“If we don’t accept this bochur, he’ll probably go to work and abandon learning. I’m not willing for Am Yisrael to lose such a talmid chacham”
Porat Yosef’s legendary rosh yeshivah, Maran Hagaon Rav Ezra Attia (1885-1970) looked after every talmid like his own son. “My children have a loving father who takes care of them, but not all the students of the yeshivah have a father. Therefore, I must care for my students even more than for my own children,” he said.
Only the best would do for his talmidim, even in gashmiyus. He himself wouldn’t eat more than half an egg, but he had different standards for his students. “Eat an egg so you can have strength for Torah,” he would order a scrawny student. “And maybe you should smear some butter on your bread, too.”
Occasionally, he’d send his son Rav David to the house of an impoverished oleh who was a talmid chacham and yerei Shamayim, bearing a real treasure: two liras.
“Tell him to buy cream and butter so he can gain strength, but give him the money in secret, so people won’t see that I’m supporting him and stop helping him,” Rav Ezra told his son. “He’s an impoverished talmid chacham and it’s a mitzvah to look after him.”
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