehillah, and he never sought “validation” for his kehillah’s approach.

His attitude may have stemmed, in part, from an unfortunate incident that occurred shortly after he arrived in America and was invited to a rabbinic conference. As he ascended to the podium, he heard another rav on the dais whisper, “Vos redt ehr, der Yekkeh?” — loosely translated as “What is the German saying?” That was the last time Rav Breuer spoke outside his own kehillah.

(The particular term that this rav used is considered derogatory, and Reb Moshe warned me that the word should not appear in print. He consented after it was explained that this was an opportunity to make his distaste for the term known.)

Meanwhile, KAJ was growing. Children of the original members were learning in mainstream yeshivos that advocated for a “Torah only” approach and not the one promulgated by Rav Hirsch. Rav Breuer understood that the kehillah, isolated as it was on the tip of Manhattan, could not stay isolated from the broader Torah community forever. The younger generation would need a rav who could guide them.

“He felt Father would be the ideal candidate, based on the younger people who were now expanding into the world, and he wanted them to have somebody they could relate to a little bit outside the narrow confines of Hirschian ideology,” says Reb Moshe. “He wanted somebody who had a little broader outlook.”

Rav Schwab was faithful to Hirschian ideology, a son of Frankfurt, having been reared in the Realschule like his father and grandfather before him, and attended the Torah Lehranstalt founded by Rav Breuer. Yet he was also a product of Telz and Mir and more attuned to yeshivish hashkafos. That Rav Breuer had the wisdom to bring on Rav Schwab was a testament to his foresight and understanding of the kehillah’s evolving dynamics.

The ensuing partnership was characterized by harmony, cooperation, and mutual respect. The minhag in KAJ was that the Rav would give a derashah only twice a month.

“Rav Breuer and my father alternated,” remembers Rav Moshe. “Every other week, when Rav Breuer spoke, they would put up a sign that read ‘Predigt’ — the German word for sermon. And if my father was speaking, it would say ‘Sermon.’

Rav Breuer’s decision to bring Rav Schwab into the KAJ Rabbinate, one of the most prestigious rabbinic positions of his day was a testament to his foresight, but also to his piety. Reb Moshe fills in the historical context:

“When Rav Shlomo Breuer passed away in 1926, there was a split in the community in Frankfurt as to who should succeed Rav Shlomo as rav. For two generations, the rabbanus had been in the Hirsch family, first by Rav Hirsch and then his son-in-law, Rav Shlomo Breuer. There was an assumption that Rav Shlomo’s son Rav Refoel would take over. However, many in the community were not in favor of a “dynasty” and wanted the kehillah’s position to be open to others, too.”

One of the most vocal proponents of the position going to an outsider was Rav Shimon’s father, Leopold, who had earned the nickname “der Loeb — the lion” for his tenacious commitment to Yiddishkeit. The community held an election, which Rav Refoel Breuer lost. The machlokes had been l’Sheim Shamayim, yet the Breuer family was hurt nevertheless.

The Frankfurt kehillah barely made it for one more decade before being decimated at the hands of the Nazis. Upon arriving in New York, Rav Yosef Breuer founded the kehillah, this time on American shores, and three seismic decades after the Breuers and Schwabs found themselves on opposing sides, Rav Breuer was inviting the son of “der Loeb” to join him in the Rabbinate.

A WIDER PLATFORM

New York

“He had a way of explaining difficult things to the people in written form and in spoken form. So he was a master communicator and he also had a personality that connected with people”

R

av Schwab would go on to lead the kehillah for the next 37 years, which provided him a platform as a worldwide Torah spokesman, posek, and leader. In keeping with Rav Breur’s intentions, he maintained and beautifully interpreted the Ashkenaz mesorah, perpetuating its relevance for a new generation of American-born congregants.

The Rav also expanded the kehillah’s educational focus. He was the dean of the yeshivah, and together with Rav Breuer, instrumental in the founding of such kehillah institutions as the mesivta and Bais Yaakov, the beis hamedrash, teachers’ seminary, and kollel. He advocated for the institutions and was devoted to individuals. As a trusted confidant, his ready smile, wise counsel, and brachos and tefillos for the needy and sick were sought from far and wide.

Like the kehillah he was raised in and eventually led, Rav Schwab was scrupulously honest in financial matters; he detested deceit or pretense of any kind.

“His heart was especially warm to those who had personal family problems due to an inadequate income,” says Reb Moshe. “He would scrupulously adhere to the laws of maaser kesafim — which he, personally, extended to the full chomesh. He would keep an exact record of his credits and debits in his maaser account, and on his birthday each year, he would clear the slate and forgive any credits due him.”

He once told an individual who had been having financial difficulties that the secret of good parnassah is scrupulous adherence to maaser.

The Rav was active on the broader Torah scene. One field that spoke to his heart was that of chinuch, the heroes of which he compared to the Leviim, whose main function was to teach Torah. Long before it was the vogue, he advocated for respectable paychecks for mechanchim. He was involved in Torah Umesorah, and his Agudah convention speeches were a highlight for many English-speaking Torah Jews. Many of the Rav’s major addresses, articles, and lectures were incorporated into three books: Selected Writings, Selected Speeches, and Selected Essays.

The Rav’s “magnum opus” was his Maayan Beis HaSho’eivah, a treasure trove of his most original and profound thoughts on Chumash and other topics, and Reb Moshe published his father’s speeches on tefillah and various seforim on Nach, which have become classics in Jewish homes the world over.

He also penned a small pamphlet called Eilu v’Eilu — These and Those, in which he described the Torah im derech eretz approach and the more yeshivish “Torah only” approach, validating both. The Rav was uniquely qualified for this task, as he embodied in one person two diverse Torah cultures: the glorious Frankfurt tradition of Rav Hirsch, with its emphasis on adherence to the emes and insistence on applying Torah to every area of public and private endeavor, and unwavering devotion to intense limud Torah.

In his long and productive life, Rav Schwab himself encompassed both.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1054)