Last Look at the Moon

He could resolve the most sophisticated arguments revolving around Torah and science, while never budging from the tiniest detail of the Shulchan Aruch. Rav Shimon Schwab ztz”l was a master at bridging eternal spiritual principals with the draws of modern American life, while standing guard over the sanctified thousand-year-old mesorah of Germany’s Jews. In a first-ever interview, his son Rav Yosef Chaim Schwab — master educator in his own right — pulls back the curtain on a life touched by greatness

If there exists a stereotype of the German Jew as being austere or dispassionately polite, Rav Yosef Chaim Schwab’s greeting shatters it. The ebullience of his shalom aleichem engulfs me as I enter his Monsey home.

The stories he shares of his venerated father’s life and legacy is a rich, compelling narrative. It’s easy to see how this retired manufacturer has become a popular maggid shiur — a camera and microphone used for his online shiurim share space with the pictures and notes on Rav Yosef Chaim’s desk. Following two successful careers — first at Bell Labs, one of America’s foremost think tanks, and then in jewelry manufacturing — he eventually returned to his first love. His shiurim are popular on Kol Halashon, JRoot Radio, Torah Anytime and, for close to three decades already, in Monsey’s Ohr Somayach. And his sefer, Niflaos HaTorah, is seeing its fourth printing.

Today though, Rav Yosef Chaim isn’t talking about his own achievements. Instead, he’s agreed to a rare interview about his father, Rav Shimon Schwab, whose 19^th yahrtzeit falls out on Purim Katan, the 14^th of Adar I. Perhaps a 20-year tribute would have been more standard, but 1995 was a Jewish leap year, and so is 2014, when Adar I comes around again.