The Rav Is Waiting

One of the inspiring aspects of the Torah world is the frequency with which individuals turn their own experience of tragedy and pain into a means of preventing others from experiencing the same pain. The classic example is genetics testing organization Dor Yesharim. After Rabbi Yosef Eckstein and his wife lost four out of their first five children to a dreaded genetic disease he resolved to do something to ensure that no other Jewish family would ever suffer what they had. And he succeeded. Today through the genetic testing for carriers of Tay-Sachs instituted by Dor Yesharim Tay-Sachs has been virtually eliminated from the Torah community.

The first deaf education for Orthodox kids came about when a little boy started crying at the Seder table “I’m not a rasha. I’m not a rasha.” The Haggadah he was using portrayed the evil son as not wearing a yarmulke and at that time the only deaf education then available was in public schools that did not permit wearing a yarmulke. That boy’s parents Yosef and Ruth Ebstein decided that they had no choice but to start a Torah school the Hebrew Institute for the Deaf for their two deaf sons and others like them.

Rabbi Moshe Schlesinger is another example of someone who used his personal travails for the benefit of Klal Yisrael. He and his wife Goldie were married for over 25 years without children before being blessed with twins — a son and a daughter. Long before he and his wife had yet become parents Rabbi Schlesinger began counseling other couples with respect to the complicated medical emotional and halachic issues faced by couples experiencing fertility problems.

He had felt acutely the lack of such guidance and wanted to spare other couples the same feelings of loneliness and doubt. By that time Rabbi Schlesinger a graduate of Ponevezh Yeshiva and subsequently a close talmid of the Brisker Rav’s son Rav Yosef Ber Soloveitchik had accumulated considerable halachic and medical knowledge of the issues connected to fertility problems.