Rabbi Hirth was “a man of action” who knew what he had to do
It was immediately after Shabbos Shuvah when the news began to spread. Rabbi Heshie Hirth, the famed builder of the Passaic Torah community, had left This World.
I’ve been living in Passaic since June 1989. At the time, there were perhaps 200 frum families in town. We initially found an apartment on Ascension Street, and as Hashem would have it, my landlord was Rabbi Hirth. When we signed the lease, I vividly recall how he commented with his signature smile, “Mazel tov, you now have the zechus of joining me in being one more rabbi who lives on Ascension Street!”
I was an eighth-grade rebbi in the mornings, and in the afternoon I learned in the Yeshiva Gedola of Passaic, in the same chabura as Rabbi Hirth.
Between being his tenant, sitting next to him in the beis medrash, and having my sons’ students in his newly established Yeshiva Ktana of Passaic, I was afforded the privilege of interacting with Rabbi Hirth on multiple fronts and in varied relationships.
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