The Mantle of the Accountants

On 29 Shevat 5687 (1927) the sun set over the Slobodka yeshiva in Chevron. The Alter, Rav Nosson Tzvi Finkel, the founder and educator of Slobodka, was niftar. It was the closing prayer of the opening chapter of the Slobodka branch of the yirah institutions that had been founded along the path of Reb Yisroel Salanter.

Somewhere far from the bier, surrounded by grieving hearts, two of the Alter's students walked together. “Two types of builders,” one said to the other, “take part in the founding of every spiritual edifice that is established for the generations: the masterminds and the accountants. Now that the masterminds have left us, we must put on the mantle of the accountants.”

“I saw then,” Rav Yitzchok Hutner later related, “how Reb Yechezkel's shoulders rose up to put on the mantle that had been thrown to him.”

Later, as if apologizing, Reb Yechezkel explained to the readers of the notes he wrote in the margins of his Mesilas Yesharim, the Shulchan Oruch of yiras Shomayim: “I hereby say that if in these insights I have failed to cite the name of my mentor, Rav Nosson Tzvi Finkel, it is because there is no reason to mention him, since everything I know is from him. Without him I would be like a blind man and a deaf man. Only through him have I merited the opening of my eyes and my ears, and my entire study approach and manner of analyzing the halochos comes only from him, my rav muvhak, even though I did not merit to be a talmid muvhak.”

Those close to him testify that in his sichos Reb Yechezkel never mentioned the name of the Alter.