Man of the People  

“Announcing malchus Shamayim saves us from destruction”

The gifts of Rav Dovid Cohen have taken him beyond the walls of Yeshivas Chevron to become a Man of the People. As Klal Yisrael concludes one of the most difficult years of recent memory, the Rosh Yeshivah answers some burning questions

Bnei Torah living in Eretz Yisrael circa 1990 recall the day a new sefer hit the shelves. Titled simply Yemei Purim, it was the sefer’s author who sparked excitement. Rav Dovid Cohen had grown to become a household name in the halls of Eretz Yisrael’s many yeshivos; it was under his dynamic influence that Yeshivas Chevron was rapidly blossoming into one of the world’s finest Torah institutions.

Given his reputation as a world-class lamdan, an easy presumption was that Yemei Purim was a collection of novel insights into the various halachic discussions related to Purim. One logically expected it to be a sefer replete with conventional, yeshivah-style lomdus.

Those who opened the sefer were shocked by what they saw. A plethora of sources leaped forward, quotes from the Vilna Gaon, Ramchal, Maharal, and so many others — all of which uncovered layer after layer of depth concealing the secret meaning of Purim and all its mitzvos. This wasn’t a sefer of lomdus, it was a sefer of machshavah.

At the time, this was nearly unheard of. The seforim of Rav Yitzchok Hutner had been published by that point, but, other than that, hardly any sifrei machshavah existed.