Twenty years after Rav Wolbe’s passing, his grandson reflects and remembers
It’s hard to believe that it’s been 20 years since my Saba, Rabbi Shlomo Wolbe z”l, was niftar on Chol Hamoed Pesach. I spent the days preceding his passing with him in Shaare Zedek hospital, and the memories are still vivid. My grandfather never traveled with a retinue; he had no gabbai to manage his affairs or arrange “special treatment.” He shared a hospital room with two other men, with only a flimsy curtain cordoning off each patient. I was 18 then, and spent Leil HaSeder with Saba, together with my 20-year-old brother, Yoni.
We didn’t experience a traditional Seder in that sad, cramped hospital room. The only matzos we had were the square machine ones the hospital provided. We didn’t have a gleaming table at which to drink our Four Cups or ask the Four Questions, but watching our grandfather — hooked up to tubes and experiencing agonizing yissurim — was a bitter dose of maror to swallow.
At three in the morning, I helped Saba sit up in bed, hoping to alleviate his tremendous pain and discomfort. Then I sat down on the floor and asked him for a brachah. He placed his hand on my head and said, “Learn Chumash well, learn Mishnah well, and learn Gemara well.”
His levayah was twodays later. Waking up to find the whole city plastered with signs of his passing, hearing the announcements blasting from cars roving Yerushalayim, seeing tens of thousands of people converging on the Bais Hamussar that he founded, witnessing the typical jostling and jockeying for positioning at a well-attended funeral (estimates range from 35K to 100K) — it was all surreal. But the most lasting memory I have from that day happened afterward. Minhag Yerushalayim bars direct descendants of the niftar from joining the levayah procession. So while throngs accompanied Saba to Har Hamenuchos, we children and grandchildren remained in my grandparents’ apartment adjacent to the Bais Hamussar. As we reminisced about his life, my cousin, Rabbi Ahron Schwartzman, said something I will never forget.
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