Rav Sholom Mordechai Schwadron

Early years

Rav Sholom Mordechai Schwadron zt"l, known as the Maggid of Yerushalayim, was born in 1912 in the Beis Yisroel neighborhood of Yerushalayim to Rav Yitzchok and Freida Schwadron. His father had earlier served as Khotymyr's av beis din, the head of its rabbinical court, and was the son of the Maharsham, the leading posek in Galicia before World War I. Rav Sholom was born about a year and a half after the Maharsham's passing and was named for him.

Rav Yitzchok was a widower. His first wife, Chaya Leah, had passed away in 1898, and nine children remained in his care. He moved to Eretz Yisroel in 1903, bringing four of them, and there he married Freida, who brought up the orphans as if they were her own. Together they had six more children.

Rav Yitzchok passed away at the age of sixty-three, when Freida was thirty-five and Sholom was only seven. Freida carried the burden of supporting the family, which included a sickly brother who lived in her home, by going from house to house selling bread. At night she found time to say Tehillim and to share with her children the Torah of their father. In later years Rav Sholom included a number of the Torah thoughts of his father in the prefaces to his seforim Daas Torah Maharsham (part II) and Oholei Shem.

The boy spent several years in the Diskin Orphanage in Yerushalayim. At twelve he began learning in Yeshivas Tzion under the guidance of Rav Yaakov Katzenelenbogen, and at fifteen he went to the Lomza Yeshiva in Petach Tikva, where his rebbe was Rav Eliyahu Dushnitzer.

Torah and leadership

Despite the poverty of his youth, Rav Sholom grew into a serious talmid chacham. By the age of eighteen he was learning 700 pages of Gemara each zman (semester) in the Chevron Yeshiva, which had moved to Yerushalayim after the 1929 massacre in Chevron. During his seven years there he became the talmid muvhak (primary student) of the mashgiach ruchani (spiritual supervisor), Rav Leib Chasman. He also learned from Rav Elya Lopian, Rav Yechezkel Levenstein and Rav Meir Chodosh.

On the Friday of Chanukah 1936 he married Leah Auerbach, daughter of Rav Chaim Yehuda Leib Auerbach, rosh yeshiva of Yeshivas Shaar HaShamayim. Rav Chaim Yehuda Leib was a well-known Yerushalayim figure. His poverty was great, yet his love of Torah and of talmidei chachamim was greater. Rav Sholom was his first son-in-law. His brothers-in-law included Rav Shlomo Zalman Auerbach, who headed Yeshivas Kol Torah in Bayit Vegan and was his lifelong friend and learning partner, and Rav Simcha Bunim Leizerson, the first president of the Chinuch Atzmai school system.

A story is told of the early days of the marriage. As agreed in the shidduch, his in-laws were to support him for the first three years. On the first morning his mother-in-law served him black bread, cream, coffee and halvah, and he thanked her and went off to learn. The next day his wife did not join him, and he was told she had gone somewhere. By the third morning he was worried and insisted on knowing the truth. In tears, his mother-in-law admitted that they had promised to support him but had nothing left to feed their daughter as well. Each morning, after he had gone, his wife came in and breakfasted on bread and water.

Rav Sholom built his own home on simplicity. The family's small apartment in Shaarei Chesed had two rooms and no refrigerator, bathtub, washing machine or running water, and water came from a well nearby. The kitchen stood in the courtyard and was too small to require a mezuzah by halachah. Even so, the family was known for sharing all it had with visitors who dropped in and with the needy.

Once married, he entered the Ohel Torah kollel, where his fellow learners included the future leaders Rav Shmuel Wosner, Rav Eliezer Waldenberg and Rav Yosef Sholom Elyashiv. He gave an evening Gemara shiur to the residents of Shaarei Chesed and learned every night with his brother-in-law, Rav Shlomo Zalman Auerbach. A request came in 1937 for a more advanced evening shiur there, and he gave it for twenty-five years.

In 1943 he became mashgiach ruchani of Yeshivas Tiferes Tzvi, a yeshiva for young teenagers, where his talks and his own total concentration in learning left a lasting impression on the boys. From 1950 to 1960 he served as rosh yeshiva of Yeshivas Mekor Chaim, where he had the same influence on Sephardi students. He taught the highest shiur and formed personal bonds with his talmidim that in many cases lasted thirty or forty years. At the urging of the Brisker Rav, he also became a spokesman for Peylim, an organization that worked for the spiritual rescue of Jewish children from Yemen and Morocco who were living in absorption camps.

The Maggid of Yerushalayim

In 1952 Rav Sholom began giving a public talk on Friday night at the Zichron Moshe shtiebel near Geula. The talk continued for forty years, and it earned him the name Maggid of Yerushalayim.

He opened each talk with halachah and closed with fiery mussar that reached his listeners' hearts and moved them to improve themselves. A master storyteller, he stirred his audience with a sing-song voice, witty remarks and dramatic gestures before delivering the call to change. He often marked the irony of human weakness with a booming laugh and the cry "Pilei ployim, hafla vafelle," meaning wonder of wonders, amazing.

One talk from the month of Elul is remembered, in which he prepared his listeners to reflect and do teshuvah before Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. He asked the congregation to picture the people buried in the local cemetery being granted a single hour to return to this world. In a mournful sing-song he repeated, "Just one hour." Then he startled them by telling them to look at the door, where the great-grandmother and the rav who had passed away the year before, together with Berel and Yankel and Yossel, were all walking in. The listeners actually turned around to look. The departed, he said, were pleading for room, because they had only one hour. In this way he brought his audience to think of Hashem's greatness, of man's mortality and of the days of teshuvah.

In his talks he told many stories of the gedolim and tzaddikim of earlier generations. Rav Paysach Krohn, a talmid whom he mentored, included some of them in The Maggid Speaks, a book on which Rav Sholom collaborated, and in Echoes of the Maggid, which appeared after his passing.

Rav Sholom worked on himself as he urged others to do. From the time of his marriage until well into his eighties, he kept a taanis dibbur (a fast from speaking) every Monday and Thursday, and also during the forty days from the first of Elul until Yom Kippur.

Seforim

Rav Sholom annotated, edited and published twenty-five or more seforim, mostly the writings of his grandfather, the Maharsham, among them Shaylos UTeshuvos Maharsham, Oholei Shem and Daas Torah Maharsham. He also prepared two well-known mussar works by his own rebbeim: Lev Eliyahu, the writings of Rav Elya Lopian, and Ohr Yahel, the writings of Rav Leib Chasman.

Later years and passing

His mother, Freida, passed away in 1962, and his wife, Leah, in 1977. Rav Sholom passed away on 22 Kislev 5758 (21 December 1997) and was buried on Har HaZeisim, the Mount of Olives, in Yerushalayim.