The traffic is edgy, Rabbi Olshin is not

WE often think that because a person holds a high position, he is special.

We forget that it is the other way around. Because he is special, he came into the high position.

At least that is the way it should be; and when it is, that which made the person special continues to shine through even after he has attained the high position.

Lord Acton said that power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. A well taken point — but also a limited one. For when a person is special, and attains power only because of that, then not only does his power not corrupt him, his humility continues exactly the same as before.

I was thinking about this as I drove Rabbi Yerucham Olshin to the airport last Monday morning. Rabbi Olshin is one of four deans, or rashei yeshiva, of the largest yeshiva in the world, popularly called “the Lakewood Yeshiva” in Lakewood, NJ — officially Beth Medrash Govoha.

Perhaps the most famous yeshiva of the last 1,000 years — since the end of the famous Babylonian academies — was the Volozhin Yeshiva in Eastern Europe, 1801-1892. It had some 400 students.

The Lakewood yeshiva today has some 6,000 students!

A little reflection and one might conclude: If a single yeshiva has 6,000 students, it must be fragmented, maybe even incoherent, full of divisions working at cross purposes.

Then again: Say about the Lakewood yeshiva what one may say of a special person: The yeshiva is not special because it has 6,000 students; but the other way around. Because it is special,  6,000 students have flocked to it.

If 6,000 students flock to a single place, it must be because of the coherence, unity and inspiration of that place’s vision.

RABBI Olshin was in Denver for one day last Sunday to speak on behalf of the Denver Community Kollel; but it would be a waste to limit a person like this, on a one day visit, to a single audience. He met multiple audiences, not least the 150 people, including schoolchildren, who greeted him at the airport upon his arrival.

A waste? Yes, but again, not because he is the “head of the Lakewood yeshiva.” Rather, because of his sweetness, his humility, his capacity to communicate, to find just the right metaphor, and to elaborate on it.

On Monday morning, he spoke for the briefest time at Yeshiva Toras Chaim before heading for the airport. This was his metaphor, based on a point made by the founder of that Volozhin Yeshiva, Rabbi Chaim Volozhiner; and preceded by a question.

Why on Rosh Hashanah do we pray that G-d grant us “life”? Not a “good” life, just life?

Do we not have free will?

Is it not up to us to choose the good, to act in a way that pleases G-d?

And if we do, is not our own destiny, so to speak, in our own hands?

Why do we need to pray that   G-d grant us life?

The Torah says that if we choose the good, G-d will grant us life; and if not, not.

Should not the Torah therefore say, “Choose the good”? But it doesn’t. It says: “Choose life.”

At which point the question circles back to itself: Why pray to    G-d to grant us life if He already told us to choose life?

A mosaic of questions with a single answer, based on a single metaphor:

The Torah, it states in Proverbs, is a “tree of life to all who hold fast to it.”

Said Rabbi Olshin: Imagine getting caught in a roaring river. It can drown even the strongest swimmer. The struggling swimmer suddenly sees a tree. He grabs on! The river is tugging and pushing and slamming against him. It is painful. O how nice it would be to relax his grip for just a few seconds to alleviate the pain and get some rest.

But if he does, he will lose his life.

This is why the Torah says “Choose life” and why we pray to G-d that he grant us “life.” We are pushed and pulled by terrible moral choices. We are surrounded by temptations — to cut corners, to yield to unworthy desires, to do the wrong thing. Yes, of course, we should choose the good.

But to do so, we must first have life — we must withstand all the moral and ethical forces that would pull us away from the good, from “the tree of life,” the Torah.

In being asked by G-d to choose life and in asking G-d to grant us life, we are focusing on the essence: preserving our grip on the tree, keeping to our moral and ethical position.

But we are doing more.

 

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We are also clarifying our position, ascertaining exactly what “the good” is.

 

Rare is the person who would admit to wanting to do anything besides the good. But what is good? We can deceive ourselves, can convince ourselves that our own, strong, unexamined desires are “the good.” By choosing life — by choosing the Torah, the “tree of life” — we gradually learn what the good is.

It would not be enough for G-d to say: Choose the good.

First we must have a basis for knowing what the good is.

That is provided by the Torah — by “the tree of life.”

We must choose it.

And we pray that G-d grant it — life — on Rosh Hashanah.

Such was the jist of the brief remarks of Rabbi Olshin last Monday morning.

IN the ride to the airport — first of all, there was traffic. Bad traffic.

I-70 was, almost, the proverbial “parking lot.” It wasn’t “supposed” to happen at that hour. It did. We needed to get off of I-70.

To weave through the city streets . . . and the clock was ticking.

(I was thinking a few moments earlier: Rabbi Olshin is not going to lose his precious few moments to address the students at Yeshiva Torah Chaim just because he has a flight to catch.)

Anyway, Rabbi Olshin is calm. We are getting off I-70, hoping to get to his flight by slowing down! It looks nip and tuck. Will we make it?

Meanwhile, we get into a discussion about his manifold responsibilities and he happens to call the person who is going to meet him at Newark Airport.

“Yes, I have to go back to Lakewood,” he says.

I am thinking: Of course he has to go back to Lakewood. That is where he lives.

Well, it turns out that he has to go back to Lakewood because he has a wedding of a child of an old friend to attend that night.

That’s the first wedding of the night.

Then he has to turn around and travel from Lakewood to Queens, NY, because he has another wedding — of a child of another old friend — to attend that same night.

Denver to Newark.

Newark to Lakewood.

Lakewood to Queens.

Queens to Lakewood.

All in one day.

And here we are, on the pavement, watching the traffic pile up, and Rabbi Yerucham Olshin evinces no nervousness, no edginess.

He emanates spiritual calm.

That, too, is part of the good that the Torah tells us to choose.

That, too, stems from the “tree of life.”

I WONDER: How can the head of an institution with 6,000 students stay on top of things? It is true, there are four rashei yeshiva, but let’s face it. In a yeshiva of 100 boys the heads have trouble establishing a relationship, let alone a close mentoring relationship, with each student. What happens with a 6,000 person student body?

Not to mention, the Lakewood yeshiva has a major publishing house.

And a host of speciality yeshivas within it: so called chaburos  or groups that specialize in one area of Halachah and master it.

Plus, the community of Lakewood has grown exponentially in the last 15 years, and the yeshiva is responsible for setting the tone of the community.

It is hardly a secret that a rabbi with a congregation of a couple of hundred families is challenged to set the right tone for it. What about a community of tens of thousands of people?

How, I wonder, can Rabbi Olshin stay on top of all this?

His answer is quick, natural, refreshing: “I can’t.”

It turns out that to manage this growing phenomenon of “Lakewood” the four rashei yeshiva have put in place many layers of leadership. There are, for example, hundreds of “rashei chaburah,” young scholars who take responsibility for a group of students.

There are several central study halls, not just one; and the four rashei yeshiva divide up the times they give lectures to the students, with a multiplying effect. And they work to sustain Lakewood’s special character.

LISTENING carefully, I discern something quite contrary to the public image I had of these heads of the Lakewood yeshiva. After all, I see their pictures at this and the other event around the country; and, right here, Rabbi Olshin is in Denver, not Lakewood. I had imagined that these yeshiva heads “graduated” to the point where their communal responsibilities and public appearances (two weddings in two cities in one night) overwhelm their educational station and desire.

Here we reach the root of the sweetness and tranquility of Rabbi Olshin: He is what he says he is.

It is “life” that he is holding onto. He spends all morning studying Torah in one of the study halls of the Lakewood yeshiva. He spends the afternoons preparing the Talmud lectures he delivers a number of times each week.

All the rest — it fits into that schedule, not the other way around.

The worries about the Lakewood budget (almost $30 million), the public appearances, the attendance at the weddings, the inevitable administrative tasks, the emergencies in students’ lives, and all the rest: These must submit to the study and teaching of Torah, to that schedule.

But wait? If Rabbi Olshin is studying Torah every morning in the Lakewood yeshiva, how is he in Denver?

“An exception,” he says.

Plus: The plane is its own study hall. He had four uninterrupted hours to study Torah on the way over, and was looking forward to the same going back.

But what about the cell phone? The emails? The constant distractions before the flight, and after?

Rabbi Olshin brought no cell phone. (He borrowed mine to confirm his pick-up from the Newark Airport.)

This head of this major — we may say gigantic — Jewish institution manages without a cell phone.

The budget, somehow, is met.

His focus is on studying.

And teaching.

On establishing relationships with students, which, he says, over time — and given the hundreds of layers of teaching and mentorship in place — does take place.

“Choose life” — it creates human beings like Rabbi Yerucham Olshin.

Copyright © 2011 by the Intermountain Jewish News