Rav Avraham’s daily shiur was given in the apartment that had belonged to Rav Chaim Shmulevitz, housed within the Mirrer yeshivah; the table they sat around was Rav Chaim’s table, the seforim they used were Rav Chaim’s seforim.

The shiur was small, the numbers hovering between eight and fifteen. This wasn’t due to unpopularity; Rav Avraham was a cherished and highly respected figure throughout all of the Mir, talmidim and hanhalah alike.

But Rav Avraham intentionally allowed only a small number of talmidim into his shiur because he wanted everyone to be able to fit around the one table. Should any attendees be relegated to seats in the back, or on the side, they would feel secondary, and Rav Avraham could not allow that.

The shiur itself was unique in that it was not delivered in any structured format. Rav Avraham would begin by reading the Gemara.

“Nu, vos meint di Gemara?” he’d ask, “What does the Gemara mean?”

A talmid would share Rashi’s commentary, and Rav Avraham would smile.

“Nu, vos meint Rashi?” he’d prod, “What does Rashi mean?”

The talmid would supply his understanding of Rashi’s words, and Rav Avraham would spring forward.

“You hear what Chesky says?!” he’d exclaim to the other talmidim. “Chesky says pshat in Rashi is like this!”

And then he’d go on, bringing proofs, refutations, counter-refutations, and further proofs to “Chesky’s pshat.”

It was an open forum; all talmidim were encouraged to join the conversation, and heated debates would often ensue. There were snippets of humor, bursts of laughter, stories of tzaddikim, and deep mussar insights, all blended into a single tapestry of pure, spirited Torah, shared around that old, worn, wooden table where Rav Chaim Shmulevitz once sat.

And if a bochur missed a shiur, he would receive not a chastisement, but a most sincere expression of remorse.

“We meeessed you!” Rav Avraham would pronounce in his accented English.

The relationships he forged with talmidim would extend far beyond the shiur room. Rav Avraham was a rebbi for life; no matter where a talmid was, or how many years had passed since he left yeshivah, Rav Avraham was a rebbi with unwavering, fatherly love.

A talmid once approached Rav Avraham and shared that an opportunity had come up for him to significantly reduce his monthly rent by moving to an apartment in a different neighborhood. But after a lengthy conversation with Rav Avraham, he decided that it would not be the right course of action to take.

Six months later, Rav Avraham approached the talmid. “Please give me your bank account details,” he said.

The talmid did so, not fully understanding why. But shortly thereafter, he understood; his account showed a deposit of several thousand shekels.

When Rav Avraham next saw the talmid, he asked him, “Nu, did you receive the money?”

“I did, Rebbi,” the talmid said, “but why did Rebbi do that?”

“It was my advice that led you to not take the decrease in rent,” Rav Avraham explained. “I felt that it’s my achrayus, so I sent you some money.”

A few months later, the talmid looked at his account, and again there was a deposit of a few thousand shekels. This went on, with several thousand shekels flowing into the account every couple of months. During this time, Rav Avraham’s health began to decline, and the talmid would make frequent trips to visit him in the hospital.

“On the night before Rosh Chodesh Shevat, I left the hospital at about nine p.m.,” the talmid recalls. “The next morning, I woke up with about twenty texts and missed calls. Overnight, Rebbi’s condition had taken sharp a turn for the worse. He was intubated and sedated.”

The future was unknown.

It was a Friday, and later in the afternoon, the talmid received a phone call. It was the Rebbetzin.

“Before my husband was intubated,” she told him, “he told me to tell you that — regarding the arrangement you have — the money won’t come in on Rosh Chodesh, as it usually does. It will come in a week or so from now.”

“That Shabbos, I met with Mirrer rosh yeshivah Rav Binyamin Carlebach,” the talmid shares. “I told him what happened. And his response was, ‘Over the past 24 hours, I’ve heard many such stories.’ ”

Reb Moshe Meisner, a close talmid, was blessed with a beautiful baby boy with a heart defect. Multiple surgeries were conducted, and although this took place in faraway America, Rav Avraham would contribute in his own way.

“Whenever there was a procedure,” recall talmidim from that era, “Rav Avraham took us all to the Kosel, where we davened together for the procedure’s success.”

Years later, on Shivah Asar B’Tammuz, Reb Moshe lay down to take a nap. An hour later, he arose to find four missed calls from Rav Avraham. Concerned, he called back.

“Moshe,” Rav Avraham spoke urgently, “I have another talmid who had a baby with a similar defect. Can you be in touch to help him?”

Reb Moshe, of course, consented.

“Multiple times over the next few months,” Reb Moshe recalls, “Rav Avraham called me to make sure I was helping this other talmid.”

He was with them in their pain and he was with them in their joy. A talmid made a bris for his son that coincided with first seder. When Rav Avraham saw that the fellow talmidim were in yeshivah, he protested.

“How can you not go to the bris?” he exclaimed.

He proceeded to charter a tender and take the whole shiur to the bris. Later, he told them, “You missed out on a seder. You have to make it up.”

When his talmid Reb Mordechai Gutfreund moved to Far Rockaway, Rav Avraham encouraged him to deliver a Chumash shiur on Thursday nights.

“He wanted to help me, and so for months, we would go through the parshah together on the phone, sometimes for two or three hours,” says Reb Mordechai. “Because of the time difference, he would wake up sometime around 3  a.m. just to learn with me. Sometimes, we would hold these sessions twice in one week.”

Rav Avraham was proud of his talmidim, and he wanted them to be proud of themselves as well. He was once in America and his talmid, Reb Binyomin Boruch Brodsky asked him, “Are you going to the gvirim?”

Rav Avraham smiled. “Mir zenen di gvirim!” he said. “We, the bnei Torah, are the gvirim!”

Every talmid of Rav Avraham knew that neither he nor his family were ever alone. If a talmid’s wife had a baby — and her mother couldn’t be there to help her — it would be the Rebbetzin who played that role, with just as much love and devotion. For his part, Rav Avraham would show up to a bris and start directing the waiters — “Put the rugelach there, the juice on the other table!”

Talmidim’s families were just as dear to him. Meir was the 12-year-old son of a close talmid whose bar mitzvah was the week of Shabbos Chanukah. He very much wanted to read the haftarah in the Mir that Shabbos, but this posed a slight challenge, since that was the week of Rav Chaim Shmulevitz’s yahrtzeit. Every year, Rav Avraham would receive maftir and read the haftarah on Shabbos Chanukah.

And so it was arranged that Rav Avraham would recite the brachos on the haftarah, but Meir would lein. For weeks thereafter, each time Rav Avraham spotted Meir, he would smile.

“We’re shutfim [partners],” he’d say. “Don’t forget we’re shutfim!”

And as much as he respected his talmidim, he demanded that they respect each other. He once brought up the mishnah in Pirkei Avos that teaches, “Shnayim sheyoshvin v’ein beneihen divrei Torah, harei zeh moshav leitzim — two sitting together who don’t share words of Torah are a company of scoffers.”

“Bring me my father’s Mishnayos,” he said.

A talmid went to the shelf and produced Rav Chaim’s Pirkei Avos. There, Rav Avraham showed them how the header to the Tosafos Yom Tov’s comment on this teaching was underlined. The Tosafos Yom Tov explains that the mishnah is not referring to two people engaged in idle talk. Rather, they are, in fact, learning Torah. However, there is no discourse — they are not talking to each other. This, the mishnah teaches, is a moshav leitzim. Rav Chaim had underlined the header to this commentary — clearly signaling his regard for its message.

Along these lines, Rav Avraham would often quote the words of Manos HaLevi, who expounds on the idea of Bnei Yisrael being counted via a machatzis hashekel rather than a whole shekel. Each Jew is a half, interdependent upon another, and it is the recognition of this that allows Bnei Yisrael to be counted as one complete whole.

“I’m not a shalem without another Yid!” Rav Avraham would cry out when sharing this thought, “I’m not a shalem without another Yid!”

He would deliver a shmuess at the beginning of the zeman, and this too was focused on the primacy of bein adam l’chaveiro. He would quote his father, who would say, “How can you learn well while a bochur on the same bench as you doesn’t have a chavrusa?”

“Six thousand yechidim,” Rav Avraham would say, “is not a yeshivah. We have to be in this together.”

His loving heart dovetailed well with his very sharp mind. Rav Avraham was known as a most keen baal eitzah, and his talmidim, as well as many others, turned to him for his incisive advice and direction.

A talmid received an offer to serve as a maggid shiur in a Yerushalayim-based yeshivah. The proposal was tempting, though it would mean leaving the Mir — and, perhaps more pertinently, Rav Avraham’s shiur. The talmid consulted with Rav Avraham several times in an effort to gain clarity on the right course of action. One evening, the talmid met with Rav Avraham in his home and, once again, brought up the question.

“Take a pen and paper,” Rav Avraham instructed him, “and write a list of mailehs and chesroines in taking the job.”

The talmid sat down at the dining room table and made two columns on the paper, labeled “Pros” and “Cons.” Then he began listing the advantages and disadvantages of taking the position. He then returned to Rav Avraham and showed him the paper.

Rav Avraham looked at it and pointed to the word at the top of the left column. “Vos shteit es?” he asked, “What does this say?”

“It says ‘Pros,’ ” the talmid replied, “dos meint ‘mailehs’ — this means advantages.”

“Nu,” Rav Avraham prodded, “vos shteit unter? — What does it say underneath?”

The talmid read off the list of positive aspects of taking the job. Rav Avraham smiled.

“How do you know these are mailehs?” he asked. “Perhaps these are chesroines — they are reasons to leave the Mir!”

Rav Avraham then looked at him meaningfully. “So I see you consider all reasons to take the job as ‘mailehs.’ This means that this is what you want to do. If that’s what you want to do, then how can I tell you otherwise?”

The love that Rav Avraham exuded to his talmidim was not reserved only for them — it was available to any and every Yid that Rav Avraham encountered.

Any Jew who entered the Shmulevitz home could feel the love, the tranquility, and the joy for life that saturated it. There was always chocolate cake, served by the Rebbetzin, and then Rav Avraham would sit you down, the expression on his face one of the sincerest joy.

It was a sincerity that could only be properly understood through an insight that he frequently shared in the name of his father-in-law, Rav Nekritz z”l. There are two mishnayos in Pirkei Avos, said Rav Nekritz, that seem to contradict one another. The 15th mishnah of the first perek teaches in the name of Shammai that one should be “mekabel es kol ha’adam b’sever panim yafos — greet each person with a pleasant countenance.” However, the 12th mishnah of the third perek cites Rabi Yishmael’s teaching that one should be “mekabel kol adam b’simchah — greet every person with joy.”

So which is it? With a pleasant countenance or with joy? Rav Nekritz explained that these two qualities address two different concerns. The first is to gladden and uplift the recipient of your greeting. For this, you need sever panim yafos. The second mishnah is about the greeter himself. Are you happy upon seeing a fellow Jew? Does extending well wishes to your Jewish brethren gladden your heart? It should, says Rabi Yishmael; go ahead and be “mekabel kol adam b’simchah” — let the greeting to each Jew endow you with true, authentic joy.

Rav Avraham’s each interaction embodied this duality. He made others happy, and he was so happy as well.

HE abhorred machlokes. “You can have Torah,” Rav Avraham once told Reb Chaim Yosef Heimowits, “and you can have money. But if you have machlokes, you have nothing.”

A talmid was once offered a proposal whose terms were abruptly changed. The talmid spoke to a leading posek, who told him that he had legitimate basis to take the other party to a din Torah. The talmid called Rav Avraham to seek his opinion.

“No,” Rav Avraham said flatly, “we don’t go there. We don’t go to beis din.”

It happened once that the beis medrash in which Rav Avraham’s talmidim learned had to accommodate an additional group of talmidim from a different shiur, making seating scarce. The talmidim approached Rav Avraham and asked if he could speak to the hanhalah on their behalf, to ensure that they got adequate seating.

“I don’t fight,” was Rav Avraham’s response. “They never taught me how to fight.”

Someone once said something that could have elicited a sharp response on Rav Avraham’s part. Yet it didn’t come — instead, Rav Avraham replied in soft, even tones. When the man left, present talmidim asked why Rav Avraham didn’t responded more sternly.

“I have a mesorah from the Zeide that that’s not the way to go about it,” Rav Avraham said.

“The Zeide?” his talmidim asked. “Which Zeide? Rav Leizer Yudel?”

Rav Avraham shook his head. “Yaakov Avinu,” he said. “When Lavan accosted Yaakov and accused him of making off with his daughters and their children, Yaakov could have lashed out at him. He could have called Lavan out on all the pain and grief he had caused him through his sly and ruthless trickery. But he didn’t. He simply said, ‘Mah pishi, mah chatasi, ki dalakta acharai — What is my transgression, what is my sin, that you have pursued me?’

“From the Zeide, we learn how to respond to people.”

The deep attachment he felt with fellow Yidden sometimes found its purest expression in times of sorrow. When Rav Elya Boruch Finkel, a beloved maggid shiur in the Mir, passed away in 2008 at a relatively young age, Rav Avraham was devastated. He entered the shiur and tried to speak. He stopped and waited for some five minutes. He tried again but to no avail. He still could not speak. He tried yet a third time, struggling mightily. Finally, he let out a deep sigh.

“Ein lanu shiur rak haTorah hazos,” he said. “We have no hope other than the Torah.”

And with that, he began the shiur.

When a talmid and his family were preparing to move back to chutz l’Aretz, Rav Avraham, together with his wife, would arrive at their home. Together, they would escort them to the waiting taxi, sending them across the Atlantic safe in the knowledge that their rebbi and rebbetzin would remain forever with them.

But in the days prior to the departure, Rav Avraham, along with the talmidim, would hold a seudas pereidah. There, Rav Avraham would speak and share a quote from his wife’s grandfather, Rav Avraham Yafen.

“The Zeide would say, ‘I have many kashas and I have many teirutzim,’ ” he said. “But there’s one kasha that I have no teirutz for. Kashah alai pereidas’chem.’ ”

Chazal tell us that Hashem says Kashah alai pereidas’chem as the Yom Tov of Succos comes to a close — “your departure is hard for me.”

It’s a kasha — a difficulty — that Rav Avraham found to be unanswerable.

Saying goodbye to his talmidim was so hard.

But it came with so much ahavah.

The same love that Rav Avraham had for Yidden applied to Yiddishkeit as well. Rav Avraham loved mitzvos.

Someone once approached Rav Avraham with a concerned look on his face.

“Yesh li ba’ayah,” he said, “I have a problem.”

The man proceeded to explain that he had moved into a new apartment, and, due to the architectural layout, identifying the proper place to light the Chanukah candles was a challenge.

“Davar rishon,” said Rav Avraham firmly, “mitzvot einam ba’ayot.” [The first thing you must know is that mitzvos are not problems.]

But that didn’t mean that the question of where to light shouldn’t be taken seriously. When Reb Yehoshua Feigelstein moved into his apartment, not far from where Rav Avraham lived, he too had a question about the proper location to light Chanukah neiros. He called Rav Avraham, who came to inspect his home.

“Reb Yehoshua!” he said upon examination, “you have an eitzah! You can light on your back porch!”

Reb Yehoshua was hesitant. “But nobody walks that way,” he said, “is it really pirsuma nisa?”

“Yehoshua,” said Rav Avraham in a firm voice. “I will walk by every night together with the Rebbetzin.”

And that is what they did.

Rav Avraham was friendly with a respected talmid chacham who went to great lengths to ensure the halachic validity of his esrog and lulav. Reb Yehoshua Feigelstein was present when Rav Avraham encountered this talmid chacham on Shabbos Chol Hamoed, when one does not shake the lulav and esrog.

“Nu?! Bah Shabbos, bah menuchah!” he exclaimed, a humorous critique on the stringent approach. Then he turned to Reb Yehoshua. “Mitzvos zenen azoi geshmak [Mitzvos are so geshmak],” he said.

When Chodesh Nissan arrived, talmidim knew to expect a phone call — a special invitation to join in bircas ilanos, along with their wives and children. Together, they’d recite the brachah with fervent kavanah. Then l’chayims were made over cups of grape juice, and the talmidim, along with their beloved rebbi, would join in joyous dance, celebrating the joy of the mitzvah, rejoicing in the ability to strive higher and achieve more.

The love for mitzvos was rooted in the reality that a mitzvah is the fulfillment of the devar Hashem — whatever that may be.

“I made a bris during Covid,” says Reb Yosef Brown. “The mikvaos were closed, and I was distraught at not being able to tovel prior to my son’s bris. I shared this unease with Rav Avraham.

“He was not concerned. He smiled and said, ‘V’nishmartem me’od l’nafshoseichem is also a mitzvah!’ ”

He felt this same devar Hashem sprinkled throughout the calendar and he rejoiced at its every juncture.

As Shavuos approached, he would enter the shiur room, exuberant. “Today is the day when we said ‘Ritzoneinu liros es Malkeinu!’ ” he would exclaim.

Pesach would have Rav Avraham completely absorbed in the task of baking matzos, and many talmidim would join him in the matzah bakery. When Chanukah came, he would invest great effort into finding the most ideal oil and the most preferred wicks.

Pesach Sheini always found him charged with special energy. “Today, we have the opportunity to have a second Korban Pesach!” he would say. “How did this come about?”

He would briefly repeat the story of how Jews who were not in a state of purity and unable to bring the Korban Pesach approached Moshe Rabbeinu. “Lama nigara?” they protested, “Why should we be inferior?”

Moshe consented to this argument and directed them to stand by — “Imdu v’eshma mah yetzaveh lachem Hashem — stand by and I’ll listen to what Hashem commands for you.”

Rav Avraham would point to two perplexing aspects to this story.

“What did they mean when they said lama nigara?’” he asked. “They’re losing out because halachah doesn’t allow them to bring a korban in a state of impurity. That doesn’t make them inferior — it’s just how things work!

“Secondly,” Rav Avraham continued, “why was Moshe so confident that Hashem would take their complaint seriously?”

Rav Avraham explained that this wasn’t a complaint — it was an outburst. They so badly wanted to bring a Korban Pesach. Moshe Rabbeinu, help us! How can we lose out?!

Moshe Rabbeinu, hearing this, turned to receive Hashem’s command. Because Moshe knew that there was no way that Hashem would ignore such a strong desire — such intense bikush — to grow further in ruchniyus.

This was Rav Avraham’s Pesach Sheini message — and it was his message year-round as well. Always wanting — with every fiber of your being — to grow closer, become greater. Rav Avraham would bring up the idea of bikush often — pointing to Aharon HaKohein’s wish to have brought korbanos as the nesi’im did, or to Leah’s burning passion to be one of the imahos of Klal Yisrael. These deep-seated desires brought about overwhelming blessing, for such is the power of bikush.

He loved Yamim Tovim, and the fact that Torah dictated time — and commanded reality, was one that he insisted upon.

As a rebbi in Mercaz HaTorah, Reb Yosef Brown was constantly quoting his rebbi, to the point where his talmidim were desperate to meet Rav Avraham — the man from whom they had learned so much but had not yet merited to see. Rav Avraham was in a weak medical state, but graciously allowed for the meeting to be arranged. The boys arrived in the small shiur room — and sat around the worn wooden table of Rav Chaim Shmulevitz. Reb Yosef began the discussion with a word of introduction.

“Rebbi doesn’t speak English,” he told his English-speaking students. “But the truth is, he also doesn’t speak Hebrew or Yiddish either. He speaks the language of the lev, and therefore, everyone can really understand. However, if need be, I’m happy to translate.”

Reb Avraham nodded and started to speak. “In the year Taf Shin Lamed Gimmel,” he began, speaking in Hebrew.

At this point, Reb Yosef interjected “1973,” clarifying which year Rav Avraham was referring to.

Rav Avraham stopped. “1973?” he said incredulously. “Ahhh,” he intoned with feigned sudden comprehension, “what the goyim refer to as 1973.”

Then he veered off whatever it was that he was going to say and chose to expound upon this concept. “I sometimes hear people refer to ‘an early Elul’ or ‘a late Elul.’”

Rav Avraham smiled as he looked around the room. “Elul is Elul,” he said, banging lightly on the table. “It can be an early August or a late September. But Elul is Elul.”

That we are the Chosen People, heir to a sacred legacy and exalted lineage, was something to be so proud of.

“I had a baby girl and named her after my grandmother, Elke Reina,” says Reb Yosef. “Rav Avraham came to the kiddush and I said to him, ‘I know what ‘Reina’ means — it’s the Yiddish word for pure. But what does ‘Elka’ mean?”

Rav Avraham thought for a moment.

“I don’t know exactly,” he said. “But what the name tells you is that zi hut nisht geboiren gevuren in di gass — she was not born on the street. She has a Yiddishe bubba.”

The profound ahavah for mitzvos was matched by a deep-rooted fear of sin — as evinced by a tale bordering on the miraculous. There was a talmid whose wife would send him off to yeshivah each day with a bag of cookies. One day, following shiur, the talmid extended a cookie to Rav Avraham.

“Would Rebbi want one?”

Rav Avraham smiled. “For sure I would want,” he said, “but I first need to know the hechsher for each ingredient.”

When the talmid went home later that day, he relayed the message to his wife, who jotted down the list of ingredients along with their hechsher. The talmid then brought this list to Rav Avraham.

“For sure I would take a cookie!” he beamed.

From that day on, the talmid would come to yeshivah with two bags of cookies, one for himself, one for Rav Avraham. One day, the talmid offered Rav Avraham the daily package of cookies but, strangely, Rav Avraham demurred.

“Ich ken nisht yetzt,” he excused himself, “I can’t now. Please put it in the kitchen.”

The talmid placed the bag in the tiny kitchen and left. Sometime later, the talmid returned to the kitchen where the bag of cookies remained. But a closer look revealed something highly alarming: The cookies were infested with ants! The talmid placed them in the garbage and, later, when he went home, told his wife what happened. She thought for a moment, then looked stricken.

“Oh, no!” she exclaimed. “I used the wrong flour! I didn’t use the flour that Rav Avraham approved!”

Seemingly, somehow, Rav Avraham had sensed this.

Rav Avraham taught his talmidim how to daven — simply by the way he himself davened.

His talmidim recall how, as he stood in tefillah, he looked like a man engaged in direct conversation, in the presence of the Melech Malchei Hamelachim, and the reality that He is listening to every uttered word was something he clearly felt.

But the lesson could be overt as well. It was a hot summer day, and Moishy Krischer, in an effort to cool off somewhat, took off his hat and jacket as he walked down the Yerushalayim street. Suddenly, he found himself face-to-face with Rav Avraham.

“Nu,” he said, “hat and jacket?”

“Rebbi!” Moishy protested, “it’s hot!”

Rav Avraham smiled. “But what if, pitom, you need to daven to Hashem? You’ll need your hat and jacket!”

Once, after Rosh Hashanah davening, a talmid told Rav Avraham that, during Shemoneh Esreh, he thought of a potential job opportunity for a fellow talmid. Rav Avrhom nodded in response. The following year, on Rosh Hashanah, just as the tefillos were set to begin, Rav Avraham approached this talmid.

“Yetzt tracht men nor oif davenen,” he said softly. “Now, we will think only of davening.”

Rav Avraham loved to share an anecdote about his father that encapsulates both his love for mitzvos and his love for Klal Yisrael.

Rav Chaim would share how, prior to his passing, the Vilna Gaon was seen stroking his tzitzis.

“It is a shud to leave a world,” he said, “where, for just a few kopeks, one can acquire nitzchiyus.”

Rav Chaim would then comment — “Un ich, Chaim’l, zug, a shud avekgeien a velt vos mir ken mitfilen yenem [And I, Chaim’l, say, it’s so hard to leave a world where you can feel for another].”

In this world, Rav Chaim taught his son, one has the opportunity to feel, to celebrate, to sympathize.

And to love.

For the past several months, Rav Avraham’s medical condition was such that he struggled to breathe, much less talk. Yet he continued to love.

“I spoke with his doctor in the hospital many times,” says Reb Yosef Brown. “He was secular, but he commented that Rebbi’s face looked like ‘that of an angel.’ He said, ‘Look how he greets people! See how happy he looks?’ ”

Visitors came and went and Rav Avraham communicated through writing or hand motions — the messages always focusing on the visitor, rather than on himself.

A talmid once brought along his young son for a visit. While riding in the taxi, the talmid was learning with his son, and they completed a perek. Upon arriving at Rav Avraham’s bedside, they informed him of this happy tiding.

The next time they came to visit, Rav Avraham, spotting the talmid’s son, placed his hands together, as if holding a book, and began to shuckel slightly. He was clearly pantomiming the act of “learning” — signaling his appreciation of such a young boy seeking every spare opportunity to study Torah.

ON the 11th day of Tammuz, 5784, it grew evident that the end was near. The family was called to his bedside — as were some ten talmidim. After all, they were all family.

They watched as their rebbi’s enormous neshamah began its ascent, slowly taking leave of This World. This beautiful world, where, at no cost at all, we can “feel for another.”

There’s one kasha that I have no teirutz for. Kasha alai pereidas’chem.

His talmidim are left with no answer to this question. Saying goodbye is so hard.

But Rav Avraham would want them to continue; Pesach Sheini teaches us never to settle for our failings, always to push forward, always to have bikush.

And armed with this knowledge, they bid Rav Avraham a final farewell.

B’yedidus, Rebbi.

B’ahavah.  

Power of Mind, Greatness of Heart

I can still see him, poring over his Gemara and Kovetz Mefarshim in that famous little apartment next to the Mir’s side entrance. Deep into the afternoon, hours after he’d finished saying his daily shiur, Rav Avraham Shmuelevitz ztz”l would be there in his legendary father’s apartment. He was doing what Shmuelevitzes did best — teaching by example that learning Torah demands everything, and gives everything in return.

Almost two decades ago, I spent a year in Rav Avraham’s shiur. We were barely a minyan, around the table of a major, magnetic talmid chacham. The inexplicably small size of the chaburah was classic, unpretentious Mir — a place where the roshei yeshivah could be found sitting anywhere but the Mizrach.

Even in real time, we knew that we were hearing an echo of something legendary. All around us was the modest furniture and worn seforim of the Mirrer giant who’d lived in the humble apartment. In front of us was the youngest son, his features reminiscent of the famous father.

It was more than an outward resemblance. “Ich bin dir azoy mekaneh — I’m so jealous of you,” he’d tell us half-humorously as we rustled our Gemara to indicate that the shiur was over. “Everything is obviously so clear to you that you can go to lunch.”

But the love of Torah that he’d imbibed around that very dining room table meant that he couldn’t tear himself away until a knotty Tosafos had been resolved. On and off, on and off, his glasses would go as he gestured over the Gemara, laboring to unlock its meaning.

Rav Avraham’s influences were many and varied. In lomdus, Rav Avraham was a talmid of his brother-in-law Rav Nachum Partzovitz. As a bochur he’d been close to the Beis Yisrael of Gur, and that showed, too: under the Litvish frock coat that he invariably wore, beat a heart that was aflame with ideas taken from chassidic masters.

He had an original mind in derush as well. “Chazal contrast the ‘students of Avraham Avinu’ with those of Bilaam,” he said. “But unlike Avraham who actually had disciples, in what sense did Bilaam have talmidim? Surely anyone who leaves his middos unrefined will have bad characteristics, independent of Bilaam?”

The answer he explained, lies in human psychology. No one can live with the knowledge that they’re living in an immoral way — unless they have followers. “If they found a school of thought — if they have disciples in wickedness, then it becomes a movement, and as part of something bigger it has legitimacy.”

Despite his various influences, the deepest level belonged to his father — the great, caring heart and emphasis on bein adam lechaveiro that Rav Chaim Shmuelevitz taught.

One Sunday morning in 2006, we understood exactly what that meant. The Second Lebanon War had been underway for a week, and in the north of the country one million people took refuge in bomb shelters. In those pre-Iron Dome days, there was no defense against the missiles. Yet in most of the country including Yerushalayim, the war was a remote thing — something happening on the news to people far away.

Rav Avraham sounded the wake-up call. He came to the shiur, and for the first few minutes he didn’t open his Gemara. Instead, he quite literally wept. “Hundreds of thousands of Yidden are in pain, and we just sit here like this!” he said. “How can we ignore what they’re going through?”

A few days later, when the first Hezbollah rockets fired at Yerushalayim sent us all scurrying for the shelters, we understood what he meant. Like his father Rav Chaim’s famous care for those suffering beyond the walls of Fortress Mir, Rav Avraham Shmuelevitz was a living example of the combination that sets a Torah great apart.

When power of mind meets greatness of heart, gadlus is the result. The lessons taught around that old table will last us all a lifetime.

—Gedalia Guttentag

I’m Not Whole Without You

When my sister thought of redting me to her friend’s brother, she did her research. When she found out the boy was learning in Rav Avraham Shmulevitz’s shiur, she smiled. And then handed the shidduch over to Reb Avraham and Rebbetzin Miri. I used to say I have so much hakaras hatov to Rav Avraham and Rebbetzin Miri for being our shadchanim, but as we sat at the levayah, hearts broken, I realized the hakaras hatov needs to go back so much further. My true gratitude should be that Reb Avraham took a boy from Brooklyn and turned him into the person he is today.

“There was no such thing as a nobody with Rebbi,” my husband says. Maybe it was his Slabodka side more than the Novardok one coming out, but Rebbi didn’t believe that society could understand the concept of gornisht today. He held that self-degradation was a treif concept. And after Rebbi taught over that it was treif, he then proved that self-doubt was, in fact, middas sheker. He believed that the highest calling of a Yid is to reach their own true self. And when he believed in his talmidim, he built them. Which was every single day.

Knowing one’s worth was a lifelong theme with Reb Avraham. He would tell his daughters, “Being a Shmulevitz is not a maaleh, it’s a mechayav.” There were standards that he held himself to, that he gave over to his children, but he was always very clear about who he was and what his personal tafkid was. He never tried to be someone else, to reach someone else’s goals. He was set on contributing to Klal Yisrael as himself, not as his grandfather or father. Many relatives who held public positions would come to consult with him for guidance, but he was careful never to become a public figure; it was clear to him that wasn’t his calling in Klal Yisrael. It took a lot of persuasion for him to even permit his shiurim to be sent to talmidim in America.

A prevalent theme in his teaching, and in his own thought process and contemplation, was that no one is a “yachid,” no one is totally on his own; everyone is a part of Klal Yisrael. It’s hard to describe how much that meant to him.

Yet it was evident from the way his talmidim rallied when the prognosis grew grim that the connection he built with them was lifelong. There was a constant flow of talmidim by his bedside. They will all tell how when they’d leave the hospital, it was clear they got more chizuk than they gave. Others flew from across the ocean to visit and even others booked tickets in the hopes of a visit, but in the end were zocheh to attend the levayah and say goodbye. Those still in chutz l’Aretz are bereft; they describe walking around like orphans but with no shivah house to lend comfort or anchor their pain.

Because to every one of his talmidim, he was avi, mori, rebbi.

And he shared all of that with Rebbetzin Miri and his children. It is a large, beautiful family, yet they all agree that the talmidim — primary place that they shared — never took away from what the Shmuelevitz children had with their parents. Nachas from the talmidim was shared and celebrated.

To the world, Rav Avraham was a pillar, hiding in plain sight, holding it up. To us, he was also our shadchan, holding up our own little world, and in essence, we have all been orphaned.

—Ariella Schiller

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1021)