Saba’s Sentinels

Reb Yanky Kanievsky

“He Had Time for Everything”

He was considered one of the most powerful people in the chareidi world, the man who directed politicians and other influencers to the desk of Rav Chaim, the one who shouted the questions to his hard-of-hearing grandfather — and the one, some accusers maintained, who set Rav Chaim’s agenda. But for Reb Yanky Kanievsky, the world’s most famous grandson, he was just a dedicated assistant to his zeide, the Sar HaTorah.

“I’m the oldest son of Saba’s youngest son,” Reb Yanky says, explaining how he was so close to his grandfather. His parents lived next door, and after Rebbetzin Batsheva passed away in 2011, his mother essentially took care of the house. Anyone who stepped through Rav Chaim’s door in recent years knew that Yaakov Yisrael Kanievsky would be there, sitting right next to his grandfather.

Yet as close as Reb Yanky was, Rav Chaim never addressed him by his first name. “I always called him Saba,” he says, “but he never called me by my name because I was named for his father, Yaakov Yisrael. So sometimes he’d say, ‘come here,’ or, ‘the son of…’ but never by my name.”

The change over a week, says Reb Yanky, is huge, and painful. “It’s just too big for me to speak about what I feel,” he says. “Too overwhelming. I grew up in his presence, in every way, from the time I was a child. Our entire life revolved around him — Shabbos, Yom Tov, every day of the year, from sitting next to him in shul and pointing in his siddur, or standing under his tallis at Bircas Kohanim, to coming for Kiddush every Shabbos morning and telling him what I was learning in cheder.”