I was in Telshe Yeshiva for school. The people there were frum, the Mitzvos were observed, but I thought that a change of yeshivas would be good for me with the situation as it was. In short, the choice became Lakewood, and I went

This was in the vacation time of Tof-Shin-Yud-Bais[1]. I went to the Rosh Yeshiva zichrono l’vracha. He lived very poorly in his house in Boro Park. Very pashut. Maybe he was in a hurry, maybe he wasn’t careful enough in listening, but he said I should come back before the zman at the end of the bein hazmanim. I satisfied him very poorly, of course, but all factors considered, he allowed me to come to Lakewood. I was then about seventeen and a half.

 

I observed him at the shiur. The shiur was like a good Acharon’s sefer, a good acharonishe sefer in tearing off piece after piece after piece. You’d be surprised how much there is in a page of a Hafloah[2], or a page of P’nei Yehoshua[3]. The Rosh Yeshiva just kept going. Page after page after page, he just kept going. And every statement that he made was a statement.

There was no repetition. There was no hemming and no hawing, no nothing, just going like a machine gun. Round after round after round, he just went through the whole shiur straight through. It was pretty remarkable.

Of course, at the beginning, I couldn’t think of picking this up. Let’s say that the average person speaks 200 words a minute. He spoke at least 400 words a minute. You’ve got to get used to listening to something like that. If you want to retain in your mind what was being said, you had to get used to it and just concentrate.

The rate was so fast. I had the impression all through the years that he said in an hour perhaps what other Roshei Yeshiva would say in six or eight hours. It was so packed. It was so concentrated. It was almost not repetitious at all.

It was presumed that you knew what this piece of Gemara, this inyan was about. We’re talking about after you know what it’s about. There was no explaining the issues at hand. Those we were supposed to come with finished, well-learned.

He once asked me, “How about the mareh mekomos?”
I said, “I’ll look over the mareh mekomos.”

He said, “Don’t look over the mareh mekomos. Learn them.”

What he really meant was you’ll never know anything from looking over the mareh makomos. Learn the mareh makomos. Do your best. Maybe where you finish, the shiur starts, if not further.

The shiurim he gave were very real. The shiurim were like he had some kind of brilliant idea that came across like working out the historical veracity of Rava or Abaye because he was very real. The shitasos were very real, not just brilliant flashes of intelligence.

This is what was real to him. Reality to him was what it says in the Torah. Mamesh that. The Rov of Adas Yeraim in Europe - he was called the Hauser Rov - said over that once he was speaking in learning with the Rosh Yeshiva zichrono l’vracha - how he watched the sunset, from the sunset until the time the stars came out and you could see b’chush l’choro[4], it was not like Rabbeinu Tam[5]. He said that the Rosh Yeshiva said to him, “From a b’chush[6], you don’t freg on Rabbeinu Tam.”

Not because of that. Not on Rabbeinu Tam. It will be with a b’chush. A b’chush you don’t freg on Rabbeinu Tam.

These things were secondary to him.

I used to wonder how he withstood the whole world disagreeing with him. They lived in disagreement with him, but it didn’t seem at all to affect him.

I asked my friend why he thought the Rosh Yeshiva was unaffected.

He said, “Because he’s a city! A person? You think he’s a person and he’s affected by other people? He’s a city!”

Rabbi Beane: He was beyond that.

Rabbi Jacobs: He was a whole briyah. He was a whole world.

Rabbi Beane: Do you think he was unique or did he represent a whole world like that? Where he came from, were there people like that besides him?

Rabbi Jacobs: Probably there were people like that besides him. He was a survivor of that world and what that world was like. But I never met anyone like him. I’ve met people whom I’ve understood, but never to such an extent. It’s like you wouldn’t find yourself amongst sheep, how come you’re not influenced by the other sheep?

That’s how the Rosh Yeshiva really was. He didn’t change at all. Nothing changed. There was HaKadosh Baruch Hu, and that’s all. Anything else in any makom, not Germany, in America, not no place. And he knew how everything fit into that.

He knew how everything fit in. It’s not that he was oblivious to what was going on. He knew exactly what was going on – oh! He had a tremendous grasp of goings on. I could see that.

I could see when he walked through the building. It wasn’t even the same building as the dining room. When he would walk through the door, there were a couple of feet, maybe the actual walk was thirty or forty feet in a semi-circle, and you could see the bochurim in various matzavim in the hall, outside the beis medrash, standing together, doing things.

From that walk through the hall, he had a very accurate, good grasp on what the bochurim were about, what they were doing, and what they were up to. He understood. You’d think a man like that wouldn’t understand what’s going on in the mind of an American boy. But from a walk through the hall, from the kitchen to this or that, whatever was happening, he knew where everybody was at, what they were thinking about, what they were bluffing him, how they were trying to kid him, and how they were trying to kid themselves. He knew it all.

Rabbi Beane: Did he ever talk about it? 

Rabbi Jacobs: Yes! How do I know? Because once he said, “When I walk in, I see this guy doing this and this guy doing that.” He once said it. He never said what he saw, except once. But he saw it all in one walk. He was very sharp.

Not that he wasn’t aware, but the serious parts of reality were unchanged. Everything that he saw, he saw in his own life and then how it related to the real world. The real world, that’s the world of Abaye and Rava. The real world. If you put together what he was doing, this is what it was.

He didn’t start at the start. When he said a shiur, he didn’t start the shiur on the presumption that we all know nothing. We know what we know until we know and then we understand. He never started anything like that. It’s like saying that when you read a newspaper, you also have to chazer A-B-C again. You don’t chazer A-B-C when you read the paper. You pick up the paper and read it. You read the paper in the paper’s style. You don’t start chazering A-B-C.

That’s how he was in shiur. He didn’t start out from not knowing. The shiur began from knowing. And mistakes were nothing. They were just optical illusions. The Gemara’s there, so you read it. He knew them. He knew the mistakes.

That’s why when he said the first shiur, let’s say in Yevamos, his shiur concentrated on issues that the Gemara deals with in Daf Lamed[7]. Even though he’s saying a shiur for the olam that’s learning Daf Bais[8].  

We had better have learned the mareh mekomos. That’s why he gave the mareh mekomos in advance. That’s why he told me, “Don’t look them over. Learn them.”

Rabbi Beane: How long would that take you usually?

Rabbi Jacobs: You could learn it for any length of time.

I just need to tell over his realness. In retrospect, game-playing didn’t exist by him. They’re playing games - “Because you don’t know this, and you don’t know that, so it’s a chiddush to you?” A chiddush is not because you don’t know. It’s because you know. When you know, you have to say a chiddush. That’s where you start. Young boys start from not knowing. There was no such thing by him. Start with folly? Start where the issues really are!

They say that when Einstein would expound on relativity, he’d speaks about what he learned in seventh grade, then high school, then college at bachelor’s level, then master’s, and then PhD. Then he’d start talking about his theory and the particulars.

By us, we don’t talk like that. In our things, we don’t talk like that. In things that have meaningful daas, we don’t speak that way. We start from where the issues are, where it is, where it’s at. And that’s how the Rosh Yeshiva did it every day.

He had a certain temimus also. With all that smartness, he had a temimus, a funny thing. It wasn’t like the way he spoke. It was in addition. A temimus. Childlike, I would say. Not childish, childlike. A childlike purity. He was a man who knew it all, but he had a temimus.

Rabbi Beane: How do you think he became that? Was it inborn?

Rabbi Jacobs: Everybody is born with good and bad middos, and he had certain very good points which could have been lost over time. And then self-awareness. I’ve got to stop. It’s much too much of a sugya. He was much too big for this.