Rav Shimon Schwab cherished his German minhagim, and everything else rooted in Torah
He once told an individual who had been having financial difficulties that the secret of good parnassah is scrupulous adherence to maaser.
The Rav was active on the broader Torah scene. One field that spoke to his heart was that of chinuch, the heroes of which he compared to the Leviim, whose main function was to teach Torah. Long before it was the vogue, he advocated for respectable paychecks for mechanchim. He was involved in Torah Umesorah, and his Agudah convention speeches were a highlight for many English-speaking Torah Jews. Many of the Rav’s major addresses, articles, and lectures were incorporated into three books: Selected Writings, Selected Speeches, and Selected Essays.
The Rav’s “magnum opus” was his Maayan Beis HaSho’eivah, a treasure trove of his most original and profound thoughts on Chumash and other topics, and Reb Moshe published his father’s speeches on tefillah and various seforim on Nach, which have become classics in Jewish homes the world over.
He also penned a small pamphlet called Eilu v’Eilu — These and Those, in which he described the Torah im derech eretz approach and the more yeshivish “Torah only” approach, validating both. The Rav was uniquely qualified for this task, as he embodied in one person two diverse Torah cultures: the glorious Frankfurt tradition of Rav Hirsch, with its emphasis on adherence to the emes and insistence on applying Torah to every area of public and private endeavor, and unwavering devotion to intense limud Torah.
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