Rav Chaim Pinchos Scheinberg

Early years

Rav Chaim Pinchos Scheinberg zt"l was born on 1 October 1910 in Ostrov, the second son of Rav Yaakov Yitzchok Scheinberg, a tailor, and Yuspa (Yosefa) Tamback. His father was not there at his birth: months earlier he had gone to America, leaving behind his wife and their firstborn, Avrohom Nosson, so as to escape service in the Polish army.

His father meant to work and send money home, but he was dismissed from job after job because he would not work on Shabbos. Before long he could not even rent a room, and for months he slept outdoors along the East River in New York, with only a pillow, a blanket and an umbrella. Back in Poland his wife lived with her parents and worked hard to make ends meet, rising at dawn to milk cows for local farmers. When the First World War broke out in 1914, contact between them was lost.

By 1919 the father had saved enough to open a tailor shop, and he sent for his wife and children to join him in America. At nine years old the young Chaim Pinchos arrived with them at a small Lower East Side apartment, where his mother soon had twins, Shmuel and Chana Baila.

Torah and leadership

After a short time in public school, he enrolled in the Rabbi Jacob Joseph School and stayed until fourteen. Rav Yaakov Yosef Herman, who guided promising young men in New York toward greater Torah learning, urged him to transfer to the Beis Medrash LeRabbonim of Rav Yehuda Levenberg in New Haven, where no secular subjects were taught. Rav Herman also had in mind a shidduch between the boy and his third daughter, Bessie, still only twelve at the time. When he left New Haven at sixteen and a half he was known as a diligent student and had completed all of Shas.

At seventeen he entered RIETS, where he learned under Rav Shlomo Polachek, the Meitcheter Illui, and Rav Moshe Soloveichik. He also learned from Rav Shimon Shkop during Rav Shimon's brief stay in New York. His learning partners were Rav Avigdor Miller, Rav Moshe Bick, Rav Mordechai Gifter and Rav Nosson Meir Wachtfogel, all future leaders of American Torah Jewry.

When he was nineteen, Rav Herman proposed the match with his seventeen-year-old daughter, and the Scheinbergs agreed. Rav Boruch Ber Leibowitz, then a guest in the Herman home, wrote the tenaim. Following his mother's advice, Chaim Pinchos prepared for semichah in the months before the wedding, and he was ordained by Rav Moshe Soloveitchik, Dr. Bernard Revel and other rabbanim of the yeshiva before the chasuna.

Encouraged by his father-in-law, the young couple went to the town of Mir, then in Poland and today in Belarus, and stayed for five years. Their home stood beside the yeshiva, and there Rav Chaim Pinchos threw himself into learning and became known as one of the most diligent talmidim. His wife encouraged his growth in Torah while enduring hard conditions: there was no running water, the only heat came from a stove in the middle of the apartment, and the dirt roads were constantly muddy.

Few families lived in the Mir, and Rav Chaim Pinchos was one of the few Americans. Rav Herman had previously sent his son Nochum Dovid, with his wife, to the Mir, and some years afterward his daughter Ruchoma and her husband, Moshe Shain, followed. Rav Chaim Pinchos's younger brother Shmuel came to the Mir at fourteen and escaped Europe on one of the last ships before the war. Rav Shachne Zohn and Rav Nosson Wachtfogel, later mashgiach of Lakewood, also learned there. During those years the couple welcomed their first two daughters, Fruma Rochel and Rivka, in Poland.

While in Europe, Rav Chaim Pinchos also learned in the Kaminetz yeshiva and received semichah from Rav Boruch Ber Leibowitz. In 1935 the family returned to America, because staying abroad beyond five years would have cost him his American citizenship.

Shortly after coming back he became mashgiach ruchani (spiritual supervisor) of Yeshiva Chofetz Chaim in Queens, founded by Rav Dovid Leibowitz, and held the position for twenty-five years. He also taught at his old New Haven yeshiva until it closed in 1938. He gave his talmidim warmth and close attention, and he and his wife were known for their kindness to neighbors and guests in their small apartment, where the girls often shared beds in pairs to free space for unexpected visitors. On the Lower East Side he was also Rav of Congregation Bakash Shalom Anshei Ostrov, where he delivered Torah talks to working men.

Their family grew in New York with the births of Chana, Zelda and their son Simcha. They raised Rivky Kaufman too, one of the seven orphaned children of Bessie's sister Freida, who died suddenly in 1938.

In 1960, with the help of his brother, Rav Shmuel Scheinberg, and his son-in-law Rav Chaim Dov Altusky, husband of Fruma Rochel, he opened Yeshivas Torah Ore in the Bensonhurst section of Brooklyn. It began with six talmidim and grew steadily, drawing many local Sephardic boys who were attracted by his Torah and his warmth. The Scheinbergs treated their talmidim as their own children, raising money to help them marry and even paying their dentist bills.

Torah Ore in Eretz Yisroel

In 1963 Bessie's sister Ruchoma visited her father in Eretz Yisroel and toured a planned Chareidi neighborhood in northern Yerushalayim called Kiryat Mattersdorf. It had been founded by the Mattersdorfer Rav, Rav Shmuel Ehrenfeld, who was her neighbor in New York. She came back wanting to buy an apartment there, and Bessie became interested too. Rav Chaim Pinchos was doubtful about moving his family and his yeshiva, but after a pilot trip he decided it could work. Rav Akiva Ehrenfeld, the Mattersdorfer Rav's son and his representative for building and selling the apartments, encouraged him to move the yeshiva by offering good terms on apartments and land.

In May 1965 the move took place: Rav Chaim Pinchos and his wife, their daughter Fruma Rochel with her family, their son Simcha with his, and more than twenty talmidim settled into new homes. Rav Asa Wittow, a married talmid who had learned under him since 1960 and had been his driver in New York, came with him and moved into the same building. The yeshiva was first set up in the Diskin Orphanage building in Givat Shaul.

In June 1967, when war erupted and many American tourists headed home, Rav Chaim Pinchos urged his talmidim to stay, and none of the American talmidim left. During the war he showed his devotion by encouraging them and sleeping beside them in the bomb shelter. Afterward he began planning a permanent home, and in 1971 Torah Ore settled into its current building in Kiryat Mattersdorf. By 2011 it had nearly 800 students, over 500 of them in the kollel.

Rebbetzin Basya was a full partner in his work, supporting him and his talmidim and welcoming the many people who came for his counsel. A telephone was placed in their bedroom so he could be reached at any time of day or night. On Simchas Torah, when hundreds of singing and dancing talmidim escorted him home from the yeshiva, she watched from their sixth-floor apartment.

Rav Chaim Pinchos became a central address for Americans in Eretz Yisroel seeking guidance in raising children, choosing a neighborhood, finding a shidduch, coping with illness and, of course, halachic questions. He was at ease in English and understood the challenges facing American teenagers learning in Israel, which made him especially beloved in yeshivos for American talmidim. He was the Mora D'Asra of Kiryat Mattersdorf, one of its rabbinic leaders together with Rav Yisroel Gans and Rav Yitzchok Yechiel Ehrenfeld, a member of the Moetzes Gedolei HaTorah in Eretz Yisroel, and a posek on a wide range of communal and personal questions. His haskamah was sought for many halachic seforim in Hebrew and English, for adults and children.

Rav Chaim Pinchos was known for wearing many pairs of tzitzis at once. At first he wore about 150 pairs, and later, because of his fragile health, about 70. He said that he did so on behalf of Jews who do not fulfill the mitzvah, though his driver, Rav Asa Wittow, felt that this was not the main reason. It is also related that he took on the practice as a vow during his daughter's illness, so that more mitzvos would be done in her merit.

Later years and passing

Even in his later years Rav Chaim Pinchos continued to fly abroad to raise funds for the yeshiva. In the year 2000 his neighborhood talks to English-speaking women were collected in a book, Heart to Heart Talks, and the English sefer Rigshei Lev, on women and tefillah, cites his halachic opinions extensively.

On 21 October 2009 his wife Basya passed away at the age of ninety-six, after nearly eighty years of marriage. Rav Chaim Pinchos passed away on 27 Adar 5772 (20 March 2012), at the age of one hundred and one, at Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Yerushalayim, after a brief illness. About 70,000 people attended the levayah, which began at Torah Ore and continued to Har HaZeisim, where he was buried. His only son, Rav Simcha Scheinberg, succeeded him as rosh yeshiva of Torah Ore.

Legacy

Rav Chaim Pinchos was one of the last Torah leaders to have been formed in the yeshivos of prewar Europe, and a bridge between that world and the American talmidim who came to learn in Eretz Yisroel. He also served as rosh yeshiva of Yeshivas Derech Chaim in Brooklyn. Thousands of talmidim of Torah Ore, and the neighborhoods and families he guided, carry forward his example of learning without wasting a moment and caring for others with warmth.