The Open House of Brisk

In the home of Rav Chaim, everything was hefker. Anyone could walk in from the street and take whatever he wanted, and no one in the family was allowed to say a word. Families would sometimes move in and take a room for themselves, and no one would object. People made themselves at home as if they owned the place, and some nights Rav Chaim could not sleep because someone was in his bed.

The Brisker Rav said that his father's house was far worse than a reshus harabbim (a public area). If you made your bed in the street, the authorities would come and take it away, but in his father's house there were no rules and people did whatever they wanted. He recalled that he himself once came to his own bed at night and found a stranger lying in it. He had nowhere to sleep that night, and he said nothing to anyone.

Rav Dovid Soloveitchik shlita related that one time his father, the Brisker Rav, was writing a dvar Torah that Rav Chaim had asked him to write. In the middle of his writing, a schlepper barged in from the street and asked for the pen. The Brisker Rav told him that he would give it to him in a minute, when he had finished writing. When Rav Chaim heard this, he cried out, “What is going on here, that we don't lend our pens?”