The first time I encountered the slightly statured man with the diminutive beard and warm countenance was 35 years ago. I had recently returned from a year of intense growth and learning at Yeshivat Hamivtar and was visiting my brother, the last of the all-male rabbinical class at the Jewish Theological Seminary.
It was Shabbat and we were ascending the many steps toward what was known as the Finkelstein minyan, named after Prof. Louis Finkelstein who, due to age and frailty, could no longer walk to shul. As a consequence, the minyan, an eclectic blend of Traditional, Conservative, Modern and Centrist predominantly younger men and women and several recognized scholars, came to him.
My eyes returned to the man who was in his late 60s. I saw he was seated in a folding chair davening without a Siddur. When I offered him a prayer book, he politely declined, closed his eyes, and returned to convening with God. Others, observing the scene, chuckled.
“Why are they laughing?” I asked my brother.
“You clearly don’t know who that man is? He’s Rabbi David Weiss Halivni. He knows the entire Shas by heart, and my guess is he knows the Siddur by heart as well.”
I would meet this man more than 20 times hereafter as a member of the Union Traditional Judaism then based in Teaneck, where Rav Halivni was rector of its rabbinical school. I consumed his books, learned his life story and incisive philosophy and theology on God, the Holocaust and, his magnum opus, a brilliantly erudite commentary on the Talmud called “Mekorot u’Mesorot” (Sources and Traditions).
The final days of Sivan were most difficult for me. Two of my greatest mashpi’im, religious influencers, returned to olam ha’emet just days apart: Rabbi Chaim Wasserman, who was my rav at the Young Israel of Passaic-Clifton, and Rav Halivni, of whom I was in awe. (Tthere is a beautiful story I hope to share of how the two met some 17 years ago at the Israeli Consulate as each prepared for his aliyah.)
I can’t explain exactly why, but I was moved immeasurably by Rav Halivni’s life story: He was raised in a broken home, his sisters suffering from illnesses, his father long gone, his nightly sleep on a thin lining of straw. Despite the abject circumstances, this boy found love, a passionate love for the Talmud. It became his day and his night—and his memory was a divine gift.
By age 15, David Weiss would receive semikha and delight rabbis and scholars many times his senior in their home of Sighet, Romania (and formerly of Hungary), with extraordinary pilpul (Talmudic logic) to resolve conflicting sections in our oral tradition.
Soon, this iluy would lose everything. Rounded up by the Nazis, he, his family and community encountered the worst of concentration camps as well as work camps. Physically understocked, young David Weiss endured the brutal days reviewing sugyot (Talmudic folios) in his mind, seeking to resolve Rashis and Tosafot. The Talmudic debates and his own attempts to seek resolution sustained him. By the time the war was over, he would be an orphan, his immediate family licked in the flames of the Shoah.
I once asked Rav Halivni; How? How was he able to find purpose? How was he able to marry and raise three wonderful boys? How was he able to become the person we eulogized just days ago after 94 years of life?
“I believe,” he said after some reflection. “I believe in the Aybishter (God). I believe I have something to give to [the Jewish People.]”
Often when he spoke publicly in his lilting, Hungarian-accented voice, he started with a lighthearted story that, to the careful listener, was both a teaching and a theological uncertainty.
The father rustled his son awake. The first glimpses of day were knocking on heaven’s door and it was time to say selikhot. The boy, declining at first, joins his father. As they take their seats in the shteibl, the boy sees a coin on the floor and picks it up.”
“You see,” his father said, “The Aybishter is rewarding you for coming to shul.”
“Yes tata,” the boy replied, “but what about the man who lost the coin. He came earlier than me.”
Not only would we all laugh, regardless of how many times we heard the story, but Rav Halivni always joined us.
Then after a brief pause, he’d resume, “I am a continuation of the chain, of our mesora. The coin I pick up are the teachings of our forefathers, of Chazal.”
There are few blessed with the brilliance and grace of Rav David Weiss Halivni. I am forever grateful to have been in his presence. May his memory be an eternal blessing. Yehi Zichro Boruch.
Mitch Morrison is a journalist and resides in Passaic, New Jersey. He is an occasional contributor to The Jewish Link.
