One Final Havdalah

When our editorial team put out a call for “short, powerful memories” following Rebbetzin David’s petirah last week, alumnae pointed out that Rebbetzin David always downplayed that which was flashy but fleeting; she taught, instead, that spiritual growth results from the steady accumulation and reiteration of basic fundamentals, rather than from the thrilling moments of inspiration. Sound bites, she taught us, reduce the great and the awe-inspiring to banal clichés.

A magazine whose craft relies on the anecdote and the pithy quote cannot, by its very nature, do justice to someone whose life was about the serious, the measured, the majestic.

And yet, at the behest of daas Torah, we could not send a magazine to print without marking, albeit in some small and inadequate way, the loss of the great mechaneches of our era. Her impact reached far beyond the thousands she taught directly, extending to her students’ children and grandchildren, their students and students’ students.

Students also reminded us that Rebbetzin David encouraged us to read biography. Despite emphasizing that the genre often contained errors, whether factual inaccuracies or subjective interpretations by the author, she felt there was much to gain by reading about great people. At the same time, she cautioned, one must read about gedolim with awe and humility, remaining cognizant that they were human and struggled, but on a far different plane than regular people.