Rav Yosef Eliyahu Henkin (1881–1973) was one of America’s greatest poskim
His weekly salary as the director of Ezras Torah was $50 — a paltry sum, by any standard. At one of our meetings, a resolution was raised to increase Rabbi Henkin’s salary.
He immediately rose from his chair and declared: “Must I leave Ezras Torah?”
The less his personal benefit from Ezras Torah, the greater the aid for talmidei chachamim in distress. He was a baki b’Shas, as well as the four tracts of the Shulchan Aruch. Once, in my presence, he received an urgent phone call from Eretz Yisrael and he resolved the problem, which apparently defied easy solution to those who called him, relating to marriage laws, without reference to single sefer.
On several occasions I noticed Rabbi Henkin refer to a mysterious small notebook. He once revealed to me that in this notebook he kept a log of those minutes during the day that he did not utilize for Ezras Torah. He was not involved with his own personal business during those minutes, but when someone came to his office at Ezras Torah to discuss divrei Torah or if he received a telephone call, as he often would, from anywhere in the world requesting his opinion on a particular problem or sh’eilah, he immediately looked at the time and noted in his record how many minutes he had borrowed from Ezras Torah. He would then know how many minutes to “make up” on behalf of Ezras Torah-related work.
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