That Was a Leader

Beyond the huge blow to Klal Yisrael, the passing of the Novominsker Rebbe, Rav Yaakov Perlow ztz”l, is a personal loss for me. Over a period of 30 years, the Rebbe drew me close to him. Shortly after I was appointed editor of the English Yated Ne’eman in 1989, I received an invitation to come visit the Rebbe and his Rebbetzin in the Har Nof apartment of his son-in-law Rabbi Yitzchok Treger.

I was then a baal teshuvah of less than ten years, and the name Yonoson Rosenblum was unknown. But the Rebbe or the Rebbetzin must have seen an editorial or two and their curiosity was piqued. My chief memory from that meeting is how the Rebbetzin, like myself a Chicago native, put me at ease by telling me that she remembered reading frequently as a girl about my maternal grandfather in the Sentinel, the local Jewish weekly.

That first meeting became an annual event on the Rebbe’s visits to Eretz Yisrael to meet with former talmidim and whenever I was staying in Brooklyn.

Both the Rebbe and his first Rebbetzin a”h, were unusually broad-minded. She played a major role in developing a limudei chol curriculum in the Novominsk Yeshivah, as a means of developing skills that would augment the limudei kodesh. The Rebbe’s respect for her keen intellect was palpable. I remember her accompanying him to a large meeting of balabatim at an Agudah convention when she was already very ill and he did not want to leave her side. He turned to her frequently to hear her opinion.