“The whole flight I couldn’t rest,” she said, “because I knew I’d seen you before. You’re on the Vhaarev Na video!”

Living Higher

R

abbi Dovid Newman, Torah entrepreneur par excellence and founder of Vhaarev Na, was recently preparing to board a flight to Johannesburg for a Kinyan Masechta siyum when two fellow passengers, a distinguished-looking non-Jewish couple, approached him.

The husband introduced himself as a retired commercial pilot and his wife as a principal at a Catholic school in Toronto.

“I recognize you from somewhere,” said the wife to Rabbi Newman.

Rabbi Newman, dumbfounded, replied, “I’m a teacher in Rockland County.”

The woman said she’d never been there but insisted that their paths had crossed before. The mystery was unsolved at boarding time, but when their flight landed in South Africa 13 hours later, the woman once again approached Rabbi Newman.

“The whole flight I couldn’t rest,” she said, “because I knew I’d seen you before. You’re on the Vhaarev Na video!”

The woman knew all the lyrics to Baruch Levine’s “V’haarev Na.” She explained to an astounded Rabbi Newman that as an educator, she constantly researches new methodologies and ideas she can use to help her students.

Her online searches for “learning excitement” brought her to the Vhaarev Na website. She was mesmerized by the passion the program instilled in young men for their studies. She watched the video multiple times — boys learning as the song plays in the background, and Rabbi Newman speaking.

We are taught that mitzvah goreres mitzvah — one mitzvah brings about another. The Vhaarev Na movement has advanced an incalculable surplus of limud haTorah.

And now, we learn that it has created a tremendous kiddush Hashem as well.

Sign of the Times

Travelers plying the roads in the Empire and Garden States are used to the billboards hawking the latest model Lexus or smiling injury attorneys promising to fight for your rights.

But recently, these signs have been sharing a different message entirely.

“Which Masechta in Talmud has the Most Words?” asks one.

“Where in the Talmud Does Tosafot Quote the Rambam?” asks another.

These are ads for A-Time’s “Shas-a-Thon” program, an initiative to learn all of Shas collectively, in one evening under one roof, as a merit for those who need help with fertility issues.

“Which Masechta in Talmud has no Tanu Rabbanan?” asks one sign, directing drivers to loftier thoughts.

The question is confounding. The phrase tanu Rabbanan means “the Rabbis taught,” and is ubiquitous in Talmud, opening hundreds of sugyas. It is hard to imagine a masechta without it.

But a legendary story in yeshivah lore gives the answer. A group of yeshivah students in the Mir beis medrash were chatting about mundane matters when they should have been learning the assigned masechta — Nedarim.

Suddenly, one of the talmidim noticed the rosh yeshivah, Rav Nochum Partzovitz, approaching. Not wanting to get chastised for idle chatter, he began to sway before his shtender and called out in the traditional sing-song, “tanu Rabbanan!”

The Rosh Yeshivah stopped in his tracks and sighed. “Dos nisht [not this],” he admonished. “In all of Maseches Nedarim, the words tanu Rabbanan are not found.”

Their bluff was called.

The boys may have not been the most studious, but industrious they were. They rode the 402 bus from Jerusalem to Bnei Brak, to the Kollel Chazon Ish. When Rav Chaim Kanievsky looked up from his Gemara, the bochurim approached him, asking if the words tanu Rabbanan ever appear in Nedarim.

“Yes,” Rav Chaim replied, “it appears once.”

The bochurim smirked, eager to relay the information to Rav Nochum. Rav Chaim noticed their smugness and asked why they wanted to know. They relayed the story of how they were caught.

Rav Chaim broke out into a big smile. “The Mirrer Rosh Yeshivah is right,” he said. “On daf chaf-zayin in Nedarim it says, ‘Man Tanna d’tana lehu d’tanu Rabbanan — who is the Tanna who taught this that the Rabbis taught?’ It is not a conventional tanu Rabbanan, as it only occurs in middle of a phrase. But you were chanting it in the usual way.”

Such was the mastery of Rav Nochum Partzovitz.

Something to ponder as one continues over the Goethals Bridge…

The Lens

A group of visiting medical students in the Lakewood Fellowship program took part in a course taught by Dr. Daniel Roth, a local ophthalmologist. One of the classes Dr. Roth taught covered how halachah is formulated and handed down through the generations — from Har Sinai to modern-day poskim.

The students then entered the beis medrash, where they encountered Rav Shmuel Felder, one of Beis Medrash Govoha’s senior poskim. In a mid-program survey, several of the medical students rated the top experience of the program as being able to meet a living embodiment of the mesorah that Dr. Roth had presented.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1045)