It’s not quite the same as commanding respect just for coming into the room. One can command respect for being powerful or intimidating, or for being wealthy or “the smartest person in the room.” With Rav (Rabbi) Noah Heisler it was different, even though he certainly was knowledgeable and, indeed, commanded respect just for coming into the room. But it was something more. There was an aura about Rav Heisler, something akin to a holiness, and a gentleness, a sense of coming from a different world, of living on a higher plane. He was stately and derived his quiet charisma from his vast Torah knowledge.
Rav Heisler left us last week.
Our family met Rav Heisler in Jerusalem as he was nearing the end of his tests for dayyanut, for becoming a judge on Israel’s rabbinic courts. He relished showing us his test scores, always A+, yet somehow this did not detract from his humility. He could speak strongly when the occasion demanded, but it wasn’t Noah Heisler being forceful. It was the Torah which spoke through him.
Rav Heisler became the community rabbi of Sanhedria Murchevet, then a new neighborhood in northern Jerusalem, a year or two after it opened in late 1972. His knowledge more than qualified him for the position, but a noble soul is not always temperamentally suited for the rough and tumble of politics that could erupt in a new neighborhood. It was precisely his refined character that made him stand out and above, that attracted a coterie of admirers and disciples, that had them singing “or zaru’a la-tzaddik” (light is sown for the righteous) on the way home from a very long, very animated and elevated Simchas Torah.
The Goldberg and the Heisler families were close. Most of our children were younger than his; our daughters looked up to his daughters, who were role models of friendliness, piety, humility and learning. They were all very skilled, as were his sons. Pardon the disruption in the chronology, but Rav Heisler’s son Meir, then a teenager, was a serious, highly focused Torah student who, decades later, my son Mattis and I met in Bnei Brak on Purim. The decades fell away in an instant, though I could not ignore the differences: Meir had grown into an esteemed rabbinic judge himself and blossomed into an engaging, outreaching personality.
I get ahead of myself.
Generations in Jerusalem
One could not separate the nobility of Rav Noah Heisler from his wife, as welcoming and organized a person as one will ever meet. She was, simply, Rabbanit Heisler, herself a scion of an old, multi-generational Jerusalemite (Yerushalmi) family. The Heislers carried themselves with a certain regal bearing. They raised nine children in two bedrooms. Their small apartment was always spotless. Rabbanit Heisler sewed her daughters’ clothing because that’s how one made ends meet. Her inherent dignity and character (middot) enabled her to befriend anyone in the extremely varied neighborhood — varied religiously, ethnically, linguistically, with immigrants from Russia to North and South America to Angola to Sweden to Iraq.
Like the rabbanit, Rav Heisler was a people person. He was with you in your simcha and with you in your pain. And he stood up for you. Once an unkind remark hurt a convert in the neighborhood. Rav Heisler spent the entire Shabbos going from one minyan to the next lecturing on the topic of “loving the convert,” noting (among things) that all born Jews are descended from our ancestors who converted at Mount Sinai.
Once he learned on the day before Passover that a widow had no provisions for the holiday. At a super busy time, Rav Heisler made it happen, top to bottom — not only the Passover provisions, but the Passover cleaning.
I learned something watching the Heislers with their nine children. I learned that being a good parent isn’t a factor in how many kids one has. The more kids, the tougher it is to pay attention to the kids — so runs the conventional wisdom. Watching the Heislers, I learned otherwise: Being a good parent is an inherent ability. If one has it, nine kids is not too many. If one doesn’t have it, two kids is too many. The Heisler children, with their cramped quarters, were model children. Because their parents were model parents.
So we had two noble souls, role models, in the Heislers. And of course, in the condominium apartments built too small for growing families, the relationship with the Heislers wasn’t just Torah and spirituality. It was borrowing a cup of sugar in a pinch from the rabbanit and all sorts of daily interactions. It was our Mattis and the Heislers’ son Shuki becoming fast friends. Rambunctious and left to their own devices by a school day that ended at 1 p.m., they got into all kinds of mischief that, it is just as well, their parents found out about only afterwards.
I remember when the Heislers’ youngest son Zev Wolf was born. I asked Rabbi Heisler whether he was named after a known tzaddik in Jerusalem a couple of generations earlier. And he was. It was another point of connection between me and Rav Heisler, feeling part of the traditions of the old Yerushalmi communities that first preceded and then existed alongside the modern Zionist communities.
Not lightly, but silently
It wasn’t just Rav Noah Heisler. I befriended his father, Rav Zeidel Zalman Heisler, who traveled the world raising funds for Hinuch Atzmai schools in Israel.
I met him at the funeral of Sarah Kauvar outside the Sanhedria cemetery, not far from Sanhedria Murchevet. Somehow we struck up a conversation and I learned that in Rav Zeidel Zalman Heisler’s travels he had met Rabbi Charles E. H. Kauvar, the long time rabbi of BMH synagogue in Denver, and had admired him. So he paid his respects at Mrs. Kauvar’s funeral, where it was likely that no one knew who he was. That was the Heislers. Doing the right thing for its own sake. Trying to reach upward to the Creator through obeying his commandments, which, in this instance, engendered a friendship.
My friendship with Rav Noah Heisler’s father renewed itself at least twice yearly. Both of the Heislers, father and son, were well respected in the top echelons of rabbinic circles in the Holy City. Somehow I learned that father and son Heisler visited Rav Yosef Shalom Eliashiv, the preeminent Ashkenazi Torah scholar, and Rav Ovadia Yosef, the preeminent Sephardi Torah scholar, and Rav Bezalel Zolti, the chief rabbi of Jerusalem, on the intermediate days of Sukkot and Pesach. I volunteered to drive them.
Back in the 1970s, there were so few cars that one could do a mitzvah with one’s car. The Heislers much appreciated the lift, and I certainly did too, for I had the opportunity to visit these eminences twice a year. As things turned out, later I was tested for rabbinic ordination by both Rav Yosef and Rav Zolti.
I learned this too: Children of the senior Rav Heisler and of Rav Eliashiv married. The two rabbis were mechutanim. As Rav Eliashiv became very well known only later, one also heard much about his mechutanim and their achievements. But I don’t once recall the self-effacing Rav Zeidel Zalman Heisler being mentioned as part of that honored cohort. That was the Heisler way: quiet, humble. I learned this too — how Rav Noah Heisler scored those A+’s on his dayyanut tests. His father sat with him five hours a night — from 7 p.m. to midnight — reviewing the material with his son. Rav Zeidel Zalman Heisler did not carry his vast learning lightly, he carried it silently.
Atypical relaxation
Long after I had met the two Heislers, father and son, I learned that another son of Rav Zeidel Zalman — Rav Yosef Heisler — also became a rabbinic judge. Keep mind that the curriculum for this position is longer than that for any other profession I am aware of — longer than for medicine and law, for example. Years and years of study go into this, based on prior years and years of mastering the Talmud. Rabbi Zeidel Zalman raised two sons who achieved this lofty scholarly plateau.
I remember once coming to visit Rav Yosef Heisler for reasons no longer recalled, and he wasn’t home yet. This is what sticks in my mind: As I was waiting for him, one of their younger sons, not yet Bar Mitzvah, had apparently not prayed ma’ariv, the evening service. His mother gently yet unmistakably urged him to do so, and he did. The women and the men were equally the educators in the Heisler families.
I asked many halachic questions (she’elot) of Rav Noah Heisler between 1973 and 1983, the years we lived in Sanhedria Murchevet. He had everything at his fingertips. Didn’t matter what the subject was. I remember once as I was studying for rabbinic ordination, he wondered whether I had noticed at the end of very long (whole-page long) comment by R. Shabbtai Hakohen on the laws of salting meat an intriguing observation about the Shema. I was immersed in studying this topic; he wasn’t. Didn’t matter. As I say, the whole Torah was at his fingertips.
Rav Heisler’s relaxation from the late hours of the evening into the wee hours of the morning was to study responsa by famous sages, such as Noda B’Yehuda, widening his knowledge in areas of Torah that did not necessarily impinge on his professional obligations as a community rabbi or a rabbinic judge. That’s how he relaxed.
Gentleness. Smiles.
I remember once being in his office as he was on the telephone speaking to one of his grandchildren, putting on a false front of sternness, very much unlike who he was, urging his grandson to study Torah seriously, all the while smiling at me, as I suspected the grandchild intuiting the smile behind the stern words. Torah study. Unending Torah study. Gentleness and smiles. Humility. Rav Noah Heisler.
I remember how, when I proudly showed him my ordination certificate from the Beth Din (rabbinic court) of Agudas Israel, he reacted with alarm. I had done well; this was reflected in the certificate. What could be wrong? Rav Heislser pointed out: The certificate contained every important credential except . . . my name. The certificate was worthless. I went back the next day and was reissued the same certificate, this time with my name.
I remember when our neighbors’ eldest daughter got engaged. She was but 17. Rabbi Heisler was thrilled, as he had helped this family out of a difficult spot year years earlier. He was also wondrous over the merit of our neighbors seeing their oldest child daughter engaged at such a young age, evading or transcending all of the stumbling blocks that so often loom in trying to marry off one’s children. That 17-year-old daughter now has 12 children and is a grandmother countless times over. She is refined, accomplished, embracing, humble, truly a pious servant of the Creator. The proverbial village it takes to raise a child was, under Rav Heisler and his pleasant ways, an inspired village.
Never disclosed
So many revealing memories. Once Rav Heisler indicated to me, “We have a problem with the sandek!” (The sandek holds the baby on his lap at the bris — it is the highest honor at the occasion.) The Heislers had a grandson and the sandek was to be the other grandfather. He held a distinguished position in the Ponevitch yeshiva.
But there was a problem. He was on cancer treatment, and he had never disclosed this to a single member of his family. He simply underwent all the treatments and cared for himself, not wanting to upset those who loved him. But now, the scheduled bris conflicted with the scheduled cancer treatment, and it looked like he couldn’t be the sandek, so the secret came out. This was the level of self-effacement, of character (middot) and of Torah knowledge one came to see through the Heislers, not only in them.
It was passed down.
Not only to his talented and learned children.
It was passed down in the neighborhood. As diverse as the neighborhood was ideologically — from the very modern to the very old world, haredi Orthodox — the residents shared a tremendous thirst for Torah knowledge, both the full time Torah students and those gainfully employed. Just by being who he was, Rav Heisler nurtured this. I could cite many examples, bolstered by hindsight. I suffice with just one example: the four Petroff boys, the Heislers’ neighbors. Their father, Yaakov Petroff, was a professor of Classics at Bar Ilan University whom we never saw talk about his work because he was always immersed in Torah study. Their mother, Devorah Petroff, stemmed from the family of the legendary musar master, the Alter of Novorodock (d. 1919). All four boys of these immigrants to Israel from America went on to master the entire Talmud. There were many, many other examples of thirst for Torah study in the neighborhood. I cite just one more: Yisrael Shachor, then a kollel student, who went on to become an eminent dayyan in Haifa.
But as I say, it was not only the full time Torah students who looked up to Rav Heisler. Among many, I cite Henoch Gross, husband of my wife Elaine’s childhood friend Kendy, who mastered the Mishneh Berurah, the long and detailed code of daily, Sabbath and holiday Jewish law. He knew it cold. That he worked all day didn’t stop him from this level of mastery.
I cite Reuven Miller, a professor of social work at Bar Ilan, who perceived a need to build bridges between the higher world of Rav Heisler and the larger world “out there,” and devoted his professional energies to the task. Meanwhile, he grew into a Torah scholar himself, inspired by Rav Heisler.
Storied people
It is a piece of conventional wisdom that Rav Yosef Shalom Eliashiv never had study partners, chavrusas. But this is not true. Rav Noah Heisler was his chavrusa on erev Shabbos. They would begin their Torah study early Friday morning and continue all the way up to close to Shabbos, leaving just enough time to prepare for Shabbos. So typical of the Heislers that one does not hear of the esteem in which they were held by Rav Eliashiv.
In 1981, I published a story in the Jewish Observer about the head of the Ponevitch yeshiva, Rav Elazar M. M. Shach — how he once made it a point to attend a funeral of an unknown individual and, to boot, it was raining buckets that day. Why did the eminent head of the Ponevitch yeshiva trouble himself to attend this funeral? Decades earlier, this man had supplied a blanket to a young Torah student back in Europe, Elazar Shach, who had no place to sleep except for a bench in the study house and had no way to keep himself warm at night. This man had protected the young student from the elements. Rav Shach thought he should honor him by attending his funeral despite —or perhaps because of — the elements. After I published this story of kindness, anonymity and dedication to Torah study, it became widely circulated. It was Rav Noah Heisler who told me the story. It fit him, exemplifying his own modesty and connection.
The last time I saw Rav Heisler was a few years ago in Jerusalem, when I visited the Holy City for the Bar Mitzvah of a grandson. I came to Rav Heisler’s home. He was not home.
The rabbanit said that he was in the shul. I went to the shul. I found him there as he was with sons and grandsons, studying Torah in the merit of . . . the soul of Rav Zeidel Zalman Heisler, whose yahrzeit was that day.
I fit right in.
© IJN 2026
