Transcriptions

Personal History

I originally came here right after high school.  I was 17 years old and I came here just for an Elul zman to take a look at what the yeshiva was like.  I was very much influenced by seeing the Rosh Yeshiva because he elevated people.  Just by looking at him and seeing him function, you would be elevated. 

His shiurim were a bit difficult to understand without knowing the sugya thoroughly, and at the age of 17, I was kimat the youngest, so I decided it would be better to go to Philadelphia for a year or two, and then I came back here at the age of 19.  It was the summer of 1960.

At that time, we still had to work hard at the shiur[1] to understand them.  If I had a shailah in halacha, I felt comfortable to go and ask the Rosh Yeshiva.  Once in a while, the Rosh Yeshiva would meet you and speak over the shiur.  If someone had a personal question that he wanted to speak to the Rosh Yeshiva about, which I didn’t, people felt that the Rosh Yeshiva was the person to talk to.  They didn’t go to their old Rosh Yeshiva to talk it over with; they spoke to the Rosh Yeshiva here.

The Effect of His Presence

The Rosh Yeshiva stressed the inyan of being araingutan in learning.  That had a hashpo’ah on most of the people.  They didn’t need to have a mashgiach.  Just seeing the Rosh Yeshiva around was enough. If somebody felt like wasting time and the Rosh Yeshiva walked through the hall, without even having to say anything, the person felt that his place was in the Bais Medrash. 

The Rosh Yeshiva was different than other Gedolim, in that people somehow had an awe of him.  It was very difficult if they wanted to ding zich un [2] or something like that.  When they would speak with someone else, even a big talmid chacham, either they listened to him or not, but somehow, you had to be machniya[3] yourself to the Rosh Yeshiva even though he was a gentle person.