The Chavrusas: Ronald (Reb Shlomo) Hofbauer,Rav Moshe Chaim Bransdorfer ztz”l, London
Ronald (Reb Shlomo) Hofbauer has been a fixture on the benches of London’s Golders Green Kollel (known as Hager’s Kollel after founder Rav Gershon Hager) for the last three decades. But while he’s not your standard avreich, this hardworking surveyor and community-conscious balabos enjoyed a daily learning session with the late Torah giant and rosh kollel Rav Moshe Chaim Bransdorfer ztz”l. Mr. Hofbauer’s busy workday would grind to a halt for 90 minutes each afternoon when he would ascend to the top floor of Beis Yissocher Dov on the corner of Highfield Avenue and Golders Green Road. Onlookers might have considered the chavrusashaft an unlikely match — a chassidish rosh kollel and a decidedly non-chassidic clean-shaven balabos — but for Mr. Hofbauer, it was the ultimate rebbi-talmid shidduch.
“We learned daily for over 30 years and we covered numerous masechtos,” says Mr. Hofbauer of his venerated chavrusa, the rosh kollel, who passed away in Elul of 2017 at age 71 after a protracted illness. “Rav Moshe Chaim was very impressed that I would tear myself away from work and devote the time to learning. But for me, it was the greatest joy.”
He says that particularly memorable were the Kodshim masechtos, “which brought the subject to life for both of us. We’re talking about a gadol b’Yisrael, but one year, after Yom Kippur was over, he told me that because of our learning, his Yom Kippur was completely different — as of course was mine. Here was the maestro at the heights of his specialty, but for me it was totally new territory. Rav Moshe Chaim took me on a virtual tour of the Beis Hamikdash.”
Rav Moshe Chaim Bransdorfer was born in 1946, the first baby born in the DP camp in Lausanne, Switzerland. For his survivor parents, their baby was a sign of the rebirth of Klal Yisrael after the Holocaust — and indeed, he was a symbol of Torah’s survival through the worst calamities. His father, Reb Hershel Bransdorfer, moved his family to Antwerp, and as a bochur, Rav Moshe Chaim became close to Rebbe Itzikel of Pshevorsk. After several years learning in the Wilryk Yeshivah under Rav Yehudah Aryeh Treger, he continued on to Eretz Yisrael, where he learned in the Belz and Tchebiner yeshivos and was considered a prized talmid.
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