The 50th yahrtzeit of HaRav Eliahu Meir Bloch zt"l was 28
Teves. This hesped was given by HaRav Gifter on the
tenth yahrtzeit, in 5725 (1965).
Torah
Torah is the lifeblood of the Jewish People, and more than
that — the Torah is a blueprint of the entire Creation.
Everything in Creation has a certain framework, and the Torah
encompasses everything.
The life of the Jewish People is Torah. The life of a Jew is
measured on the scale of how much Torah he can learn; and all
the mitzvos have their root and source in the Torah.
There are those who call themselves Orthodox who see the
Torah only as one mitzvah. Wherever such an approach is
prevalent, we know that the members of that community have
lost their appreciation of the Torah leaders. Such societies
do turn out some truly wonderful personalities in some ways,
but they lack that epitome of greatness in Torah: the Torah
personality.
Jewish life in America is marked by lack of restraint. The
natural desire for freedom has brought with it, in this
country, freedom from being human. Whoever wants to build a
society here that has as its basic tenet responsibility and a
sense of obligation, has only one way to do so: he has to
establish the yoke of Torah upon that entire generation. Not
to create a society that has also Torah and also
mitzvos, but a society that will represent a thorough
change in the approach to the essence of life from what
exists around us.
One must create an aspiration to Torah, an aspiration to
achieve greatness in Torah, to learn Torah for its own sake,
Torah lishmoh. One must establish a deep sense that
learning Torah year after year, without thinking of a
tachlis, is not synonymous with being lazy, negative
and uncreative, but rather is the pinnacle of happiness upon
this earth.
The Rosh Yeshiva zt"l, who was a Holocaust survivor,
saw the building of the Telz Yeshiva in America as his life's
purpose. And his purpose was not to add a little bit of Telz
to Jewish American life, but rather to revolutionize American
Jewry: to plant here too the whole concept of Torah, the
lofty ideal that the Lithuanian Yeshivos represented for
generations.
Who can fully assess the revolution in the way of thinking of
Torah-true Jews that came about thanks to the unceasing
labors of HaRav Eliyahu Meir, as he sought to establish Torah
here in its fullest dimensions?
During the last few months of his life we saw his incredible
deveikus, his deep connection to Torah. On the day
after his last operation, he was lying in bed, attached to
all manner of tubes — and looking worried. He asked one
of the visiting rebbeim — in sign language — to
learn the parsha with Rashi with him. He needed all
the strength he possessed in order to hear every word —
and he had to hear every word, because he was learning Torah.
Here and there he motioned to the person to stop, because he
did not have the strength to continue listening. However he
was still worried, and a quarter of an hour later he
requested again to resume the studying. When he felt that he
had learned for a whole hour, he once again asked the person
to stop, but now his face expressed joy. And so, not a day
went by in which he did not fulfill his duty to learn Torah
for at least an hour a day, even though this caused him
terrible physical suffering.
I myself remember one day, towards evening, when the Rosh
Yeshiva zt"l said that he had not learned today
because of weakness. He then added that as long as he can
remember he never went through a day without learning Torah,
with the exception of the day that he was taken in for an
operation before dawn and awakened from the anesthesia after
dark. But now, he said, he felt that studying might endanger
his life since he is so weak. But he was afraid to pasken
for himself that he is exempt, and therefore asked the
Rosh Yeshiva HaRav Mordechai Katz zt"l, who was
visiting him at the time, to pasken that he is exempt
for reasons of pikuach nefesh. That was the extent of
his deveikus to Torah.
Hundreds of students learned from him and acquired the
certainty that the highest level of happiness in life is when
the goal is learning Torah and knowing it, through unceasing
labor.
Da'as Torah
Learning Torah in a pure and whole way trains a person's mind
and senses to behave according to Hashem's will, as revealed
in the Holy Torah.
The Rosh Yeshiva zt"l used to say of the verse Lo
suchal le'echol bishe'orecho (Devorim 12:17 —
literally, You will not be able to eat . . . ), that not only
is the eating referred to in the verse forbidden, but because
it is against Hashem's will a person should truly feel that
he cannot do it. Likewise, he should feel that he cannot do
anything that is against Hashem's will.
He used to say that when one tells a person to jump off the
roof of a tall building, the natural response is to say that
one cannot do that. That is not really true, for the person
can do it but does not want to do it or is afraid to. But
since his mind tells him not to do it, he sees it as an
impossibility. So too, a person should train himself in Torah
to the point that his mind, that has been immersed in Torah,
rules his actions and makes it impossible for him to do
anything against Hashem's will. Torah changes a person's
nature. When one has learned Torah, one's thoughts are not
those of a simple person but a reflection of da'as
Torah.
We are living in a period in which there are many "leaders"
who speak in the name of Torah, but who are entirely lacking
in the realm of da'as Torah. It is no wonder, then,
that in this generation darkness and light are
intermingled.
Mesorah
Chazal said of Rabbi Eliezer ben Hurkanos that he never said
anything that he had not heard from his teachers. Elsewhere
they say that Rabbi Eliezer himself said that he said things
that no one had ever heard before. One godol explained
this contradiction by saying that there were certain things
said by Rabbi Eliezer's teachers which only Rabbi Eliezer
could hear.
It is a wondrous spiritual trait to recognize one's Rov's
greatness, to the point that one's powers of thinking are
completely subjugated to the way of that Rov. It is almost as
if one is making use of the Rov's thinking for one's own
personal thoughts. In order to achieve such a state of mind
one needs both a deep realization of the Rov's greatness, and
pure middos, to the point of negating oneself in the
face of such greatness.
The Rosh Yeshiva zt"l was blessed with this spiritual
trait. He was able to set aside his entire wonderful, many-
sided entity in face of the da'as Torah of his great
teacher, HaRav Yosef Yehuda Leib zt"l, av beis din and
teacher in Telz. He always strove to find sources for
everything that he learned, and for all his innovations
— whether in halochoh or in aggadah, whether in theory
or in practice — in the words or ways of his father. He
recognized his father's genius and saw the great light of his
Torah and middos, with no desire to put himself
forward.
We live in a period in which people tend to belittle and
contradict the accomplishments of the past, a period that is
detached from the past, with the result of leaving the
present life empty and bereft. In these confused times we
will sorely miss a person like HaRav Eliyahu Meir Bloch, who
found all his own original genius in his father's teachings,
and used it to work towards a fruitful future for all
eternity for the Jewish People.
Truth
Chazal taught us that it is not enough to be a man of Truth.
A talmid chochom should also seek and pursue Truth.
The feeling for Truth should become one of his senses.
Our generation is a generation of falsehood, and without a
natural sense of Truth it is difficult to withstand the pull
of that falsehood. All the faults of this generation stem
from a tendency towards falsehood. Compromises are made with
falsehood. But the nature of Truth is that anything that is
not thoroughly true, cannot be considered true either. The
life of a Jew is a life of Truth, and any life that does not
contain the Truth, is only an imitation of the Jewish way of
life.
The Rosh Yeshiva zt"l pursued Truth. He could
immediately sense the slightest falsehood, and would use his
sense of Truth to expose it. We still remember the many
complaints and claims against him, when he said once that the
Sunday minyanim in the shuls are simply avodoh
zorah. But he did not retract his words, because his
opinion was based on his sense of Truth, which did not allow
for any compromises or capitulation.
This trait of his was what caused him to discourage his
talmidim from entering the American rabbinate, for he
saw it as compromising with falsehood, and for one who really
seeks Truth, no consideration in the world is reason enough
to dim its great light.
Public Affairs
A person's greatness is measured by the degree to which he
feels that his self is not limited to his own affairs. The
truly great person — as we learned from the Rosh
Yeshiva zt"l — is he who believes in Hashem and
cleaves to him to the point of feeling, that everything
— and really everything — is part of his own
private self, since he himself is part of everything. He
therefore feels that he is responsible not only for himself,
but for the entire public. And that, of course, is the basic
point of Chazal's teaching, Kol Yisroel areivim zeh bozeh
(Shavuos 39a).
For that reason, any great Torah personality must be
connected to all the issues relating to the Jewish People. It
is a direct result of his Torah outlook, of his belief in the
Almighty. It is the expression of his obligation to fulfill
his responsibilities as a Jew who is fulfilling the will of
the Creator.
We live in a time in which public action has become a
profession. But the professional political figures are living
not for the Jewish People, but off them. Such political
behavior, which is only a profession, results in terrible
things such as shows of obeisance to the Pope, which involve
requesting his blessing and thanking him for the "favors" he
has granted the Jewish People. How shocking — and how
painful — this is!
The Rosh Yeshiva was unique in his generation when it came to
askonus for the Jewish People. Everyone who met him
could see that the Rosh Yeshiva zt"l felt that it was
his personal obligation to sanctify Hashem's Name in the
world. His students saw this as well, and recognized the fact
that greatness in Torah widens one's perspective. They saw
and recognized that the four cubits of halochoh actually
encompass the entire world!
HaRav Mordechai Gifter zt"l was also rosh yeshivas Telz,
Cleveland.
