Rav Aryeh Leib Malin

Early years

Rav Aryeh Leib Malin zt"l, known to all as Rav Leib, was born in 1906 in Mileitzitz, near Bialystok. His father, Rav Avrohom Moshe Malin, served as the town's dayan (judge of a beis din). The family traced its roots to Brisk, where an ancestor, Rav Isser Yehuda Malin, had been one of the rabbinic leaders of the city.

As a young man he learned in the Shaar HaTorah yeshiva of Grodno, where he drew close to the rosh yeshiva, Rav Shimon Shkop, and quickly became known as a serious talmid chacham. He later spent time in Baranovich under Rav Elchonon Wasserman and learned from Rav Baruch Ber Lebowitz, before arriving at the Mir, where he found his true home.

Torah and leadership

In the Mir, Rav Leib took his place among the senior talmidim known as the “lions of the Mir,” and in time became their leader. He was regarded as a model of lomdus (deep analytical learning) and of mussar. His rebbi in mussar was the mashgiach, Rav Yerucham Levovitz, whom he called the teacher and guide of the yeshivos of prewar Europe. Rav Shmuel Berenbaum related that Rav Leib felt like dust before the Mashgiach, and would have walked into fire had Rav Yerucham asked him to.

From the Mashgiach's shmuessen Rav Leib took more than ethical lessons. The sharp analysis Rav Yerucham brought to the words of Chazal taught him how to dig into every word of Torah. Rav Yechiel Michel Feinstein said that Rav Leib could immerse himself completely in whichever masechta the Mir was learning.

The Mir gave its senior students wide responsibility for running the beis medrash. The lions placed newcomers into chaburos (study groups) and delivered shiurim in them, and several could have served as roshei yeshiva in their own right. Their authority grew further once Rav Yerucham passed away that summer of 1936. The leading posek, Rav Chaim Ozer Grodzensky, held this group in high esteem, and Rav Chaim Pinchos Scheinberg remembered it fondly for decades.

At the request of Rav Isser Zalman Meltzer, the Mir's rosh yeshiva, Rav Eliezer Yehuda Finkel, sent a group of its finest scholars to Brisk to hear the shiurim of the Brisker Rav, Rav Yitzchok Zev Soloveitchik. Rav Leib was among those who heard his shiurim on Kodashim, together with Rav Ephraim Mordechai Ginsburg, Rav Yonah Karpilov and Rav Yechiel Michel Feinstein, the Brisker Rav's future son-in-law. The Brisker Rav took a special liking to him. Rav Leib recorded many of the shiurim, which were later circulated in stencil form, and he was given access to manuscripts of Rav Chaim Brisker.

After Rav Yerucham's passing, Rav Leib and the Mashgiach's sons led talmidim and alumni in publishing his mussar teachings as Daas Chochmah U’Mussar. Rav Leib edited the second volume, and his notes were among those Rav Simcha Zissel Levovitz drew on. He also chaired the assembly of talmidim marking Rav Yerucham's first yahrzeit, which led to the first volume of maamarim, printed in Vilna in 1940. Further pamphlets followed during the years of exile in Shanghai.

In the summer of 1940 the talmidim of the Mir, who had fled occupied Poland to Lithuania, faced a crisis. Soviet rule threatened Torah learning and observance, yet leaving meant real danger. A small group of senior talmidim, holding no official titles but respected by the entire yeshiva, concluded that the yeshiva must leave Lithuania and must leave together as one unit. The vision, the authority and the determination behind the plan came from Rav Leib, who was then unmarried and held no official post.

In 1941 Rav Avrohom Kalmanowitz invited him to come to America, but Rav Leib declined and followed the Mir into exile in Shanghai. There he took on many administrative duties and was a leading member of the committee responsible for the yeshiva's logistics as it moved, first to Kobe, Japan, for roughly six months, and then to Shanghai, where it stayed through the war years.

Beth Hatalmud

After the war Rav Leib came to America. Rav Moshe Feinstein proposed that he lead Mesivtha Tifereth Jerusalem, and Rav Avrohom Kalmanowitz proposed that he head the newly founded Brooklyn branch of the Mir, but he declined both offers. In 1948 he married Yaffa Kreiser, daughter of Rav Dovid Ber Kreiser, a rosh yeshiva in Kletsk who had earlier been av beis din of Greiver.

Rav Leib chose instead to build a yeshiva and kollel on the model of the prewar Mir. He founded Beth Hatalmud Rabbinical College in Brooklyn, viewing it as a continuation of Volozhin, Slabodka and the Mir. He took upon himself the task of recreating the tzuras hayeshivah, the very form and spirit of the yeshiva, on new shores.

As rosh yeshiva, he held to standards of Torah and mussar that taught by example. It is told that he once announced a shiur on a certain sugya, and then cancelled it on the day itself, explaining that he could not see in the talmidim the proper desire to hear it.

Later years and passing

Despite the demands of the yeshiva, Rav Leib spent hours immersed in learning. About nine months before his passing, a hooligan threw a stone at him and injured him. On his final day he was noticed standing in the women's section of the beis medrash, hands outstretched, deeply absorbed in tefillah. A talmid who saw him, and who went on to become a well-known physician, understood that Rav Leib was having a heart attack. Later he collapsed after coming late to a gathering at the home of Rav Shabsai Frankel, known for reprinting the works of the Rambam.

Rav Leib passed away on 29 Teves 5722 (1962), at the age of fifty-six. His passing brought an outpouring of grief perhaps unmatched until then in the American Torah world. Rav Aharon Kotler was so shaken that he fell ill and was confined to bed. When he recovered somewhat, he accompanied the aron to Eretz Yisroel, where Rav Leib was buried on Har HaMenuchot in Yerushalayim, and there he delivered the hesped.

Rav Aharon mourned the loss of the one he saw as the great baal achrayus (man of responsibility). He said, in Yiddish, that the man with the deepest sense of responsibility was gone, and added what his talmidim in Lakewood had often heard from him: that he had believed Rav Leib would take responsibility for the American Torah community. He applied to him the words about Yehudah, “Your brothers will praise you,” explaining that Yehudah began as one of the brothers and rose to royalty through initiative. Rav Leib, too, began as one of the chaburah and rose above it to become someone extraordinary.

Rav Yisroel Gustman, Rav Leib's colleague from his Grodno days, also spoke. He noted that the Menorah in the Beis Hamikdash was adorned, while the Aron Kodesh had no outer decoration, because the Aron stands for Torah itself. Rav Leib, he said, needed no outer trappings, for he embodied Torah.

Legacy

Rav Leib's own Torah was published after his passing by his nephew, Rav Berel Povarsky of the Ponevezh yeshiva, as Chiddushei Rav Aryeh Leib. It covers all of Shas and is used in many yeshivos today, especially for Kodashim and Nezikin, where it is particularly well known. Rav Berel described his uncle's Torah as Brisker Torah, continuing the tradition of Brisk. More recently, his close talmid Rav Chaim Ozer Gorelick published Chiddushim U’Biurim Rav Aryeh Leib. Among his other talmidim were Rav Mordechai Elefant and Rav Shimshon Dovid Pincus.

His influence was not limited to his own beis medrash, to the talmidim of the prewar Mir, to the chaburah of the Brisker Rav, or to the exiled yeshiva in Shanghai. Wherever a beis medrash is built on Torah, mussar and a sense of responsibility, a trace of what Rav Leib carried forward can still be felt.