Keeper of the Trust

That said a lot about the rav who was known as a kanoi for everything holy, from the fierce protection of Shabbos to the battle for the protection of graves, to keeping the government’s hands out of chadarim and yeshivos.

But somehow, public officials made their way to his door as well, creating an unprecedented relationship between the Eidah leadership and the country’s power brokers. (He once visited with former public security minister Yitzhak Aharonovitch of the Yisrael Beiteinu party, and the two conversed in Yiddish, a language the minister knew well from his immigrant parents. He also held a meeting with former justice minister Yaakov Neeman a”h in rich Hungarian-Yiddish.)

When the Gaavad first arrived after living in Antwerp for 37 years, where he initially served as a yeshivah rebbi and later was appointed as a rav and a dayan for the local community, he was greeted by Rav Meshulam Dovid Soloveitchik of Brisk. “I’m giving you a piece of advice,” the longtime rosh yeshivah and son of the Brisker Rav told the newly-minted Gaavad. “Open a kollel and get chavrusas and set your learning seder in stone. Otherwise, the politics and strife of Yerushalayim will sweep you in.”

The Gaavad followed the advice, spending the first four and a half hours of his day surrounded by 50 diligent avreichim and a non-negotiable chavrusa. The sign hanging at the entrance to his beis medrash reads, “It is strictly forbidden to interrupt the Gaavad while he is learning.”