Once the boy arrived, it was Rav Aharon who caused the transformation
One night when I was seven years old, my father hurriedly awakened me. Rav Aharon Kotler was here! He had come to our neighborhood to purchase arba minim in a shop in the basement of our building.
We rushed down to the shop and I beheld Rav Aharon for the first and last time; his fiercely piercing eyes were trained intensely upon the merchandise before him, and then briefly upon me as he gave me a brachah.
A few years later, our class was taken to Pike Street on the Lower East Side to attend Rav Aharon’s funeral.
Lo zachisi liroso b’fanav.
My generation did not merit the experience of those who had been his talmidim in Lakewood to learn Torah under his transformative influence. Theirs was the generation that defined for us the concept of a “yeshivah bochur.” They were real American boys who had somehow taken the unusual step of going off to Lakewood, where they were shaped into the first generation of American yeshivahleit.
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