One a rosh yeshivah, the other a savvy criminal lawyer. With Rav Aaron Brafman’s shloshim approaching, his brother Ben shares the secret of their unbreakable bond
FIND YOUR SPARK One imagines that a lawyer spends most of his energy poring over dry legal tomes and that a rosh yeshivah will be immersed in Talmud 24/7. Yet the truth is that while intellectual activity is part of both job descriptions an equally large part has to do with helping people through the roughest times of their lives
“I still can’t believe we’re having this conversation”
Ben Brafman says seated at the conference table of his gleaming East Side office with 26th-floor views of the river. It’s just a few weeks since the petirah of his brother Rav Aaron Brafman the beloved longtime menahel of Derech Ayson/Yeshiva of Far Rockaway and to him it feels as if one half of a pair of Siamese twins has been severed.
On the surface of course the “twins” were by no means identical. As many people heard Ben say at the levayah when their father was in a coma during his last months Rav Aaron would show up for bedside shifts in his black suit Gemara in hand; Ben would appear to relieve him wearing a sweat suit and toting legal papers. When a nurse expressed surprise that they were actually brothers Ben quipped “He’s adopted.”
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