Remembering the late Dr. William L. Elefant

AMONG other verses, the 15th psalm says:

“G-d, who will reside in Your tent? Who will dwell on Your holy mountain?

“The person whose ways are wholehearted, and who is just, and who speaks truth in his heart.

“His speech is not routine, he does no harm to anyone, and he bears no reproach on account of his relationships. . . .

“People like this never stumble.”

Sometimes I think this psalm was written for Dr. Bill Elefant, who left us last Shabbos.

“Le-olam yehei adam, always be a person who fears Heaven in private and in public,” it is written in the siddur, the prayer book.

In the yeshiva in Kelm, this verse was read in two ways; the first way, just as it says.

But the students also read it a second way. “Le-olam yehei adam.” STOP. Always be a man. Always be a mensch.

Let a person master himself, always.

Let a person always grow into that being envisioned by G-d when he created the human being “in the image of G-d.”

I MOURN my late teacher and friend — truly, a man. A human being in the finest sense. A lover of virtue and a a lover of G-d.

A person who never stopped striving. A person full of life, who saw the world in bright colors.

A  person who could hurt neither a fly nor a human being.

Many are mourning Bill Elefant, as he was a friend, a teacher, a husband, a brother-in-law, an uncle, a great-uncle, and a student of the Torah.

I not only mourn; I remember the good and the beautiful, the entire arc of Dr. Bill Elefant’s life, since my family has been interwoven with his for 60 years, almost from the day he arrived in Denver from Williamsburg, NY, to teach at the old BMH Hebrew School on 16th and Gaylord.

I REMEMBER, first, that person with the beautiful, fair skin, the radiant face, the unflagging eagerness to transmit Torah to young charges. I remember that smile, that patience, how nothing was ever punitive or repressive.

I remember Bill’s earnestness, his enthusiasm, his joy at conveying each little piece of Torah.

If ever there were a choice between appropriate discipline and risking a negative reaction by a student, for Bill it was instinct: Soften the discipline and keep welcoming the student.

I remember, second, the ease with which he communicated with the parents of his charges.

I remember how, coming from Williamsburg, he evinced no cultural distance between himself and the different culture in the West.

I remember the respect he gave and the respect he received.

It was all effortless. It was the way he was.

I remember, third, how Bill Elefant kept growing, kept rising — how he sought out DU to study education there. There was no automatic pay raise awaiting him at BMH for achieving a master’s degree, or a doctorate. He sought these because he wanted to be the best teacher he could possibly be.

The book of Proverbs tells us:

“Educate a lad according to his way, and when he grows old he will not depart from it.”

This is typically taken to mean that if you are able to educate a student in his individuality, then, later in life, what you have taught him will stick with him. If you can make Torah understandable to a person, he will never depart from it.

Rabbi Israel Salanter says this means something much more:

“If you can educate a person, taking into account his individuality, then, later on, he will never stop educating himself. Never stop learning. Never stop growing. He will never fall into a rut.”

Bill was always fresh, always propounding a new idea.

Always? Literally, always. In these past months, as he lay on his hospital bed, barely able to speak, if you listened carefully and pieced together his bits of speech, you heard a coherent idea, and a new idea.

As his body deteriorated, his mind kept growing and rising. Until the very end he embraced the process of self-education.

I remember, fourth, Bill’s love of Eretz Yisrael — his modest but very dignified apartment in Kiryat Yovel; his joy at being on holy soil, on teaching in the holy land, in the holy tongue.

And I remember, fifth, Bill’s humor.

He told me once that when he was at his doctoral dissertation defense at DU, the professors were giving him a hard time. They were picking on every little thing — a common experience at dissertation defenses.

Well, in those days, it was common to write scholarship in the third person, or in the editorial “we.” We have shown this, or we have proven that. One of the professors on the committee turned to Bill and objected to the editorial “we.”

“Who is this ‘we,’ anyway?” the professor pestered bill.

Bill smiled and said. “‘We’? Well, it’s William Elefant.”

And I remember how my wife Elaine and I ate at Bill’s Shabbos lunch in Kiryat Yovel, Jerusalem, and, after Elaine gave birth the very next day, how Bill enjoyed telling us that it was his wife Clara’s cholent that was the makeh be-fatish, “the final hammer blow.”

At a terrible time of loss, people may take strength from remembering Bill’s beautiful enthusiasm for teaching Torah; his ease at communicating with any person; his unending quest for knowledge; his love of Israel and his humor.

MARRIAGE is not just you, and not just you and your family, and not even just you and your spouse.

It is also you and your spouse’s family.

It would not be strictly accurate to say that Bill had an exemplary relationship with his late father- and mother-in-law, Mr. and Mrs. Herman Burger, of blessed memory, who were immigrants to Denver from Hungary and long-time pillars of the West Side Jewish community. “Exemplary relationship” still implies a certain distance.

To Bill, Clara’s parents were his parents. And to them, Bill was a son, not a son-in-law.

And Bill was not really a “brother-in-law.” He was a brother. All these extended family names — Burger, Elefant, Katsztl, Weiss, Stavsky — are really just surface labels for a genuine combination and mixing of many families into one family.

And Clara. I saw you often in the hospital, as Bill struggled, as doctors struggled, as every tiny advance seemed to be followed by a larger setback. I have been inspired by your unfailing devotion to Bill, all the years, and especially this last year. With your quiet determination, you found a way to get the hospitals and the doctors to do everything — absolutely everything — possible for Bill. You were tireless, never defeated.

DR. Bill Elefant had extraordinary personal characteristics, or middos.

I want to name just two.

Jealousy is very difficult to avoid. Whether it is another person’s money, or luck, or achievements, or fame, or family — jealousy is very tough to overcome completely.

I have never known a person so empty of jealousy as Bill Elefant.

In the 1960s and 1970s, his brother built a huge yeshiva in Israel.

Bill had not a shred of jealousy for his brother’s achievement. All that Bill felt was happiness for his brother.

Bill was surrounded by people who had children and grandchildren. Bill rejoiced in them. No jealousy, just happiness in another’s joy.

Someone else published a book — Bill was happy for the author.

Someone else came up with a deep insight into the Torah — Bill was excited.

It is written, “Jealousy, lust and vainglory take a person out of this world.” As empty of jealousy as one could be, Bill Elefant was fully, openly, happily, exuberantly, in this world.

The second personal characteristic of Bill that I want to name is reverence for Torah scholars. In the nature of things, this means that as one gets older, as the decades pass, one’s respect for Torah scholars is going to be directed to people younger, even much younger, than you.

For Bill, age made no difference. If a rabbi or Torah scholar was 30 or 40 years younger than he, Bill paid him that respect.

BILL made personal contributions to many people. He involved himself in other people’s lives. I owe him a great personal debt for this.

I mention three instances, and many readers can and will identify, filling in their own personal gifts from Bill.

First, when our youngest child was born, it was the year of mourning for my father-in-law, whose Hebrew name was Yisrael Chaim Michael.

Our son was named after him. I was explaining this at the bris. When I was done, I had not even had the chance to sit down when when Bill Elefant approached me with one of his famous word plays.

Yisrael Chaim Michael is not your average Hebrew name or combination of names, but Bill said:

“Of course you named him Yisrael Chaim Michael. The initial letter of each name spell out, in Hebrew, the word ‘ch-m-y’: ‘my father-in-law.”

Bill’s letter-number combinations (gematrios) and word plays were not just games or intellectual pyrotechnics. He gave profound meaning to moving moments. He captured our feelings at our times of loss and of joy.

Second, when my Dad, the late Max Goldberg, died, and it was close to the funeral, there was a family desire that he be buried with his tallis, but it was not clean. It was impossible to get it dry cleaned just then.

Bill stepped forward and said:

“The way the tallis is, it means it has been used. Bury Dad with the tallis the way it is — it sends the right message, the right recommendation, to the Alm-ghty.”

Very sensitive, very pertinent, words, at exactly the right time. Le-olam yehei adam, always be a man, a mensch.

Third, Bill called our daughter “TaRYaG” or “613” for the 613 mitzvot in the Torah. Tehilla Rivka Goldberg — T-R-G. Bill said he threw in the “y,” which stands for G-d. What a beautiful touch.

IN one of the last hospital visits that Tehilla and I made to Bill, when he was barely able to speak, Bill said something that sets a very high bar for faith, for self-acceptance, for joy. Writing it now, recall

ing it, I still can’t believe a person — any person, let alone one lying on a hospital bed for months, with tubes everywhere — could say this.

Dr. Bill Elefant said, quoting the Yigdal hymn quoted in the siddur:

“G-d sees the end at the beginning. Mabit le-sof davar be-kadmuto.”

Said Bill: “G-d sees the end at the beginning.”

“But man sees [the beginning] only at the end [of his life].

“I am at the end, and I can see the beginning.”

Then, a heavy pause.

“And I am happy with my portion, sameach be-helko.”

•       •       •

Reb Aryeh Levine, the late tzaddik of Jerusalem, observed:

When a baby is born, everybody is full of mazel tovs. Everybody is happy. There is a bris, or a baby naming. However, the baby is crying.

And when somebody dies, everybody is crying. No one is happy. There is only a funeral. However, the soul of the departed is singing, is exulting.

The soul has broken the bonds that limited it and kept it from full closeness to the Holy One, Blessed be He.

Bill — we loved you. We miss you. We treasure your memory. We shall never forget you.

Copyright © 2011 by the Intermountain Jewish News