In His Words

There are certain people whom you just don’t feel right exposing to the glare of the public spotlight, no matter all the calculations for doing so, how much there is to learn from them, what a kavod haTorah it will be, and so forth.

Rav Yeruchom Kaplan ztz”l, who passed away last week, was certainly such a person, even had he not left a request that hespedim not be said for him. Yet how can this special Jew’s petirah go unmentioned, either?

What was Reb Yeruchom? The Baranovich-born son of Rav Mendel Kaplan, the unforgettable rebbi in Chicago and Philadelphia, who bore the name of Rav Mendel’s great rebbi, Rav Yerucham Levovitz of Mir. A lifelong fixture in Yeshiva Beis HaTalmud as a yungerman, a rebbi, a mashpia. A rosh yeshivah in Yeshivat Mikdash Melech in Flatbush who taught generations of Sephardic young men.

But, who was Reb Yeruchom? Reading Yisroel Greenwald’s classic book about his father, Reb Mendel and His Wisdom, might give some help toward answering that. But the most I can offer is to follow Chazal’s directive of “Ein osin nefashos l’tzaddikim, divreihem hein hein zichronam — we don’t erect monuments to the righteous; their words, those are their remembrance” (Yerushalmi Shekalim 2:5), and to share a few of Reb Yeruchom’s own words.