A true tzaddik and ba’al mussar to his core, a leader of the Novaradoker chaburah, a leader and guide to multitudes in Boro Park—where he resided—and beyond, was Rav Chaim Mordechai Wainkrantz. A talmid of the legendary Novaradoker Yeshiva in Poland, he lived and disseminated its teachings to a new generation in Boro Park of yesteryear. 

His yohrtzeit this past Kislev marked twenty years since the passing of this legendary tzaddik who impacted countless people with his spirit of Torah and mussar.

Novaradok of Yore  

Chaim Mordechai was born in a town called Papov in the year 1920. His father was Reb Kalman Aaron Wainkrantz. 

The period of post World War One brought tremendous upheaval in Eastern Europe, and with that came a great spiritual threat to the Jewish youth of the region, many of whom were joining secular movements and moving away from the faith of their fathers. 

Reb Kalman Aaron sought to send his son Chaim Mordechai to a yeshiva away from home, but on the way, Chaim Mordechai had a dream that would alter the course of his life. In it, the Alter of Novaradok came to him and asked him to join his yeshiva. He made his way to the Novaradoker yeshiva in Poltusk, Poland—and his heart would forever be smitten with the spirit of mussar that thrived there. 

Transplanting Novaradok 

Arriving in America, he headed straight for the transplanted Yeshiva Beis Yosef in Boro Park which Rav Avrohom Yoffen had reopened a few years earlier, in 1942. He sat down to learn in the yeshiva with tremendous hasmodoh—joined by a number of his chaverim from Biyalistok. The spirit of Novaradoker mussar once again had a home! 

 Although his role in Yeshiva Ohel Yaakov of Boro Park was primarily educational, Rav Chaim Mordechai took part in the fundraising efforts to keep the yeshiva afloat. Once, he needed $10,000 on an urgent basis for the yeshiva. He took in a nap in the afternoon, when suddenly he had a dream that someone was at his door with $10,000 for him. He got up, and sure enough, a man was at his door with the full amount!

Ko somar l’beis Yaakov… In addition to his espousal of mussar to the men, Rav Chaim Mordechai was a mashpiah for the women as well. Aside from his many years of teaching in Beis Yaakov of Boro Park, he developed an ardent following among the women from the Sephardic community in Brooklyn who had true emunas chachomim in this great tzaddik, and hung onto his every word. 

Truly Happy

“If you want to be really happy, then learn mussar for four hours! That will make you happy,” Rav Chaim Mordechai would always say. To his talmidos in Beis Yaakov, as well as to the scores of his adherents, he would constantly say, “You have to have happikeit!” 

“He would exhort men to never, ever get angry at home,” relates Rav Yehuda Mandel, a student of Novaradok, “and he would explain that the way to accomplish this was by learning mussar—that is the true way to serenity and joy.”   

The following story illustrates the heights to which Rav Chaim Mordechai himself ascended through his avodas hamussar: Rav Wainkrantz used to serve as the gabbai in Yeshiva Beis Yosef-Novaradok during krias haTorah. One Shabbos a deranged individual walked in during krias haTorah and began hurling insults at Rav Chaim Mordechai. The olam was aghast. But there was one person in the crowd whose countenance was as serene as though nothing had happened—and that was Rav Wainkrantz himself. 

He was practicing the middah of hishtavus—to approach everything in life unfazed one way or another—that he had worked so hard to hone with the power of mussar. 

Rav Yehuda Mandel recalls visiting Rav Wainkrantz two weeks before his passing. “He knew where he was going, and he was beaming… his face was alight, like the great tzaddikim,” he remembers. 

On the 29th of Kislev of the year 5765 (2004) Rav Chaim Mordechai Wainkrantz returned his neshomoh to its Creator following a lifetime of avodas Hashem with mesirush nefesh and disseminating the philosophy of mussar to new generations in Boro Park of yore.