New York (VINNEWS/Rabbi Yair Hoffman) There are seforim that one learns, and there are seforim that one hears. The newly released two-volume Chelkas Kohen al HaTorah belongs to the second category. Anyone who ever sat in a shmuess delivered by Maran HaGaon Rav Alter Chanoch Henoch HaKohen Leibowitz zt”l, Rosh Yeshiva of Yeshivas Rabbeinu Yisrael Meir HaKohen – Chofetz Chaim, will open these pages and find himself back in the Beis Medrash. The cadence is there. The slow, deliberate build-up is there. And above all, the mehalech is there, that unmistakable Slabodka method which the Rosh Yeshiva received from his father and rebbe, Rav Dovid Leibowitz zt”l, who in turn received it from the Alter of Slabodka himself.

The two volumes (Bereishis–Shemos, and Vayikra–Bamidbar–Devarim, with additional sections on Nach, Pirkei Avos and the sifrei mussar) were edited by Rav Chaim Tropper from tape recordings of the shmuessen, and published by Keren Moreshes Rabbeinu together with Machon Meforshei HaShas of Lakewood. They present material that has never before appeared in print, and they stand as a worthy companion to the celebrated Chiddushei HaLev of Rav Binyamin Luban shlit”a.

The Method

The introduction states the Rosh Yeshiva’s lifelong insistence plainly: mussar is “a complete portion and discipline of the very body of our holy Torah,” and it must be learned exactly as one learns a sugya in Shas, with depth, with iyun, and with toil. Citing Rav Yisrael Salanter’s Iggeres HaMussar, the editor explains why. Knowledge that merely sits in the mind does not move a person. Only learning “with strength and deep analysis” makes “a strong acquisition in the soul” and slowly changes one’s very nature.

What did that look like in practice? The Rosh Yeshiva would take a Ramban, a Rabbeinu Bachya, a Ralbag, a Maharsha or an Eitz Yosef, often a line that most readers pass over without a second glance, and ask: What compelled the meforash to say this? What must he have assumed about the human heart for his words to be true? He unfolded the latent chain of reasoning, step by step, until a brilliant yesod in kochos hanefesh stood revealed. Chelkas Kohen preserves that process with painstaking accuracy. The question, the rejected answer, the “v’tzarich lomar,” the conclusion, and then the hisorerus l’maaseh all appear exactly as the Rosh Yeshiva laid them out.

A few examples will show the reader what awaits him.

Hevel’s Mercy (Bereishis, p. 30)

The Midrash (Bereishis Rabbah 22:8) relates that Hevel was stronger than Kayin. Hevel had pinned him to the ground, Kayin pleaded for his life, Hevel “was filled with mercy,” and Kayin promptly arose and killed him. The Eitz Yosef asks how the weaker Kayin prevailed, and answers in a few words: Hevel “did not guard himself.”

Most would read on. The Rosh Yeshiva did not. Why did Hevel not guard himself? It cannot be that he was fooled by Kayin’s plea, for a man facing death will say anything, and Hevel surely knew it. Rather, Hevel did guard himself, but not to the full degree that the mortal danger required. And why not? The Midrash itself supplies the answer: nismalei alav rachamim. The great compassion that welled up in Hevel’s heart dulled, ever so slightly, his intellectual perception of the danger.

Two towering lessons emerge. First, that one is meant to feel overwhelming compassion even for a would-be murderer in his moment of need, for light pity would never have clouded Hevel’s judgment in a matter of his own life. Second, that compassion itself, the noblest of emotions, can damage the seichel and ruin one’s actions. The Rosh Yeshiva is careful to add that the solution is not to diminish the rachamim by even an iota. “An abundance of compassion is desirable without limit.” The avodah is to ensure that the seichel remains the ruler over the emotions, and not the reverse.

Efron’s Generosity (Bereishis, p. 91)

The Ramban explains that when Efron said “in the presence of my people I have given it to you,” he meant that Avraham should bury Sarah immediately, since there are witnesses and Efron can no longer retract. Avraham refused. He paid in full, made a formal chazakah before the entire city, and only then buried Sarah.

The Rosh Yeshiva asks what no one else asks. Efron was, as Chazal say, “nivhal lahon,” a man who lusted for money. Such a person should be the first to insist: pay me, and then bury! Why would he consider the field Avraham’s before a single shekel changed hands?

The answer is a remarkable chiddush in the human psyche. Efron’s entire grasp of the concept of ownership was corrupted. To him, the line between “mine” and “not mine” was blurry. The trait that produces that blurriness is a deficiency in middas ha’emes. A person who tolerates falsehood cannot properly appreciate what ba’alus means, even regarding his own property. Avraham Avinu, perfected in emes, stood at the opposite pole. So long as any thread of connection to another remained, whether a debt still owed or a public perception that the field was Efron’s, he could not regard it as wholly his own. One’s understanding of ownership, the Rosh Yeshiva concludes, rises and falls with the measure of truth in one’s soul.

The Lentils the Torah Hid (Bereishis, p. 101)

Rabbeinu Bachya notes that the Torah first says merely that Yaakov cooked “a stew,” and reveals only after the sale that it was lentils. The reader, he explains, assumes that something precious was involved, and is then struck by Esav’s baseness.

The Rosh Yeshiva unfolds what lies within those words. The Torah added no new information by reversing the order. It employed a tachbulah, a stratagem of surprise, solely to make an impression upon the reader’s soul. From here comes a foundation of all mussar: there is an immense distance between knowing a fact and knowing that same fact through hispa’alus of the heart and contemplation of the mind. The Torah itself is telling us, as it were, “Contemplate well what is being said here.” And there is a lesson for every rebbe and teacher: one who teaches Torah must acquire wisdom in kochos hanefesh and present the material in the manner that will bring talmidim to genuine clarity.

Bikkurim and the Life of Another (Devarim, p. 151)

Turning to the end of Sefer Devarim, the Rosh Yeshiva examines Rabbeinu Bachya’s explanation that Mikra Bikkurim obligates a person, in his time of prosperity, to take to heart his former lowliness. But the farmer never suffered in Mitzrayim, “not he, not his father, nor his father’s father.” How can the recitation awaken real feeling? Because the entire history of Klal Yisrael is part of the very essence of the Jewish soul, and every Jew can summon it as his own.

Then comes a second question. Why preface the suffering in Mitzrayim with the biography of Yaakov Avinu, who was destitute in Aram, a stranger in Egypt, and then became a great nation? The answer is an insight of striking psychological depth. A person living in comfort sees his blessings as isolated, separate kindnesses. He cannot see “one complete picture” of how HaKadosh Boruch Hu carried him from darkness to great light. It is far easier to see that arc in someone else’s life. So the Torah hands him Yaakov’s life to look at, and through it he learns to recognize his own.

Answerable for the Distant (Devarim, p. 155)

In Parshas Nitzavim, Rabbeinu Bachya interprets the Gemara’s “two geese” (Bava Basra 73b) as Yishmael and Edom, who will one day convert, and explains Rabbi Elazar’s comment, “Yisrael will be called to judgment,” because their delayed teshuvah delays those nations from entering under the wings of the Shechinah.

The Rosh Yeshiva draws out the implications. If Klal Yisrael bears responsibility toward its bitterest enemies, who spilled our blood like water, and if even the great teshuvah that finally brings Moshiach will not exempt us from the claim that it should have come sooner, how much more are we responsible for our own brethren who are distant from Torah, toward whom a full obligation of arvus applies. And lest anyone think this is the work of professionals alone, the Rosh Yeshiva spells out the path. It requires not a single word of Torah. A warm countenance and a genuine smile, scrupulous honesty in business, pursuing even a rightful claim calmly and with derech eretz, and refusing to lend an ear to coarse speech in the workplace. Were every shomer mitzvos meticulous in these matters, he says, multitudes the world over would return.

“See the End of Flesh and Blood” (Devarim, p. 164)

The final piece on Chumash may be the most moving. The Tanchuma describes Moshe Rabbeinu’s fear that his death outside Eretz Yisrael would crush the spirit of Klal Yisrael. Yet with half a moment left, his last words were: “See the end of flesh and blood.” Where is the comfort and encouragement?

The Rosh Yeshiva answers that these words are the encouragement. A tangible awareness that one’s end is the grave does not depress; it elevates. It reminds a person that he has a mission, that he is here on the Creator’s errand, and it fills him with courage. All the worries and fears that plague a person, he says, stem from one cause: forgetting this reality. He then cites what he heard many times from his father, Rav Dovid zt”l, on “Better to go to a house of mourning than to a house of feasting.” One can only compare two things of the same kind. Shlomo HaMelech is teaching that zikaron yom hamisah produces simchah, and that this simchah is greater than that of the feast.

For Yom Kippur

With Yom Kippur approaching, it is worth noting how much of Chelkas Kohen speaks directly to the avodah of the day. Three pieces stand out.

The first is on the posuk “b’shagam hu basar” (Bereishis 6:3; vol. 1, p. 33). Rashi explains: man is mere flesh and still does not submit, “and what if he were fire or something hard?” The Mizrachi adds, “and what would he have done” were that so. The Rosh Yeshiva asks how this magnifies the sin, and uncovers in these words a tachbulah for cheshbon hanefesh. A person should ask himself: what would I do if I were stronger, wealthier, healthier, if I had nothing in the world to fear? The evil that would then emerge is simply the reflected light of who he is right now, held in check only by frailty. At the same time, building on the Seforno and on the Alter of Slabodka, he insists that a person must carry two opposites in his heart at once: “I am a tzelem Elokim, exalted and lofty; what has sin to do with me?” and “I am small and weak; how did my heart dare defy Hashem?”

That shmuess closes with words the recorder preserved in all their urgency. “Kevod rabbosai,” the Rosh Yeshiva begins, reminding the talmidim of the kabbalos discussed during the Yamim Noraim, and of Rav Yisrael Salanter’s teaching that one who firmly resolves to learn mussar is already reckoned an “oseh teshuvah,” a ruling which, Rav Yisrael promised, is accepted in the Beis Din shel Maalah. Chazal say that immediately after Yom Kippur one must begin preparing for the next Rosh Hashanah, and that preparation is limud hamussar. He then gives voice to the yetzer hara’s arguments (“Yesterday you learned mussar and today you stumbled again, so why waste your time?”) and answers with Rav Yisrael’s mashal of the water dripping upon the stone. Each drop leaves a mark invisible to the eye, but only when the learning is constant.

The second concerns vidui itself (vol. 2, p. 180). On “Mah yisonen adam chai, gever al chata’av” (Eichah 3:39), the Midrash says: “Let him stand like a gibbor and confess his sins, and not complain.” The Maharzu links this to “Who is mighty? He who conquers his inclination.” The Rosh Yeshiva draws out the implication. Admitting “I have sinned” demands the same enormous gevurah needed to hold back from an aveirah that has come to hand, for human nature forever seeks to escape blame and shift it elsewhere, even by far-fetched and illogical reasoning. And against whom is the complainer complaining? Against HaKadosh Boruch Hu Himself, if only in his subconscious. So hard is it to say “chatasi” that a person would sooner fault the Ribbono Shel Olam than accept responsibility for his own troubles. One who grasps this will stand differently at Ashamnu.

The third is drawn from the opening of the Yom Kippur Torah reading (Vayikra 16:1; vol. 2, p. 31). The Ramban explains “b’karvasam lifnei Hashem” to mean that the sons of Aharon died while serving before Hashem, and that Aharon is therefore warned to serve only in the place and at the time commanded. If their intent was purely l’shem Shomayim, how did they err, and why would Aharon HaKohen need such a warning? The Rosh Yeshiva answers that a holy yearning for closeness, in the manner of “k’ayal ta’arog,” can itself blind the eye of the intellect until a person rules that an aveirah is a mitzvah. On the day when every heart is stirred, the lesson is l’maaseh: no kavanah in the world pushes aside a single halacha in the Shulchan Aruch.

And for Sukkos

The sefer contains no shmuess devoted to Sukkos as such, but the Yom Tov is well served nonetheless.

In Parshas Bo (vol. 1, p. 180), the Rosh Yeshiva analyzes the famous Ramban at the end of the parsha, which lists the mitzvos that serve as a perpetual remembrance of Yetzias Mitzrayim, concluding with “and that we make a sukkah every year.” The Ramban continues that “from the great open miracles a person comes to acknowledge the hidden miracles,” that everything which befalls us is gezeiras Elyon with no nature in it at all. The Rosh Yeshiva asks: every Jew already knows and believes in the miracles of Mitzrayim without a shadow of doubt, and yet finds it exceedingly hard to feel that his own success is not “kochi v’otzem yadi.” How, then, does remembering accomplish anything? His answer is that the Ramban is not speaking of knowledge at all. He is speaking of hargashas halev, for the mind and the heart are “two separate worlds, as distant as east from west.” The mitzvos of remembrance exist to plant a tangible feeling in the heart, and one who acquires it will come to see the events of his own life as hidden miracles. There is no finer kavanah for one who leaves his house at the very season of the ingathering, when the pull of kochi v’otzem yadi is strongest, and sits in the shade of the sukkah.

Sukkos is also when Koheles is read, and Chelkas Kohen returns to Koheles again and again. The Bikkurim shmuess cited above is built on “B’yom tovah heyei v’tov” (7:14), and it is itself a guide to the Chag HaAsif, for it teaches how to stand before Hashem with one’s harvest and truly give thanks. “Tov laleches el beis evel” (7:2), in Rav Dovid Leibowitz’s reading, reveals that awareness of life’s transience is a source of simchah, which may be the very reason Koheles belongs to zman simchaseinu, and that shmuess is drawn from V’zos HaBracha, the leining of Simchas Torah. And on the “small city” and the “poor wise man” (9:14-15; vol. 2, p. 184), which the Gemara (Nedarim 32b) applies to the body, the yetzer hara and the yetzer tov, the Rosh Yeshiva identifies three powers of the yetzer tov that the yetzer hara labors to make a person forget. Its quiet voice is never fully silenced, even at the height of temptation. It gives a person no rest after he has stumbled, waking him even in the middle of the night. And it fills him with joy when he withstands a nisayon. One who calls these to mind at the moment of trial, he says, holds a mighty weapon.

A Final Word

Rav Tropper writes with great humility that he does not claim to have plumbed the depths of the Rosh Yeshiva’s intent. Yet the care is evident on every page, from the full citations to the cross-references between shmuessen and the faithful preservation of the Rosh Yeshiva’s own structure. He urges the reader not to be satisfied with a first reading, for the more one toils in these words, the more they penetrate and become part of one’s very nature.

That is the gift of Chelkas Kohen. It does not merely report what Rav Henoch Leibowitz zt”l said. It lets a new generation learn how he thought. Sifsosav dovevos bakever.

The sefer is distrunuted by Levitz and is available in most seforim stores.

The author can be reached at [email protected]