The Key to Repentance

When Rav Shlomo Wolbe was leaving his position as menahel ruchani of Yeshivas Beer Yaakov to move to Jerusalem in 5742 (1981), a yungerman named Reuven Leuchter asked him if he would be willing to continue their rebbi-talmid relationship by chavrusa.

“To my amazement, he said yes,” says Rav Leuchter. For the next 20 years, Rav Leuchter traveled to Rav Wolbe once a week, where among other works, they studied Nefesh HaChaim, the groundbreaking tome of Rav Chaim Volozhin.

“I have no notes or recordings from those sessions,” said Rav Leuchter last week, as he sat in a modest storeroom that serves as his office in Jerusalem’s Sanhedria Murchevet neighborhood. “He forced me to concentrate and educated me to listen. Many times, I would daven to Hashem for help because my head was pounding, but Rav Wolbe was ‘merciless.’ He kept pushing things and I had to put them in my head. He also had a great memory. He would tell the same joke with the same words months later and he would check to see if I was making a face like ‘I heard that already.’ ”

What was the Rav’s point?

“If you make that face, then you’re not listening. If you’re listening to Beethoven, do you say you know the symphony already? If you do, then you’re not listening. Listening means that even when you’re hearing the same story, you might pick up a minute detail you never understood before.”