Living the Dream

Until his final days, one could enter Mosad Adar Gbyr, his unassuming shtibel on East 9th Street in Flatbush, and witness this centenarian quietly immersed in his learning, bent in the same position he had maintained for close to a century. Past and current mispallelim would bring their children for brachos, or to just catch a glimpse of this ember of a bygone era.

While he was always happy to share a memory, a vignette, an eitzah, or a kind word, he meticulously calculated every minute of his time. The Novardok imprint, left on him by his great rebbeim in the old country, permeated his very being, in a way that was as much a part of him in his twilight years, as in his dawn, when he was a young boy learning in Pinsk.

Rav Grainom grew up in Lenin, Poland (though due to shifting borders today the town is part of Belarus). As a young teenager he went to learn in Pinsk, in a branch of the Novardok yeshivah system founded by the Alter of Novardok, Rav Yosef Yoizel Horowitz. He entered the shiur of Rav Yaakov Yisrael Kanievsky, later renowned as the Steipler Gaon, where he studied for a year and a half. While at the time he didn’t form a close relationship with the Steipler, his rebbi left a strong impression on him, and Rav Grainom felt deeply connected to him many decades later.

After a few years in Pinsk, Rav Grainom followed a group of older bochurim who went to learn in another branch of the Novardok network in Mezritch. He was offered the opportunity to join the Baranovitch yeshivah and learn under Rav Elchonon Wasserman and the mashgiach Rav Yisrael Yaakov Lubchansky, but declined, concerned that the mehalech there would clash with his Novardoker chinuch.