Interview with Rabbi Aharon Feldman
Rabbi Aharon Feldman is a rabbi and the rosh yeshiva of Yeshivas Ner Yisroel in Maryland. He is a member of the Moetzes Gedolei HaTorah.
Slabodka and Baltimore
Contents
Max Raskin: You’ve spoken about three rabbis early in your life who influenced you, one of them being Rav Yitzchak Hutner. I’d like to ask who those three rabbis were and what their influence was.
Rabbi Aharon Feldman: The first rabbi that impacted me was Rabbi Yaakov Yitzchok Ruderman, who was the rosh yeshiva in Ner Yisroel. I came into the area when I was 15 years old, and I was here for five years. He impacted me.
He was a person with a vast, encyclopedic knowledge of Torah and a very, very consistent, pious, and frum person who kept mitzvos with dikduk. Every move that he took had some relationship with some part of the Torah. He didn't move a finger without mentally consulting something in the Torah.
And it was a tremendous model for me of what a tzaddik looks like. And that it instilled in me an ambition to try to know as much as him. But it was an impossible task because he had a photographic memory. And I tried to know all of Shas, and didn't have the memory that he had, but I tried. At least it propelled me on. But he was the first, maybe the strongest influence on me of trying to make myself into someone very learned in Torah.
MR: He was a student of Rav Nosson Tzvi Finkel, correct?
RAF: Yes, the Alter of Slabodka. He was a student of Slabodka and nothing that he ever mentioned was ever without some reference to the Alter of Slabodka. That was his rebbe and the one from whom he got his spiritual sustenance and inspiration.
MR: Is that where the name “Ner Yisroel” name comes from?
RAF: Yes.
Slabodka was founded by adherents of Reb Yisroel Salanter who started the Musar movement in Europe. There was antagonism to making a Musar movement. The Musar movement wanted to incorporate into yeshiva the study of musar, which is not traditionally part of the study. This was done individually by people, but not incorporated as part of the order of study of the yeshiva. And Reb Yisroel Salanter’s students instituted in yeshiva musar as part of the yeshiva schedule of studies.
One of those people was the Alter of Slabodka, who was a talmid of a talmid of Reb Salanter. He was a student of Reb Simcha Zissel Ziv [the Alter of Kelm], and he made Slabodka. So it's supposed to inculcate musar to the students. He differed slightly from his teacher, R’ Yisroel Salanter. He emphasized a certain aspect of "Gadlus HaAdam," the greatness of man. He spoke about how great man was. That's what he saw was necessary to instill in his students.
But it was a continuation of the ideas that he had heard from his rebbe, and therefore, all the institutions that were made in Slabodka were named after R’ Yisroel Salanter.
Rav Ruderman named Ner Israel after R’ Yisroel Salanter as well.
Rav Hutner
MR: I’ve read a little bit about Kelm and Slabodka and the different schools of musar. Do you describe yourself as being a part of one or the other?
RAF: No, I'm not part of either of them, I don't think.
My style of thinking was influenced by Rav Hutner. That’s the second person that had a profound influence on me. Rav Hutner was also a student of the Alter of Slabodka and influenced by him greatly. But what he tried to impart to his students was not so much personal growth or character development, which was the Musar movement. He did not talk much about character development — he talked about the greatness of the Sages.
He felt what was missing in our time was a recognition of the scope and the depth of the Sages in their understanding of history, of man, of Torah. And people were very superficial and needed to be exposed to the depth of Torah. And Rav Hutner's emphasis was presenting Chazal and showing how they solved the human dilemma and how they interlock with each other — Torah is extremely complex, and yet at the same time, based on simple principles.
And you became exposed through Rav Hutner to the majestic vastness of Torah, its all-encompassing truths and its simple truths. That wasn’t the purpose of Slabodka or Kelm.
MR: My understanding is that Rav Hutner incorporated chassidus into his musar.
RAF: Yes. He incorporated much of the Sfas Emes. His writings were influenced by chassidic writings, but he was not a chassid.
Jews for Mises
MR: I learned of Rav Hutner through Israel Kirzner, the Austrian economist. He edited Pachad Yitzchok. If you wanted to become familiarized with the Torah of Rav Hutner, is there a work that you would recommend?
RAF: I think you have to learn his writings in the original Hebrew.
Israel Kirzner is a personal friend of mine, by the way.
MR: Really?
RAF: Yes. He’s a very brilliant person. He used to be my chavrusa when we learned in yeshiva together. He's certainly reliable in whatever he does.
MR: Before I became religious, I knew him as a genius in economics. When I was in high school, I was reading him in economics, and then met him at the weekly Austrian Colloquium at NYU. But then I discovered that he was a total masmid. A giant.
RAF: Right, right, right. He was a giant. His father was a giant. And his father was a Slabodkan.
He went into economics because he wanted to have a profession, and he took a field which would be neutral with regard to any Torah values. He chose economics. He didn’t want to go into psychology or into philosophy or anything like that. They would have to have conflicts, perhaps, with the Torah. So he chose economics and became a world-famous expert in it. He was a first-class genius.
MR: He absolutely was. And he happened to be involved with one of the only ethical schools of economic thought, in my opinion.
RAF: Yes.
Memories of Rav Ruderman
MR: You had spoken about Rav Ruderman’s memory and I wanted to ask you about memory. In the yeshiva world, there is a high emphasis placed on a certain kind of memory. There's the famous pin test where a pin would be placed in a word in the Talmud and the student would be tested on the word on the page before and after it. What do you think about memory and memorization? What does that mean to you?
RAF: Yeshivas, as a matter of fact, do not place a great emphasis on memory nowadays, and they never placed emphasis on memorization. It just so happened that geniuses that had a tremendous memory were admired, became legends. But there's no emphasis placed in yeshivas on memory.
MR: From all the rabbis you knew, was there someone whose memory knocked your socks off?
RAF: Rav Ruderman.
I'll tell you a story about Rav Ruderman. I was traveling with my friend in a car. Rav Ruderman was in the front seat. My friend and I had just memorized a certain tractate of the Gemara — were about 18 or 19 years old.
MR: Do you remember which tractate?
RAF: Brachos.
He said one amud, and I said one amud, by heart. While we were saying it, Rav Ruderman was sitting in the front seat and seemed very perturbed. We wanted to impress him how much we knew, but he was sitting there annoyed with us. Suddenly, after a few pages, he turns around to us and looks at us and sees we don't have a Gemara.
He says, "Where's your Gemara?"
So we tell him, “We're doing it by heart.”
"Oh!" he said, "I couldn't figure out what Gemara you were learning from, because you were missing a word here, missing a word there.”
MR: That's incredible!
RAF: That’s the type of memory he had. It was admirable, but never something that we imitated in memorization. People don't memorize in yeshivas. If they learn a lot and they remember, then they're considered noteworthy and considered honorable, but they don't go and walk around and memorize. It's not true.
MR: Is there either a sugya or masechta of Gemara that you think you’ve spent the most time with?
RAF: Well, when I was about 16 or 17, I spent much time in the beginning of Bava Metzia and it was very formative for me. It gave me an interest in analyzation of Gemara and in researching Gemara and trying to think of original thoughts. I think that was the most formative sugya in my life.
MR: Do you come back to it now?
RAF: Yes — we always come back. We always learn it in the yeshivas.
MR: And you can just keep going deeper and deeper, right?
RAF: I keep on going, and I keep on finding new insights. The Torah's remarkable. There's no limit to how much you can keep on understanding in its depth and its breadth. You can learn the same Gemara over and over again and find something new in it.
Brisk and Reb Malin
MR: I want to make sure I ask you about the third rabbi.
RAF: The third is Rabbi [Aryeh] Leib Malin. Leib Malin was not so famously known — he was a senior student of the Mir yeshiva in Europe. They weren't able to get married in the Mir because of the war, so he was already almost 40 years old when the war ended. And they got stranded in Japan and in Shanghai; they came to America after the Second World War was over.
He was a senior student, the one that they looked up to in the yeshiva. And when he came to America, he formed a kollel in East New York. The kollel had about 10 married old time Mirrers from Europe and four Americans. I was one of those four Americans.
And I was exposed to a type of learning that I had never been exposed to before. Reb Leib Malin was part of the select group that the Mir rosh yeshiva in Europe sent to learn with R’ Yitzchok Zev Soloveitchik, called the Brisker Rov. It was a group of about five or six people that went to learn by the Brisker Rav. And they spent a few years with him. And they came out giants.
Brisker is a certain type of learning — it's hard to explain, but it revolutionized the approach of learning in the entire world. It's based on his father Rav Chaim Brisker. But he himself had a unique way of approaching learning the Torah and learning Gemara, and his way was you felt a search for truth. And what he came up with, you felt it was the truth, the right explanation. He came up with insights to the Talmud and everyone began following the Brisker till this day.
He would come up with insights which no one came up with before and which you suddenly saw like a blaze of light that this is the answer. Everyone's trying to figure it out until now. They finally found out the right answer. What do you say in English? There's an expression, the wow…
MR: …the wow factor!
RAF: Yes — the wow factor. So the Brisker Rav was acknowledged as a world-famous authority and genius and he came to Israel in his later life, and he died in Israel.
Reb Leib Malin was a talmid of his, and I was able to learn with R’ Leib Malin. That influenced me into the way of learning of the Brisker Rav. That was the most profound influence on me in my approach to Torah learning. Rav Ruderman and Rav Hutner were the Slabodka way of learning. But when I came across this way of learning, the Brisker way of learning, it opened up a new vista to me, and I began thinking in those lines, and it's followed me to this day. It's very influential.
Returning to America
MR: I wanted to ask you about your decision to move back to America after being in Israel. You had access to the great gedolim, and I wonder what that decision-making process looks like. Was it mostly prayer by yourself? Was it conversations?
RAF: My decision to move back to America? I discussed it with Rav [Yosef Shalom] Elyashiv and with Rav Aharon [Yehuda] Leib Shteinman and they both told me to go.
MR: How did you pick the two of them as opposed to Rav Moshe [Feinstein]?
RAF: Rav Moshe Feinstein was not alive at that time, and they were the two greatest people in Israel.
MR: How long was that conversation with them?
RAF: Each one took about 20 minutes to a half hour, something like that. I told them the pros and cons and they both told me to go.
MR: Wow. Was it a matter-of-fact conversation, or was it a spiritually heady conversation?
RAF: No, it was not spiritually heady. It was a question of what's the right thing to do. That's all. The pros and the cons and what outweigh.
MR: But these are people who had ruach hakodesh, no?
RAF: I don't know. I didn't go to them for ruach hakodesh. I went to them because they have common sense.
MR: You spent time living in Yerushalayim and there’s the Gemara about the air of Eretz Yisrael making one wise. I have heard people say that you're a mekubal, that you study Kabbalah deeply, and you study things that are hidden from a lot of us. Do you find that more difficult in chutz la'aretz? How is studying here versus in Eretz Yisrael different?
RAF: I'll tell you, it's not true that I'm a mekubal. I dabble a little bit. A little bit. Maybe more than other people. But I'm not a meukbal. Far from it. And I found people to learn with in Israel. And I found people to learn with in America. That’s all. There's no difference.
MR: The Frierdiker Lubavitcher Rebbe said, “America iz nisht andersh!”
RAF: That's very different. America is very different. The value system of America is totally different from the value system of Israel. It's a totally different country. It is andersh. America has a culture which is seeped in materialism, and it's antithetical really to total submersion into Torah. You have to apologize if you want to devote your life to Torah.
In Israel you have to apologize if you want to devote your life to commerce. It's different.
Seder
MR: You’re a community leader and I wonder how you personally set a seder for study and what does your study look like?
RAF: My main occupation is not a community leader. I'm a teacher, and I do the best to teach the bochurim in yeshiva and to set an example for them of some of the studies. And I try to devote as much time as possible in the beis medresh, in the study hall, where people can see me as a model of someone who devotes his time to learning.
MR: What are you studying right now?
RAF: Right now we’re learning Nedarim; I learn with the yeshiva.
MR: For those who aren’t learning full-time, do you have some musar on how to set aside time?
RAF: Well, it's good to have a chavrusa, it's good to have a class that you can go to, a study group that you can join, and that's how you keep up the continuity. Otherwise, if you do it on your own, you fritter away time, you don’t keep your schedule. But if you have a group or chavrusa that you learn with, and you maintain a strict schedule, you can accomplish something.
MR: Is your day-to-day very regimented?
RAF: No, it's not regimented because I'm asked by many, many people different questions and different things to do, and I have different obligations and help people with different problems and different needs. I would say the day is fragmented. I try to grab as much as I can, to do a few hours in the morning, a few hours in the night to learn, but usually it's occupied with needs — communal or personal needs — of people that I'm busy with. For example, the conversation with you.
MR: I hope it's not bitul Torah!
Ethics of the Fathers
MR: This might seem like a silly question, but I think it's important. Do you have a diet? Do you eat the same thing every day?
RAF: I eat whatever my wife gives me. She's very conscious of health, and she makes sure I eat healthy foods, and that's it.
MR: I want to ask about the baal teshuva movement and Rabbi [Beryl] Gershenfeld. How often do you speak to non-affiliated Jews?
RAF: Not too often — to the extent that they speak to me. I don't reach out to them. They speak to me, I answer them.
MR: This is a broad question, but do you have any advice for rabbis doing Kiruv?
RAF: I think the most effective way of Kiruv is exposing people to the truth of Torah. That's the most effective way.
I'll tell you a story. I taught in Ohr Somayach for about 15 years. I had a student once who was a ger tzedek — he was a graduate student getting his doctorate in philosophy from Columbia University. He became a ger tzedek and I asked him, "What was the one work that influenced you more than anything else to become Jewish?" So he told me, “Pirkei Avos." I was shocked. I told him I say Pirkei Avos constantly — it doesn't have that profound of an influence on me. "What was it in Pirkei Avos?”
He says, “I just saw that the Jews got it all right. That's all. That's all."
MR: Can I ask that question to you? Is there a book that influenced you and your life the most?
RAF: Yes.
MR: What?
RAF: I wrote a book, The Juggler and the King. It's based on a book by the Vilna Gaon that is about 12 pages long. And that book had the most profound influence of any other book.
MR: My chavrusa and I are hoping to study your book on Pe’ah.
RAF: I just republished it, by the way.
MR: What was the reason for writing on that topic?
RAF: Well, when I came to Israel, I decided to study the laws that pertain to agriculture in Israel. It's a separate order of the six orders of the Talmud. The first one is Pe'ah, so I started learning Pe'ah. And while I was learning it, I had very many insights that no one else had said before, so I thought it's worthwhile to publish it so people could have benefit from it.
MR: This is maybe a silly question, but did you ever visit a farm in Eretz Yisrael?
RAF: Of course.
MR: Do you need to feel things tangibly in order to give a ruling on a novel question? There’s lots of pictures with rabbis holding interesting things you wouldn’t expect a rabbi to hold — like holding a pair of Crocs to rule on wearing them on Yom Kippur.
RAF: I would never rule on something which I don't understand. If I don't know how it works, I'd have to be informed by some expert on how the thing works before I can rule on it, of course.
Quantum Mechanics and Humor
MR: Do you spend any time whatsoever reading about the latest technologies or anything like this?
RAF: I really don't have time right now. I used to, but I don't have time right now.
MR: You were interested in technology?
RAF: I was interested in physics.
MR: You were interested in secular physicists writing things?
RAF: Quantum mechanics, yes.
MR: And what about quantum mechanics was interesting to you?
RAF: It was interesting because it describes the world in mathematical terms that no human mind can grasp. It's showing that the world is really a spiritual essence, not something physical, because you can't understand what quantum physics says with your mind. The human mind can't grasp it.
MR: That's the apocryphal quote from Richard Feynman, “Nobody understands quantum mechanics…if you think you understand quantum mechanics you don’t understand quantum mechanics.”
RAF: That’s it exactly.
MR: Bohr had a very funny line where his students see a horseshoe hanging over his door and they were confused because he’s an atheist and a materialist. They asked him what he was doing with the horseshoe…did he really believe in it?
He says, “No, no, I don’t believe in it. But the people who told me to do it, they say it works even if you don’t believe in it.”
RAF: That's a nice joke. But I think he had more logic than that story indicates.
MR: You tell one of the funniest jokes I’ve ever heard about the whitefish.
RAF: What’s green, hangs on a wall, and whistles…
MR: I like your sense of humor a lot. Where did you get it from?
RAF: From my brother.
MR: What's your age difference?
RAF: Four years. He’s older than I am. Four years.
Another person that gave me a sense of humor is Rav Hutner.
MR: Really?
RAF: Yes. He had the greatest sense of humor possible.
MR: Do you remember any jokes of his that stand out?
RAF: His jokes were not purposeless jokes, which would be leitzanus, which is not permitted by Jewish law. But they always had a point to teach. He was full of brilliant quips and comments.
MR: There’s a Gemara about Rabbah telling a joke before he started to teach.
RAF: Before he taught to put the students in a good mood, yes.
MR: Do you do that?
RAF: I try to. Mm-hmm.
Lernen Torah
MR: What was the time in your life when you had the most time to devote towards Torah?
RAF: When I was in Israel. The first years when I came to Israel, I devoted myself totally to Torah. I had no job and I just sat day and night and learned Torah and that’s it.
MR: Was there a culture shock for you moving to Israel at all?
RAF: No, there was not a culture shock at all. I felt very much at home. I moved to Bnei Brak, and I felt very much at home in Bnei Brak.
MR: Why Bnei Brak instead of Yerushalayim?
RAF: For family reasons. My wife's family lived near Bnei Brak and we moved there because of that.
MR: I want to ask you about music. I heard you sing a song about learning Torah.
RAF: There’s a very nice song that people sing, “Oylem Habe.”
עולם הבא איז א גוטע זאך
,לערנען תורה איז א בעסער זאך
ווארף אוועק א יעדן יאך
,לערנען תורה נאך און נאך
.עולם הבא איז א גוטע זאך
“Oylem Habe iz a gute zakh/Lernen Toyre iz a beser zakh/Varf avek yeder yokh/Lern Toyre nokh un nokh/Oylem Habe iz a gute zakh”
“The World to Come is a good thing, [but] learning Torah is a better thing! Cast away every yoke, [and] learn Torah more and more. The World to Come is a good thing.”
RAF: That was sung in Volozhin 150 years ago.
MR: If you could have lived and been a member of any beis medresh in all of Jewish history, which would it have been?
RAF: Under Moshe Rabeinu!
MR: Did you know Rav Avigdor Miller?
RAF: Yes. He was my mashgiach when I learned under Rav Hutner at Chaim Berlin.
MR: And what was that like?
RAF: He didn't do much teaching at that time. He more or less was the organizer and made sure that the students kept schedules and so forth, but he didn’t teach much. Rav Hutner was too powerful a figure to have someone else teaching, just you couldn’t compete with him.
MR: I really hope I didn't waste your time.
RAF: No, no, no, no. It was a pleasure to talk to you.
Vort
MR: And one last thing, do you have a word of Torah that I can share with my Shabbos table, because I shared your last vort?
RAF: Okay. Did I tell you about why we said “L’Dovid Hashem Ori” [Psalm 27]?
MR: No.
RAF: It deals with a war, right? What does it have to do with Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur? The answer is “L’Dovid Hashem” we ask for Hashem to save us from a war. We're at war with the Yetzer Hara. It's a battle. It's a struggle. The Yetzer Hara is trying to rob us of our lives because it's trying to tell us, "Think about yourselves. Think about your pleasure. Think about your wealth, honor. Think about your nerve endings."
And that's a war because the Ribono Shel Olam wants us to think about our neshamos, about how to come closer to Him. That's why we say when the war breaks out and there's enemies that want to destroy my life, I have one explanation, one answer to that, and that is, I seek one thing — to be able to spend time in the palace of Hashem. That means the palace of Hashem — Olam Haba — to bask in the glory of Hashem's radiance, which is Olam Haba.
Therefore, that's a war. It's a war we're struggling with. The enemy wants to destroy us, eat us, eat up our flesh. And we want to bask in the glory of the radiance of the palace of Hashem. So that's exactly what Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are about.
MR: That will mean so much to my wife because “Achas Sha’alti” is what she walked down the aisle to.
RAF: Perfect. Perfect.