Photos: Mattis Goldberg, Mishpacha archives

R
av Aryeh Elyashiv sits in a closet-sized room near the entrance of the caravan and blocks the doorway.

The mashgiach is in there, Rav Don Segal, his eyes closed as he sways back and forth and listens to the derashah from inside the crowded room. A slim young man balances a tray covered in small white plates, a slice of Yerushalmi kugel and a pickle on each, and tries to get through the tiny room to access the shul.

No, Reb Aryeh coolly holds up a hand, not now. Wait for the derashah to end. Don’t crowd the mashgiach. There is something in his posture, in his motion, that lets the young waiter know that he’s someone to be listened to — and it’s not just because he runs the kollel in the caravan.

Reb Aryeh’s zeide is gone six and a half years now. This caravan, at one time the central switchboard for the Torah world, has long been orphaned. Reb Aryeh keeps it going, making sure it’s kept up, that the avreichim who learn there are paid, that the glory of what was isn’t forgotten.

On this summer night in Tammuz, Rav Yosef Shalom Elyashiv’s yahrtzeit, it hums with life once again. And just for a few minutes, all the alumni are back in place, the retinue of gabbaim and attendants in formation, the crowd filling the caravan, peering in through the windows, just as they once did when the shiur drew hundreds each evening, when regulars and tourists clamored to hear the words of the gadol hador.

“I Was Always Nothing” 

I catch Reb Aryeh the next day. He is in the opposite mode now, trying to blend in with the after-Minchah shuffle in a large shul in his home neighborhood of Ramat Shlomo. He teases a yeshivah ketanah bochur about davening in the shtiblach rather than yeshivah, and wishes the owner of the grocery store next door that Hashem send him a nice crop of watermelons for the coming Shabbos.

He welcomes me to a random table against the back wall of the shul and jokes that it’s his office.

I turn off my tact button and wonder about the comedown, what’s it like. Not so long ago, he was the guy.

I tell him that I remember being on a flight to Eretz Yisrael and hearing two fellow travelers, both well-known philanthropists, arguing over who had Aryeh Elyashiv’s newest phone number.

On another occasion, on one Erev Shabbos, I was in the anteroom outside the Belzer Rebbe’s private room when a gray-bearded man came through carrying an immense kugel. “Aryeh Elyashiv had a baby girl, he’s making a kiddush tomorrow,” the older man instructed a driver, “this is from the Ruv, bring it to him.”

He laughs at the stories, and nods. “So you want to know what it’s like? Today they don’t fight over my phone number, that’s the question?”

No, I say, trying to articulate a more respectable question, but he sees that by no, I mean yes. That’s takeh the question. That, and also, how come we’ve seen others — well-positioned gabbaim and family members of gedolei hador — who seemed unable to readapt to life as a normal person after the passing of the gadol, while he, Reb Aryeh, seems to have embraced it.

“Listen, it wasn’t hard to go back to being nothing, because I was always nothing,” he says, waving his hand, as if to indicate an empty space. “I had a choshuv zeide. He saw that I’m the sort that likes getting involved, so he let me help him. That’s it. Now he isn’t here, so I don’t get that zechus anymore.”

To understand his zeide’s influence, he tells me, one needs to appreciate the complete and total simplicity of the household, of the key players in Rav Elyashiv’s orbit. “The Zeide wasn’t about shtick,” he says. “It was about learning Torah, and whomever he felt was dedicated to that end was allowed in. There wasn’t room for operators. Rav Efrati, his talmid, earned his trust, he was in charge. My siblings and my cousins and myself were all directed by my aunt, Rebbetzin Leah Auerbach, whom my zeide trusted implicitly. She was the only person on earth who could ask the Zeide how he’d slept, if he wanted to eat a bit more. The rest of us could never speak to him that way.

“Now, my brother, Reb Yisroel, did the morning shift. He was meshamesh the Zeide the first half of the day. That time was closed to the public, so my brother is less well-known than I am. My zeide would nod to him, ‘Gut morgen’ as he came in. The Zeide’s ‘gut morgen’ included ‘How are you, how is the family, how are things.’

“I was there during the afternoon hours, when there was kabbalas kahal, so there were more questions to ask him, more give and take. So people think I had more of a responsibility than I really had.”

Every Day a Gift 

Standing on the sunny porch of a shul in Ramat Shlomo, Reb Aryeh lets himself go back to the world of six years ago.

Let me tell you a vort from my elter-zeide, Rav Aryeh Levin, he offers.

The pasuk says Hagar began to disdain Sarah Imeinu, feeling that she, Hagar, was more righteous — evidenced by the fact that she had become pregnant while Sarah had not. Sarah asked Avraham to send Hagar away after that.

Rav Aryeh Levin compared this to a person driving up the street who sees an elderly man carrying heavy bags. The person offers the older man a ride, and the passenger is grateful. Then, he asks the driver to come help him bring the bags into his apartment. And then, he wants some company; he is lonely.

The driver, who wanted to do something nice, finds himself growing frustrated with how much time his act of chesed is taking. This isn’t what he had in mind.

But what if the old man walking was Rav Moshe Feinstein, asks Reb Aryeh? “The driver feels like he won the lottery, right? He can walk Rav Moshe in and sit with him. What a zechus. My elter-zeide said, as long as Hagar appreciated the zechus she had to work for tzaddikim, she was an effective, happy part of the household. Once she saw herself as better, she was no longer motivated to help. Everything was a burden for her. So Sarah sent her away. A disgruntled worker doesn’t do their job.”

Reb Aryeh pauses. “I lived that vort. Every day was a gift, a privilege. It made me happy to be there. I saw the Zeide on difficult days, when he wasn’t feeling well, when there was tremendous pressure from other people. Not once, never, did he raise his voice or lose patience. It was a different world, being around him.

“I felt like I won the lottery every single day.”

Without Pretense 

Despite his title as “the Rebbe” to his talmidim, the court of Rav Elyashiv was no-frills. In his later years when he was too old to walk to his own Tiferes Bochurim shul located on top of Meah Shearim shtiblach, the posek hador started to deliver his daily shiur in a makeshift, prefabricated caravan.

He spent most of his hours closeted in his room, seated at the simple table draped with a white tablecloth, receiving delegations of dayanim, rabbanim, donors, and politicians with as few words as possible. There was no small talk, no niceties, no convivial schmoozing.

Questions were posed. Rav Elyashiv, the posek, answered.

Then he would say, “Nu,” his eyes looking hungrily at the Gemara nearby.

The attendants in this court were similarly without pretense. Doors opened, doors closed, but there was little backroom dealing.

“The Zeide wouldn’t have tolerated exaggerated reception ceremonies — he wouldn’t have appreciated if we were making it about anything other than it was. He saw his role as answering questions, nothing more. He wasn’t a kingmaker, so neither were we. He was a posek, a Jew answering questions.”

A frequent visitor to the home, a well-known Israeli politician, reflects. “There is a concept of a ‘chatzer’ [a court], but not there, no way. If someone in the room, a family member or gabbai, would offer an opinion, Rav Elyashiv waved it away. He dealt with every question like it was a halachic question: things were black-and-white. If he felt that one his attendants had a negiyus, then they wouldn’t last long in his service. So of course no one inflated their roles, it wasn’t possible. Reb Aryeh, with his humility, is a perfect example of that.”

Torah, Torah, Torah 

In the final days of Rebbetzin Shaina Elyashiv’s life, she seemed to be aggravated about something. It wasn’t the pain, the medication, or fear.

“It was always about the Tatte’s learning,” she told her children. “When children weren’t feeling well or were off from school, I brought him his meals in shul so that he could learn in peace. When we had no money to make Shabbos, I never asked for his help. Now, I worry who will keep him by the Gemara after sheva brachos is over,” she said, using a euphemism for the mourning period.

Her eyes rested on her daughter, Rebbetzin Leah Auerbach. Rebbetzin Elyashiv knew the answer.

On the last day of shivah for the rebbetzin, Rav Elyashiv looked at his children. “I would like everyone to please go home, don’t worry about me,” he said.

They all left. All except for Rebbetzin Leah, and one grandson, Reb Aryeh.

“Look,” Reb Aryeh shrugs, “I’m the sort of person who gets involved. If the back door on the bus is stuck, I’m the one who calls out to the driver. So I just got involved in doing what needed to be done. My aunt allowed me in, she was in charge. She gave me the zechus.”

For 18 years, Reb Aryeh did “what needed to be done” and in the process, managed the impossible: He ensured that Rav Elyashiv had the privacy and peace of mind to learn.

And yet, talmidim noticed the subtlest change. It was Reb Aryeh who also allowed Klal Yisrael to “share” the Zeide.

“I learned, early on, that there will be people who will never like me. They wanted access, they wanted time, and it wasn’t mine to give. My first allegiance was to the Zeide. We were raised knowing that his time was sacred. If he would have been the sort of zeide that my friends had, if he’d sat around and chatted with the eineklach, then Klal Yisrael wouldn’t have had Rav Elyashiv! So that was the goal, to keep the door closed, to make sure he had his meals, his medicines, that the apartment was warm so he could learn. At the same time, I also felt an achrayus to allow my zeide’s light to be shared with others.”

“Reb Aryeh took a lot of arrows,” a close talmid of Rav Elyashiv’s tells me. “He ran the house of a gadol hador and did it with firmness, efficiency, and so much middas harachamim.”

“The People Need Salvation” 

The relationship between Reb Aryeh and his zeide had always been unique. His father, Rav Moshe Elyashiv, is Rav Elyashiv’s second son and seventh child.

Reb Moshe would come to speak to his father along with the other talmidim each day, bowing with the same reverence as the others, walking out backward. His relationship was one of complete awe.

Reb Moshe’s father-in-law was also close with Rav Elyashiv. Rav Chaim Brim was a neighbor and respected colleague. In addition to being a talmid of the Chazon Ish, Reb Chaim was a Ruzhiner chassid. His grandson, Reb Aryeh, inherited the mix — the reverence of his own father and the chassidic warmth of his maternal grandfather, a man with a perpetual smile in his eyes.

And the Zeide appreciated it.

It was Reb Aryeh who introduced an innovation into a world that had been innovation-free for the better part of eight decades.

Rav Elyashiv was blessed with a sweet voice, and he would sit and sway over his Gemara through the long night, a special niggun on his lips, a chant of rapture, of serenity. There had never been a tape recorder or instrument in the house, but Reb Aryeh recognized the Zeide’s appreciation for music. In honor of a siyum, he would allow a few talented singers to approach. The Rebbi kept on learning, but he seemed to appreciate it.

Reb Aryeh allowed the crowds to come by at auspicious moments in the year: Simchas Torah following hakafos, on Purim after Megillah. It was as if he had uncovered a new, unexpected wellspring of salvation. Suddenly, thousands of people were filing by the calm, quiet figure so unaccustomed to fuss, but he accepted this charge as well.

“Zeide, Klal Yisrael darft hubben yeshuos, the people need salvation,” Reb Aryeh would say, urging his zeide to give his attention to the stream of desperate petitioners.

“He agreed. He wasn’t ready to give up his learning, but if he could help, he would.”

It was under Reb Aryeh’s care that Rav Elyashiv became “the Rebbi.” Judging from the way Rav Elyashiv took to his grandson, he was comfortable with the shift.

Not long after the Rebbetzin’s passing, Reb Aryeh and his family planned a bein hazmanim trip to the north of the country. Before leaving, he arranged for a rotation of grandchildren and children to attend to the Zeide so that Rav Elyashiv was not alone.

A day after he settled in for vacation, Reb Aryeh called his cousin to check in. “To be honest, the Zeide asked when you’re coming back,” the young man confided. Reb Aryeh hung up and started packing. His vacation was over.

Nothing Too Small 

Reb Aryeh seems to be deliberating whether or not he should share. The stories of his zeide, he wants to me understand, aren’t like stories about other people.

“He lived in an exalted place, not a rav, not a rosh yeshivah. He was a person who was one with the Torah and able to reflect its light into the world.

“No one knew my zeide. He was 90 percent hidden. Any stories you hear describe the ten percent that we were able to see.”

Reb Aryeh remembers when a prominent rabbi came to speak to Rav Elyashiv. The rabbi had been appointed to a prestigious position, one deserving of respect. At the same time, Rav Elyashiv felt this person was unworthy of the lofty title.

A moment before the visitor entered, Reb Aryeh saw his zeide stand up and look in a sefer, so he was standing when the rabbi came in. Reb Aryeh understood: The Zeide wouldn’t insult the visitor by remaining seated, but he also wouldn’t stand up for him. He’d found a way, without speaking or deliberating.

Reb Aryeh is walking again, as if willing himself to keep talking. “Whatever I tell you is going to be different from what you heard: not just about hasmadah, not just about his absolute mastery over all of Torah, but of that dimension that made him, him. The way his Torah transcended words and took him into another place.”

Rav Elyashiv was once at a tena’im celebration, surrounded by many rabbanim. The chassan delivered a shtickel Torah and quoted a Minchas Chinuch. Then, there was some murmuring from the head table. One of the older talmidei chachamim seated there called out, “There is no such Minchas Chinuch.”

The girl’s father, who’d been so proud of his future son-in-law’s erudition a moment earlier, blanched with embarrassment.

“Now, you need to understand what my zeide’s nighttime hours meant to him. They were his most precious commodity. He could learn with no disturbances, no interruptions; it was his happiest time. But the next morning, at about four o’clock, he’s not at his table singing in front of his Gemara, but in the alley outside the Batei Ungarin mikveh. He’d asked around and found out that that was when the kallah’s father usually came to toivel, to start the new day. The Zeide waited with a large bag in his hand, in it his old, worn Minchas Chinuch.”

Moments later, the kallah’s father walked down the street. Rav Elyashiv removed the huge Minchas Chinuch from the bag, opened it up, and pointed to a certain passage. “Here is the Minchas Chinuch your chassan quoted last night,” he said, then turned and headed back through the alleys of Meah Shearim to his room, back to his Gemara.

The Zeide would hand Reb Aryeh a hundred-shekel bill to be changed into five shekel coins, which he would distribute to the line of collectors that would come by his seat after Maariv every Thursday night. One week, Rav Elyashiv turned to Reb Aryeh and asked about one of the “regulars,” a collector who’d come each week for his handout and had missed that week. Reb Aryeh hadn’t paid particular attention to any of the individual collectors and shrugged.

The next week, the collector was still not there, and Rav Elyashiv commented again.

Reb Aryeh noticed an article in Hamodia about the passing of a particular Jew who had collected money for tzedakah. There was a picture accompanying the article, which Reb Aryeh showed his zeide.

“Yes, that’s the one who is missing,” Rav Elyashiv said.

“Do you understand what happened?” Reb Aryeh asks me. “The Zeide, who wasn’t sociable, who wasn’t a schmoozer, connected with people in a very real way. He didn’t see them as faceless collectors but as people, and if one of them was missing, he felt it.”

Rav Elyashiv had his own way of conveying respect and appreciation.

One Erev Shabbos, Reb Aryeh heard the Zeide wasn’t feeling well. He didn’t hesitate, jumping into a taxi in Ramat Shlomo and heading to Meah Shearim. If the Zeide was sick, Reb Aryeh, the one person he trusted with his medications, had to be there.

At the Friday night seudah, Reb Aryeh could see that the Zeide was worried. “He mentioned that I wasn’t eating enough, which was uncharacteristic. He felt badly that I wasn’t at home because of him.”

On Shabbos morning, after davening, Rav Elyashiv told Reb Aryeh, “I feel better, please go back home now. It will make me happy if you go back to your family.”

Reb Aryeh insisted that he was fine to stay in Meah Shearim until after Shabbos.

“Maybe you’re fine, but Akiva’le is waiting, Chaya is waiting,” Rav Elyashiv said, as he began to list off Reb Aryeh’s children by name.

“I was astonished that he knew their names. You could see he was feeling for them, that their father wasn’t at the Shabbos table. I said gut Shabbos and set off for the walk back home.”

A Life of Self-Control

Reb Aryeh talks about the Zeide’s defining characteristic.

A questioner approached Rav Chaim Brim in shul one day with a complicated halachic question. “My zeide, Rav Chaim, turned white. It involved a particular surgery, and the ramifications of the psak were literally life and death. He said he couldn’t answer, but went up to his mechutan, my other zeide. Rav Elyashiv showed no emotional reaction. He heard the question and answered. He radiated achrayus and confidence. That was it.”

Until Rav Elyashiv’s final day at home, he was a posek first. “He was very weak, often in pain, but his approach to every question was the same. He would focus, then immediately hone in on the issue and answer.”

Rav Elyashiv was taken to the hospital late in the winter of 2012.

“It was Shevat, but the first conversation we had after he was admitted was about matanos l’evyonim. He understood that he might not be conscious when Purim arrived, and he wanted to make sure that he gave his usual amount to the usual recipients, and he told me how to go about it.”

In the hospital, doctors and orderlies would comment to Reb Aryeh about how fortunate he was to have served this tzaddik. “They would look on at his calm, his dignity, and wish they could spend more time in his presence. I remember, the Zeide was in his hospital bed, and he asked me for something. He wasn’t speaking clearly, so I couldn’t hear. He asked again, but it still wasn’t clear. He saw that I was upset that I couldn’t understand him, and he lifted his arm, as if to calm me, and smiled. The doctors were astonished. Most elderly people, they told me, get very frustrated at not being understood, and they react with anger. They’d never seen anything like this, a 102-year-old man completely in control of his emotions.”

Inner Peace

Not long ago, months after the initial interview, I was at the Kosel. It was the slow hour, early on a rainy evening, and ahead of me, a lone figure made his way across the plaza.

There was something in the walk, a rhythm, as if he was humming.

It was Reb Aryeh.

I stopped him, told him that I’m in the middle of writing about our conversation.

Good, good, he said, but it’s not about me. If there’s a message, he continues, it’s this.

“The Zeide had this inner joy that drove him. He needed so little from the outside — his Gemara and that was it. He was in his own world, and it was so freilech.

“I once heard the Zeide tell someone, ‘If you sing Mizmor L’sodah with a tune in the morning, with simchah, then you will be happy all day.”

Reb Aryeh of the joyful demeanor and self-effacing Yerushalmi posture started to walk toward the Kosel. “The Zeide wasn’t happy at being a ‘Maran.’ He was happy at being able to learn Torah and do mitzvos.

“He was happy to be a Yid.”

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 757)