Rav Elchonon Bunim Wasserman

Early years

Rav Elchonon Bunim Wasserman zt"l, Rosh Yeshiva of Ohel Torah in Baranovitch, was born in Birzh, Lithuania, in 1875. His father, Rav Naftali Beinish, was a shopkeeper from a family with no famous lineage, but young Elchonon quickly excelled in his learning. The family later moved to Boisk.

He learned at the Telshe yeshivah under Rav Eliezer Gordon and Rav Shimon Shkop, and on visits home he learned with Rav Avrohom Yitzchok HaKohen Kook, then Rav of Boisk. In 1897 he met Rav Chaim Soloveitchik of Brisk and became his talmid. Rav Shimon was concerned with the “why” of a sugya (topic of study), while Rav Chaim taught that one must know what is stated, not why. Rav Elchonon was deeply influenced by both, and in time he developed his own approach.

He married Michla, the daughter of Rav Meir Atlas, who was Av Beis Din of Salant and Shavil, a founder of the Telshe yeshivah and the father-in-law of Rav Chaim Ozer Grodzensky.

Torah and leadership

Rav Elchonon first served as Rosh Yeshiva in Amtchislav, in Belarus, together with Rav Yoel Baranchik of Riga. He left when the townspeople asked him to make compromises that he felt betrayed his principles. Leaving his family behind, he traveled to Radin as a porush (one who leaves home to devote himself fully to Torah) and joined the Kollel Kodshim of the Chofetz Chaim.

A new era began for him when he met the Chofetz Chaim in 1907. He had already served with success as a Rosh Yeshiva and was now a mature man of thirty-two, yet he trembled in the presence of the Chofetz Chaim, whom he saw as a living Torah. His chavrusa in the kollel was another product of Telshe, Rav Yosef Shlomo Kahaneman, later the Ponevezher Rav. Together with a group of the greatest Torah scholars of Europe they learned Seder Kodshim, a priority of the Chofetz Chaim as he prepared for what he felt was the imminent arrival of Mashiach.

The Chofetz Chaim became Rav Elchonon’s lifelong role model, and he felt that his rebbi’s character had been etched into every part of him. Even after he left Radin, he returned each year for Elul and the Yomim Noraim, to hear his rebbi’s drashos and to ask his advice. Once, after a Rosh Hashanah shmuess, someone remarked that the elderly Chofetz Chaim had said exactly what he had said the year before. “Not quite,” replied Rav Elchonon. “This year he included eight additional words.” When the Chofetz Chaim was preparing to leave Poland for Eretz Yisroel, a committee of gedolim pleaded with him to stay and asked, “Rebbi, in whose hands do you leave us?” He answered, “I leave you with Rav Elchonon.”

In 1910 Rav Elchonon became a Rosh Yeshiva in Brisk, where he had also taught, and he remained there until the outbreak of the war in 1914. In 1921 he became head of Yeshivas Ohel Torah in Baranovitch, where he stayed for the rest of his life. The yeshivah had been opened in 1907–1908 by the Alter of Novardok, Rav Yosef Yoizel Horowitz, as a branch of the Novardok network, and it had shrunk during the First World War. In June 1921 the Radin yeshivah, returning to Poland from exile, spent ten days in Baranovitch, and the Chofetz Chaim prevailed upon his close talmid to take over the yeshivah.

Under Rav Elchonon, Ohel Torah grew in numbers and in stature, even in the face of abysmal poverty, and attracted many hundreds of talmidim. By 1924 it had built a wooden building of its own. It was mainly a yeshivah ketanah for teenage boys, with six grades and an elite kibbutz (the most advanced group). Rav Elchonon gave a shiur twice a day, and the talmidim were required to complete the full daf with the sources he assigned, so that they quickly learned to study on their own. The staff included Rav Shlomo Heiman, who left for the Rameiles yeshivah in 1928, Rav Dovid Rappaport, author of Mikdash Dovid, and the tzaddik Rav Yisroel Yaakov Lubchansky, who served as mashgiach. Baranovitch was the only yeshivah to learn Mishnah Berurah as part of its curriculum, in tribute to the Chofetz Chaim, and its graduates went on to Radin, Kaminetz, Mir and other leading yeshivos.

Rav Elchonon taught mostly by example. The talmidim remembered that the traditional mussar shmuess had little place in the yeshivah, which he saw as a home for pure Torah, and that every action and word of his was measured and driven by a search for emes, another legacy of the Chofetz Chaim. His appreciation for chassidim drew many Polish chassidic bochurim to the yeshivah, and he encouraged them to carry their mesorah proudly and not to cut their peyos or beards in order to fit in. When a chassid asked the Imrei Emes of Gur whether he should send his son to Baranovitch, the Rebbe answered, “To Rav Elchonon, what question could there be?” The Slonimer Rebbe, Rav Avrohom Weinberg, established his court in Baranovitch and enjoyed a warm personal relationship with him.

The yeshivah was always in debt. American relief funding had mostly dried up by 1923, and meals were sometimes skipped. Rav Elchonon would say that of the ten measures of poverty that descended on the yeshivah world, Baranovitch took nine. He also joked that the yeshivah had three producers: Rav Dovid Rappaport produced seforim, Rav Yisroel Yaakov produced baalei teshuvah, and he produced debts. When the yeshivah struggled to finish its stone building in the early 1930s, the Chofetz Chaim wrote a rare letter to the Jews of Baranovitch, urging them to give generously, since whoever helped build this sanctuary would be regarded as if he had helped build the Beis Hamikdash. When Rav Meir Shapiro, planning Yeshivas Chachmei Lublin, visited Baranovitch, he was stunned by the thunderous Amein yehei shmei rabba of the hundreds of talmidim, and offered Rav Elchonon a post in his new yeshivah with much better conditions. Rav Elchonon pointed to the talmidim in the beis medrash and asked, “But what will I do with all my children?” When his own son asked for a new coat, he refused, saying that he had hundreds of sons in the yeshivah and not all of them had coats.

Besides leading the yeshivah, Rav Elchonon was deeply involved in communal matters and was active in Agudas Yisroel. He was also a thinker and an interpreter of contemporary events, and his ideas appeared in a book of essays, Kovetz Maamorim. He held that just as the Torah guides us in halachic matters, it also illuminates the era in which we live. In his essay The Footprints of the Messiah he presented a sweeping view of modern life, stressing the rapid pace of the world’s development compared to earlier generations and the idol of nationalism, which he saw as trying to replace Torah as the center of Jewish life. He was also known to say that a Jew must find time to read a newspaper, to write to the newspaper, and to review all of Shas once a year.

Teachings and seforim

Rav Elchonon’s shiurim and writings were gathered in a series of seforim: Kovetz Heoros, Kovetz Shiurim, Kovetz Biyurim, Kovetz Shemuos, Kovetz Inyanim, Kovetz Maamarim and Ikvesa Demeshicha. They are widely used in yeshivos to this day, and his maamarim on hashkafah are legendary.

Later years and passing

After his wife passed away in the early summer of 1935, Rav Elchonon’s health began to fail, and doctors sent him to the spas of Marienbad. There a telegram reached him that the yeshivah’s suppliers had stopped deliveries because they had not been paid for months. He turned to the Imrei Emes of Gur, who was also in Marienbad, and asked him to call ten wealthy chassidim to give 250 zlotys each, in return for the Rebbe’s blessing. The Rebbe did so, and the full amount was raised. Rav Elchonon then raised a difficult Tosafos in Menachos, and the Rebbe, who was known for his brevity, discussed it with him for nearly half an hour.

As a last resort he traveled to America, arriving on 18 October 1937, and spent seventeen months crossing the country to lift the yeshivah out of debt. His talmidim in Baranovitch had offered to give up a meal a day rather than see him leave, but he felt the trip was necessary. He refused the style of American fundraising, kept strictly to his principles and raised about $10,000. In Denver a newspaper reporter called him “The Jewish Einstein,” and days later, in Dallas, came the news of Kristallnacht, which did not surprise him. He believed that the children of America were pure and needed only someone to teach them Torah. He spent time with the young people of Zeirei Agudath Yisroel, among them Mike Tress, and with young men of Torah Vodaath such as Moshe Sherer, and he left a lasting impression on the future builders of Torah life in America. Toward the end of 1938 his son Rav Simcha joined him in America.

In March 1939 Rav Elchonon decided to return. His friends begged him to stay, but he said that he had hundreds of sons in the yeshivah and could not leave them. “I am a soldier,” he said, “and I have to go to the front.” He could have remained in safety, but he never considered it. Six months later Germany invaded Poland, and the yeshivah fled to Vilna. After the Red Army occupied Lithuania in June 1940, he moved the yeshivah to the village of Semeliskes, and eventually he disbanded it and advised the talmidim to find safer places.

In early June 1941 Rav Elchonon and his family tried to flee north toward Sweden and from there to America. As his son Rav Naftali was loading his bag it fell and broke his leg, and the departure was put off. Before the new date arrived, Germany invaded the Soviet Union. Rav Elchonon spent his last weeks in Kovno, in the home of Rav Aryeh Malkiel Friedman, which adjoined the home of Rav Avrohom Grodzensky, where he learned each day. There he was seized by Lithuanian partisans and taken to the Seventh Fort outside Kovno, where he was murdered al kiddush Hashem together with thousands of other Jews in Tammuz 5701 (1941).

It is told that when the end was near, Rav Elchonon spoke to those around him as calmly as he always did, with no sign of panic. “In Heaven it seems that they deem us to be tzaddikim, because we have been chosen to be korbanos (sacrifices) for Klal Yisroel. Therefore we must do teshuvah now, for we have little time. We will be better korbanos if we do teshuvah, and in this way we will save the Yidden in America. Let no foreign thought enter our minds, chas veshalom, for that would make us pigul, an unfit offering. We are now fulfilling the greatest mitzvah. Yerushalayim was destroyed with fire and will be rebuilt with fire. The same fire that consumes our bodies will one day rebuild Klal Yisroel.” Rav Ephraim Oshry, one of the few who escaped, passed these words on.

Legacy

The Chazon Ish once testified that Rav Elchonon fulfilled completely the verse “I have placed Hashem before me always.” In a generation of many great roshei yeshiva, he stood out not only for his learning but for the effect his personality had on his talmidim. He demanded that bnei Torah grow into true gedolei Torah, and he asked the same of the older talmidim again and again.

Most of his family, the rebbeim of the yeshivah and most of its talmidim were lost with him. His shiurim, his seforim and the memory of his fire for Torah remain with us, and Jews still turn to him as a model of emes, of mesirus nefesh and of loyalty to talmidim.