My admiration for Rabbi Blau began in 1967 with my father, Morris Robinson, z”l.
My father was raised in a Yiddish-speaking home in Ayer, Massachusetts in the 1940s and 1950s. His family drove over an hour to Hebrew College in Brookline for afternoon Hebrew school when he was a child. He continued there as an undergraduate, learning towards a certificate in Hebrew language instruction simultaneous with his studies in business school.
In the spring of 1967, on the cusp of graduation, my father submitted his resume to Rabbi Yosef Blau, who was the principal at Maimonides School at the time. It was for a student teaching position. Initially Rabbi Blau refused—not once, but twice. My father persisted. After my father asked a third time, Rabbi Blau agreed.
Although the purpose of student teaching is to teach others, it was my father who was impacted most deeply. The school’s vision specifically, and Rav Soloveitchik’s ideals for Modern Orthodoxy broadly, demonstrated a life well lived: anchored in literature, science and Torah simultaneously, my father saw the fusion of his Bostonian intellectualism with his Jewish heritage.
He then made a life that came into reality: All six of his children attended Maimonides and later Yeshiva College and Stern College.
Growing up with this story meant I arrived in Stern already knowing that Rabbi Blau was a rebbe to whom I owed a great deal.
Rabbi Blau was unique among the roshei yeshiva in how he prioritized the needs of Stern College students. While most roshei yeshiva visited Stern maybe once a year, Rabbi Blau was there weekly and for the full morning. He was a mashpiah, a teacher and a guide in our learning, personal, and religious lives.
I cannot emphasize enough the significance of this choice. It is rather standard to give lip service about women’s Torah learning, lamenting that it is not on the same caliber as a men’s yeshiva. It is meaningful to see how Rabbi Blau was entirely different: He took personal initiative, schlepped an hour each way, then nurtured relationships with consistent commitment.
Initially Rabbi Blau would come to Stern through the inter-campus shuttle going from his neighborhood in Washington Heights to the Stern College campus in Midtown. After YU discontinued the morning shuttle in 2014, Rabbi Blau took the train. The following year I began learning in the Graduate Program in Advanced Talmud/Tanach Studies (GPATS). It was humbling to see Rabbi Blau on the train platform with me, a rebbe in his 70s heading to the same beit midrash.
As a student my priority was to immerse myself in Torah learning and to build community. I remember going to Rabbi Blau in the beit midrash to ask him questions or discuss something I had been learning in class; then he would open three or four seforim, giving me a personalized shiur.
Rabbi Blau was a serach bat asher of sorts, a keeper of institutional memory. Once in 2016 we sat for an hour when he told me about how the Mizrachi iterated over decades. With this nuance, I had the confidence to move forward with my project.
Rabbi Blau’s support extended beyond the beit midrash. It is well known that he was an advocate against sexual abuse. Without going into detail—Rabbi Blau gave essential guidance and support when someone in my life was involved with an alleged sexual abuser. I wish more rabbis had Rabbi Blau’s courage and integrity.
In May 2017—50 years after my father’s student-teaching experience under Rabbi Blau at Maimonides—I graduated from GPATS. After the ceremony my father thanked Rabbi Blau for setting him, and by extension our entire family, on a lifelong path of Torah learning; what began as a student-teaching opportunity blossomed into a generational commitment to Torah.
In 2022 we stood in chuppah, under my father’s tallit; he had passed away two years prior. Before the seventh of the sheva brachot, we played a recording of my father delivering a dvar Torah he had said at my older sister’s wedding years before. We then honored Rabbi Blau with that final bracha.
The symbolism was intentional—Rabbi Blau guided my father and my family, and now supported us as we began our marriage.
Upon the occasion of your aliyah: May God bless you from Zion, and may you see the good of Jerusalem all the days of your life. (Tehillim 128:5)
Mazal tov!
