I doubt whether there was a single Jew on the globe with the practical Jewish skills of Rabbi Yisrael Gornish, who left us last week.
He was a mohel.
A shochet.
A shofar blower.
A Torah reader.
A mikveh designer.
An eruv supervisor.
A kashrut expert (including matzah baking).
A get (Jewish divorce) expert.
An expert in the Jewish monetary civil law who sat on rabbinic courts.
No matter how learned or pious, virtually ever Jew needs to rely on experts for something, be it a mohel, a shofar blower, etc. We may be committed to these commandments heart and soul, but we cannot perform them other than through the agency of someone else.
Rabbi Gornish was that somebody else in every field of Jewish practice.
If love of G-d is measured by performance of mitzvot — not just knowledge of them, not just commitment to them, not just observing them by dint of someone else’s expertise — I never knew anyone who loved G-d more than Rabbi Gornish.
He was called to Buenos Aires to perform a circumcision.
He was called to many states in the West to supervise kosher slaughter.
He was called to Utah and Colorado to supervise the pouring of mikvehs.
He chanted the Torah every Shabbos morning for decades.
He sounded the shofar every Rosh Hashanah for decades.
His knowledge of Jewish law was comprehensive.
He completed the Daf Yomi daily Talmud cycle many times.
And he was not a computer.
His human touch was exemplary and cross-cultural. By that I mean that although he very much adhered to the most exacting standards of observance and interpretations of Torah, he could relate to anyone, Jew and gentile, observant and non-observant, and different types of observant.
I saw this personally time and again. He had a way of resolving the most intricate human issues seemingly without effort, usually without taking a lot of time. I saw him help people out of jams with a deft, creative twist, a different insight, a suggestion for looking at things or doing things just a tad differently. In all this he was aided by his deep knowledge of Torah and Halachah, but also by tremendous human insight — and experience.
He could step into your shoes, but also enable you to step out of your own shoes. When you did, suddenly your issue was resolved, or reduced to manageable proportions.
Over the past 30 years I sought Rabbi Gornish’s guidance on hundreds of life issues and halachic queries. In the past few months alone, when he was ill, I lifted the phone many times, then realized I had to put it down.
Whom shall I call now?
It was more, so much more, than formal queries. Rabbi Gornish was a very serious person, but I cannot count the chuckles we shared over the ironies, small joys and unexpected twists and turns of life. He was a mentor. He was also a friend.
He was a teacher. He was also a student. Never afraid to consult with or admire someone whom he thought knew more that he did in a certain field. Rabbi Gornish was a great, confident and learned Talmud scholar. He was also a humble man.
I met him 30 years ago thanks to Rabbi Dovid Cohen of Flatbush. I had met the late Michael Walton of Salt Lake City, who wanted to build a mikveh. To help him, I needed an expert. I asked Rabbi Cohen to recommend one. He recommended Rabbi Gornish.
We went to Salt Lake and, with the help of Feivel Gallard of Denver and a non-Jewish construction worker in Salt Lake, who had tremendous respect for what we were doing, poured the mikveh in the Waltons’ greenhouse. It had its moments — such as when poles, set between the plank covering the intended floor to the mikveh and the ceiling, rose under the pressure of the flowing concrete beneath the plank and lifted the ceiling right off the greenhouse!
There is a certain amount of downtime during a mikveh pour. Rabbi Gornish — chasidic, halachic, stringent, seemingly insulated in faraway Brooklyn — knew how to keep the conversation going with our construction worker more than any of us. I marveled at this chasidic rabbi, how he could be himself with such integrity, yet at the same time reach out on a human level to someone radically unlike him, and not for a few minutes, but for a few hours.
That was my first experience with mikveh construction — and with Rabbi Gornish. We soon found many reasons to be in touch. Weddings. A Torah scroll dedication. A Shabbos. A mikveh pour in Denver, a mikveh pour in Boulder. A shiva. A conversion. I always felt comfortable recommending people to speak to Rabbi Gornish about a serious issue they faced. He always took the call, even when this meant many calls.
Now, I myself can call him no longer.
His words continue to echo in my mind, also his intonation. Also, his fear of the L-rd, and his defense of the Divine name.
His loyalty.
Lips murmuring from the grave.
