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Rav Ahron is a born-and-bred native of New York’s Lower East Side, where his parents, both Holocaust survivors — his father had lost a wife and children in Europe — settled after the war. He attended the local Rabbi Jacob Joseph School (RJJ), where Rav Zeidel Epstein taught the 11th-grade shiur. “Until this day,” Rav Ahron says, “he remains my image of an ish shaleim and a mechanech. He had incredible insight, and he was emes all the way, so if he had a vested interest in something, he would tell you right away. To him, there was no difference between, for example, helping me decide whether I should go to the Mir or to Ponevezh and helping another guy decide whether to go to Brooklyn College or City College.

“Although he had learned by Rav Shimon Shkop, in class he would concentrate on basic pshat; only twice during my entire year with him did he mention a lomdishe point. But I heard from guys who were in his beis medrash shiur when he later moved to Eretz Yisrael that he used to repeat entire maarachos from Rav Shimon. I think he looked around our classroom and said to himself, ‘These are 11th graders and this is not for them. I’m a mechanech.’ It was part of his innate integrity that he was able to say, ‘It’s not about me. Who am I talking to and what does he need?’

“He remains my golden yardstick for the emes that a person needs to apply to himself vis-a-vis his talmidim. You can’t tell a talmid what to do when you have a vested interest. I think rabbanim need to be able to say, ‘I have negius and I can’t deal with this issue.’ If a rosh yeshivah tells a bochur, ‘I’m telling you to stay here in yeshivah because it will be good for you,’ I mean, hello? When boys ask me whether to stay, I tell them I’m speaking as a salesman, not as daas Torah.”

In RJJ, Rav Ahron excelled in what interested him most — his secular studies — scoring highly on statewide tests. But toward the end of his high school years, several people influenced him to pursue full-time learning, and upon graduation, he made his way to the Mir in Jerusalem.

It was 1970, at just the point that the Mir had started to become a destination for American boys — the years of its explosive growth were still far in the future. Rav Ahron says that when he looks back at that time, he gets a bit scared thinking what could have gone wrong for him as a callow American boy just out of high school. “There was no hashgachah, nobody told you what you can do and what you can’t do. But on the other hand, the gadlus of the Mir in those days was that Rav Chaim Kamil ztz”l sat here, and Rav Avraham Auerbach sat there, and Rav Chaim Dovid Rottenberg sat in another corner and you could just turn around and tap them on the shoulder to speak with them. On Friday afternoons, Rav Nochum would sit on the stoop and polish his shoes, that’s how unpretentious the Mir is.”

“Rav Nochum,” of course, is Rav Nochum Partzovitz ztz”l, Rav Chaim Shmuelevitz’s son-in-law (and Rav Asher Arieli’s father-in-law) and the moreh derech for a generation of talmidim, including many Americans, in how to arrive at fundamentally clear pshat in a sugya. As Rav Ahron reminisces about his years with Rav Nochum, one can see in his eyes that he’s back at his rebbi’s side in the original Mir beis medrash. “Rav Nochum’s clarity in the sugya was incomparable, as was his total immersion in learning. And it’s hard to describe his humility outside of learning — in Torah, he was a tiger, but in everything else, there was nobody there.

“His career as a maggid shiur was like a supernova, producing most of his talmidim in all of ten years, starting when he became ill. In 1970 he was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, and that was the time talmidim started coming to the Mir. For Rav Chaim’s shiur you had to know Shas, which is why his mareh mekomos were from all over Shas. But the mareh mekomos for Rav Nochum’s shiur were the Gemara and the Rishonim. And after he had finished you said to yourself, ‘Wow, I was blind.’

“He used to say, ‘The emes doesn’t belong to me,’ and indeed, he had no sense of self. There were tapes of his shiurim and a certain rosh yeshivah of Yeshivah X came to him to borrow his tapes for the zeman. But when he came again the next zeman, Rav Nochum’s son Tzvi said to his father quietly, ‘Abba, I’m not giving him the tapes. Last zeman, he said over your shiurim in his own name.’ Hearing that, Rav Nochum responded, ‘Really? That’s fantastic, they’ll finally know pshat in Yeshivah X!’ His attitude was, ‘What do I care? They’re going to know how to learn.’”

Is This a Role Model?

Rav Lopiansky’s connection to his mentors, who ultimately shaped his aspirations and worldview, have clearly influenced his own views on chinuch.

“Once chinuch progresses into the teenage years, a child begins to assert his independence from his parents, and a rebbi or role model figure becomes much more important than his parents,” he feels. “Even if his parent is a very chashuve person, he will be drawn toward a different charismatic figure. Later, once he matures, he may go back to valuing his parent greatly again.

“So the parents’ job during those years is to select the right role model for their child,” Rav Ahron continues. “It’s not enough that you hear about someone that he’s a tremendous talmid chacham or that he gives a great shiur. Your child will want to be like this person — although he may not end up that way — so you have to ask yourself if this is someone you would want your child to look like.”

Rav Ahron himself might be a good case study: In 1974, four years after arriving at the Mir, he married Rebbetzin Yaffa, daughter of Rav Beinish Finkel, whose father Rav Leizer Yudel Finkel had led the Mir in Europe and reestablished it in Jerusalem’s Beis Yisrael neighborhood after the war.

Rav Ahron concedes that it took him a long time to appreciate his shver’s greatness because “he had two layers. On the outside, he was witty and charming, very pleasant and always fun to be with. But never, ever would he give you anything of substance about himself. It’s only if you watched carefully that you came to see that his gadlus and his hanhagos were incredible. So was his caution in financial matters, in issurim, in not being dependent on people. He never took a nickel from the yeshivah to live on because he never wanted any of his decisions to be colored by that. He spent a lot of time and mental energy — and he was brilliant — figuring out what are you allowed to do, what you have to do, and what can’t you do.”

Over the course of his many years in Eretz Yisrael, Rav Ahron came to know and learn from many great people. During his first decade in Eretz Yisrael, Rav Yitzchok Hutner began traveling there for extended stays, and Rav Ahron became enchanted by the unique approach of that master of Jewish thought.

Although circumstances prevented him from gaining a personal relationship with the Rosh Yeshivah, his influence on Rav Ahron is evident from the collection of essays on Jewish thought that the latter published under the nom de plume of “A. Scheinman.” He used that name, Rav Ahron says, “because in my shver’s family, writing on machshavah — and in English yet — was something that just wasn’t done, and they would have been very uncomfortable with it. The name Scheinman came about when I submitted a piece on marriage to the Jewish Observer and the editor, Rabbi Nisson Wolpin, casting about for a pen name for me, said, ‘What’s your wife’s name, Yaffa? Okay, Yaffa’s husband translates in Yiddish as Sheine’s mahn.’ So A. Scheinman it became.”

Believe It

The love for machshavah that Rav Hutner had sparked in him was further nurtured when Rav Ahron began regularly attending the shiurim of Rav Moshe Shapiro in 1980. He had first heard Rav Moshe speak a decade earlier upon his arrival in Yerushalayim, and he remembers being astounded as the then relatively unknown yungerman with the reddish-brown beard held forth. “For me,” Rav Ahron says simply, “Rav Moshe just opened up so much, so much.

“Here in Silver Spring, in the yeshivah,” Rav Ahron explains, “we try to give over this chelek of Torah. Of course, machshavah and hashkafah are two separate areas, and while the former might not be inspiring to some bochurim, they all need to get clarity in hashkafah. For that reason, I give a shiur on Shabbos mornings based on the two volumes I put out on Chumash called Yesodei HaTorah. It brings together the words of the Rishonim on the fundamentals of Torah beliefs as they relate to the parshah.

“In our yeshivah, since many of the boys will be pursuing professional careers and the town itself is comprised of people with a strong intellectual orientation,” he says, “it’s a given that our talmidim need the knowledge in this area that will enable them to know what a Jew believes.” In the case of someone who grows up in a totally insulated environment, some might make the argument that he doesn’t need to learn about basic Jewish beliefs, but Rav Lopiansky finds it hard to accept that this part of Torah, which comprises the whole first chelek of the Rambam’s Mishneh Torah, could be deemed irrelevant to a Torah Jew today.

“The Chovos Halevavos and the Ramchal both make the point that we tend to neglect that which is most relevant to our lives,” he says. “People spend a great amount of time learning parts of Torah that are not currently relevant to us like Kodshim and Taharos — b’ezras Hashem they should soon be relevant again — so the Rambam’s Sefer Hamada should be considered at least as relevant.

“Does a bochur need to delve into what the world outside believes, with what Christianity is and why it’s wrong? That’s not appropriate for everybody. But certainly the fundamentals of our own faith, what their sources are, some basic disagreements among the Rishonim in this area are all vital, and it’s up to a rebbi to tailor it to the world that is real to his talmid.

“After all, what is emunah peshutah? If it’s just that I believe because I believe, then that’s true of anybody who believes anything, so that’s not real belief at all. The Rambam says in Moreh Nevuchim that if one can’t define what it is he believes in, that’s not called belief. How can you say you believe in Hashem if you can’t give a basic explanation as brought by the Rambam of what we mean when we say Hashem?”

A Bigger World

Rav Ahron’s encounters with greatness have not only enriched him personally, but have helped shape his approach to guiding the growth in Torah and avodas Hashem of his talmidim. Rav Ahron is not hesitant to sing the praises of his boys, saying that “in terms of havanah, our bochurim really know their stuff; I’ve gotten very positive feedback from the Mir about our boys excelling, knowing the sugya as a whole.” And he has a unique vantage point from which to measure the quality of the yeshivah’s products: He serves as the Mir Yeshivah’s bochen, giving the farher (entrance test) to all American bochurim who seek admittance to the yeshivah.

In a practice reminiscent of his brother-in-law Rav Nosson Tzvi Finkel ztz”l, he offers incentives and prizes to the bochurim in his yeshivah. “The boys have a pace that enables them to cover ground and we also push them to learn the shakla v’tarya of the Gemara by heart, with the incentive of a cash prize,” he says. “The first year we did this, a bochur learned all of Maseches Shabbos shakla v’tarya, but he told me, ‘Rebbi, I don’t think I really know it.’ I told him, ‘You’ll see you do. Once you get it in there, it stays there, just waiting to be retrieved.’ Two years later, he was asked to say a daf yomi shiur in Shabbos, and he came to me and said, ‘I opened the Gemara and it came back to me.’”

But part of his mandate is to instill breadth of a different sort in his students. “There’s a misunderstanding of what it means to be broad-minded, in the sense that people assume that it requires having a lot of formal education,” he says. “Yet you were able to converse about a wide range of topics with the roshei yeshivah whom I remember from the previous generation. One doesn’t have to be a doctor to understand what a doctor’s role is, how to ask intelligent questions, how to research something. Broad-mindedness means having a mentality that allows one to see a bigger world and understanding the place of everything within it. “Part of what being machshiv Torah involves is being mevatel everything else, but only if it’s approached correctly — meaning that we understand that all the arts and sciences in the world will not make you a better person per se and that only Torah does that. But to think that there’s no such thing as chochmah, that it can’t be a tool and also have a place in the world, well, Rav Wolbe writes in Alei Shur that it’s a petty, small-minded person who dismisses everything in the world as being useless.”

Rav Ahron still remembers a disturbing comment made back when he was a bochur in the Mir. “There was an older bochur who was a talmid chacham, although I wouldn’t call him a baal avodah or baal mussar, who remarked that all the world’s philosophy and literature doesn’t hold a candle to a shmuess by Rav Chaim Shmuelevitz. I asked him very gently whether he’d ever done the comparison he spoke of. Now, if he would have been someone expressing an inner truth, if he would’ve been a Rav Chatzkel Levenstein-type person, where he’s a fire, whose world consists of his davening and learning and everything else in his world is nullified to that, then such a statement has an inner validity and I accept it because he lives that reality. But this fellow was not like that at all, he didn’t have a problem enjoying the world’s permitted pleasures, so coming from him, there’s a narrow-mindedness to that statement. Either make the statement because kol atzmosai tomarnah, your whole being expresses it, or don’t make it. But don’t toss it without proof, without experience.”

Rav Ahron feels that a respect for chochmah is a crucial element in any modern mechanech’s tool kit. “Part of the job of a rav or mechanech if he has a daas Torah, is to talk to professionals such as a doctor or psychologist, and translate that information into appropriate practical terms and to determine what the halachah should be. Now, it may be that the information he receives, especially in the case of a psychologist, leads to a course of action that is against the Torah, in which case it must not be followed. But on the other hand, the idea that a psychologist has nothing of value to offer a rav, I’m not sure where that comes from.

“As long as it’s in the realm of chochmah, then we say chochmah ba’goyim taamin. So why should it be seen as a threat that we have more and better psychological wisdom today than in the past and more qualified professionals? Is a rav expected to know all wisdom on his own without consulting professionals? Was the Brisker Rav a lesser gadol than the Chazon Ish because he didn’t give advice on how to do surgery as the Chazon Ish did? I think that’s absurd.”

Just as crucial, however, is an acknowledgement of the proper hierarchy: Torah on top doesn’t mean that Torah excludes everything else; it means that Torah subsumes everything and gives an understanding of how to use everything.

People worry if our school system does too good a job in educating our girls, making them so sophisticated and worldly that they have a hard time finding shidduchim or respecting their husbands. “But,” Rav Ahron says, “someone who is sophisticated in Torah but without formal education could be married to a woman who has an advanced education and it need not be a problem, so long as he has the necessary broad-mindedness.

“And the same is true for the woman: If she sees Torah and secular knowledge as an ‘either-or’ proposition, then as she moves forward in her career, she begins to live a contradiction as she comes to value the latter over the former. But if there’s an understanding that Torah, and only Torah, speaks about life and the tachlis of life, about moral issues, then she understands the hierarchy of Torah and that the two operate in two different realms.

“So if the chinuch is conveyed correctly, these problems of a mismatch between boys and girls shouldn’t exist.”

Portable Torah

The fact that most of his talmidim will pursue professional careers at some point has required Rav Lopiansky to give much thought to the challenge faced by bnei Torah transitioning to the workplace. How can the modern American yeshivah man-turned-balabos hold onto his learning and inspiration after leaving the yeshivah framework?

“The current issue of Klal Perspectives has a number of articles dealing with this issue of the transition from yeshivah to living in the community,” he says. “One of those pieces was written by the rav of a very successful kehillah. He writes that he has found that chassidishe yungeleit do much better in this regard and he identifies three possible reasons for that — not to argue that we all need to become chassidim, but simply that we have what to learn from them.

“First, the primary aim of the yeshivos is to produce an elite whose lives will be kulo Torah. But the implicit message — intended or not — that someone can take away is that everything else is worthless. And that means that once he leaves learning, even if he’s learning a few hours a day, he’s now living a worthless life, so how inspired can he be?

“Second, an overly zealous involvement in mitzvos is downplayed in yeshivah because it tends to take away from a focus on learning. In contrast, in a chassidishe environment there’s tremendous chavivus hamitzvos, and that’s portable to a later stage in life.

“A final difference is that a bochur in a chassidishe yeshivah has never stopped being part of a kehillah with a rebbe at its head. For a litvishe bochur or yungerman, however, once he leaves yeshivah, his rosh yeshivah is in the past. He’s coming to a shul that he has likely chosen because it’s the closest. Most people don’t choose where to live based primarily on the shul and rav that are there, but based on where his parents or in-laws live, where the houses are nicer or cheaper.

“What keeps a person learning? Psychologically, people are interested in and stay with what they’re good at. So sure, if someone can say chiddushim and give chaburos, he’ll want to continue learning. But that’s only for yechidei segulah; what about everyone else? If people learn how to learn material in a solid way, they’ll want to continue and cover large amounts and this will stay with them when they leave yeshivah too.”

That means that if a person leaves yeshivah knowing 300 blatt Gemara well, then when he has some spare time, he’ll be motivated to learn because whatever he’ll cover during that short time gets added to the bank; now he has 301 or 302 blatt in total. “It’s like someone who’s given $1,000 and puts it into savings; when he gets another 100, he has good reason to save that too, since now he’ll have $1,100,” Rav Lopiansky explains. “But if he took the $1,000 and blew it, why would he not do the same with 100? So learning in yeshivah should be done in a way that it’s portable to life beyond yeshivah.

“Another idea would be to introduce some chassidishe elements of a Shabbos tish, a Yom Tov tish. I was very connected to Rav Hutner’s maamarim and he made people look forward to a Pesach, a Succos.”

And finally, says Rav Ahron, people should seek out rabbanim who understand that their job is not only to answer sh’eilos and give drashos, but to mold a kehillah so that people feel like they’re part of something inspiring.

“There are some very promising rabbanim of that sort now,” says Rav Ahron. “People like Rav Binyomin Eisenberger, whom Rav Nosson Tzvi asked to become the rav for American chassidishe bochurim upon their return from the Mir. A rav needs to have another dimension to him that understands how to create a kehillah in which people feel they can really shteig. People need to take that into consideration when choosing a place to live, and there needs to be chinuch for rabbanim in that area too.”

Team Effort

Although Rav Ahron’s position as rosh yeshivah gives him the final say on Torah and spiritual matters in all three mosdos under his purview, he doesn’t believe in Torah institutions being guided solely by one individual. It’s an approach to communal decision-making that Rav Lopiansky says he learned first-hand from Rav Shach ztz”l. Back when the English-language Yated Ne’eman was first launched in Eretz Yisrael, Rav Ahron was part of the group of Americans putting it out. But the paper was foundering and it was suggested that a prominent English-speaking rosh yeshivah be asked to take charge of its operations. The person being considered agreed to take the head position conditional on having the final say over the staff members, who were decades his junior.

The question went to Rav Shach, whose firm response was, “It’s a mishnah: ‘Ein dan yachid ela Yechido shel Olam — only Hashem rules alone.’ Every person makes mistakes, myself included. I’ve made many mistakes in shiur on which bochurim have caught me and I had to walk off the bimah. You think I walked off because of anivus, humility? You don’t think I could have slipped out of it?” But, he continued, “Think for a minute — the bochur knows I’m wrong, I know I’m wrong, and the bochur knows that I know I’m wrong, yet I’m standing up there and holding on for dear life. Would that be a kavod or would that be a bizayon? It was to save my kavod that I walked off. And so, I will never allow for the creation of a mosad with just one dei’ah running it.”

Rav Ahron has implemented this approach in his own institutions, forming a rabbinical governing board comprised of five local rabbanim, which meets to discuss various issues that arise. “If I decide to override everyone else, it means I’m accountable because I went against five other people to do so.”

As Rav Aharon shares one last memory of Rav Nochum that has stayed with him, everything he’s been trying to accomplish all these years in Silver Spring — this slice of American suburbia so very far from the hallowed halls of the Mir — comes into sharp focus: “One night, I went over with my chavrusa, Reuven Schepansky — today a rosh yeshivah in Mirrer Yeshivah in Brooklyn — to speak to Rav Nochum in Bava Metzia. I still remember the sugya. He already wasn’t well, so he was standing with his back to the seforim shrank holding on. Reuven told him a kushya he had and then he told him what he wanted to say to answer it.

“He was about to go on to present his whole shtikel Torah based on this, but Rav Nochum stopped him, as an incredible smile crossed his face. He stood there for a few minutes, dveiken’zich, smiling, moving gently back and forth, as if to say, Ah! This is the right key for the sugya. It was only a few minutes later that he ‘came down to earth,’ and asked him to continue with the rest.

“The image of that sublime smile has never left me.”

(Originally Featured in XXX, Issue XXX)