Two Sons, Two Views, One Vision

Rav Dovid and Rav Reuven Feinstein, shlita

My choice of parking space that Wednesday evening on East Broadway was far from well thought out. Just a day earlier, on Tuesday of Lag B’Omer, I had made my way to New York City’s Chinatown, which boasts the largest concentration of Chinese in the western hemisphere, to visit Mesivta Tifereth Jerusalem and meet with its eminent Rosh Yeshivah. In the hallowed, brown-paneled offices at 145 East Broadway, on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, where Rav Moshe Feinstein, ztz”l,’s virtuous presence is still felt in almost every corner, I sat with his eldest son and successor, Rav Dovid, shlita, as he patiently shared penetrating insights and lessons on Shavuos and Ruth and, with great kindness and his hallmark humility, shared biographical vignettes of his father.

Dressed in his staple non-rabbinical garb and a black yarmulke that covers most of his head, this revered Torah scholar and outstanding halachic authority sat in his office off the beis hamedrash — where time seems to have stood still since the famed building was inaugurated on the week of Shavuos in 1922 — giving me clear instructions as to which aspect of his father I should emphasize. “Regarding the Rosh Yeshivah’s Torah scholarship,” he was telling me, “one page will suffice, perhaps even one short sentence. The world will gain nothing by knowing how many times he completed Shas or that he was fluent in all of Torah SheBaal Peh, like Rav Akiva Eiger and the Chasam Sofer.” The specific and clear message that Rav Dovid wanted to relay to Klal Yisrael through these pages was authoritative and awe-inspiring, while his insights and guidance were piercing and unambiguous.

Yet the following night, in order to obtain an additional viewpoint and acquire perhaps another perspective on Rav Moshe, my destination was Bialystoker Place off Grand Street, which unbeknownst to me was three-quarters of a mile and a fiftee-minute walk away from the parking spot I’d chosen. I had scheduled an appointment for seven in the evening to see Rav Moshe’s younger son, Rav Reuven Feinstein, shlita, the Rosh Yeshivah of Yeshivah of Staten Island, who resided at that address on the fifth floor of a multi-family building.

When I spoke to Rav Reuven over the phone and conveyed to him my interest in meeting, his first statement was: “You have to understand that when I was growing up, I never thought that the Rosh Yeshivah, ztz”l, was unique. I believed that all fathers were like him.” I knew right then that the few hours I would subsequently spend with him in person would undoubtedly be, along with the astounding audience I was privileged to have with his older brother, among the most memorable moments of my life. The fifteen-minute walk from my vehicle to his home therefore seemed endless.