By Suri Cohen

March 1986. My next-door neighbor poked her curly red head through the open door of my seminary dorm room. “Mail for you!” she exclaimed cheerily, pitching a package that sailed with Frisbee-like panache toward my bed. I dived for it hungrily, eager for a taste of home. Those were the days when telephone communication from Israel to America required an ample supply of asimonim, metal tokens that were purchased at the post office and fed in considerable quantities into bulky, antediluvian pay phones. My parents called me once a week at a predetermined time. And so, mail from home was a very big deal.

I opened the package and out slid a cassette. This was a curious departure from the usual written missive. I quickly inserted it into my tape recorder and watched the shiny brown spools spin silently for a few seconds. Then, all at once, my father filled the room.

“Suri.” The familiar tone was deliberate, ruminative, tinged with sadness. “The family has gathered here in the house to share our memories, reflect on our history, and talk about the way forward - how we are going to continue in a world” - his voice broke for a moment - “without Rav Yaakov.”

A world without Harav Yaakov Kamenetsky! The prospect seemed unthinkable. I had grown up literally in his shadow, a giant shadow that he cast all the way up to our house at the top of Albert Drive from his humble home at the bottom. 

Only a few weeks earlier thousands had thronged the streets of Brooklyn to mourn his loss, a foreshadowing of the throngs that would fill the avenues of Yerushalayim in a black tide of sorrow only two weeks later at the funeral of his formidable contemporary, Harav Moshe Feinstein, zt”l.

A Constant Presence

Rav Yaakov. The name was a leitmotif, a constant refrain running through the background of my childhood. Nothing we did, no decision we made, was done without consulting Rav Yaakov. It was an unwritten rule, so self-evident that it need not be stated. My father, Reb Yoseph Herman, made daily use of his access to what he felt was the Urim V’tumim of our time.

Rav Yaakov was a larger-than-life father figure to our family, to whom my father bonded with unquestioning devotion. He felt keenly that a key benefit of asking Rav Yaakov’s advice was the guarantee, the reassurance, that Hashem stands behind the words of a tzaddik, and many were the times his faith was vindicated.

When looking to move from Kew Gardens, Queens, to Monsey, my father was reluctant to forgo the benefits of the bond he had formed with the Gadol Harav Yaakov Teitelbaum, zt”l. His first requirement, therefore, was proximity to the residence of Rav Yaakov, who had recently moved to Monsey upon retiring from his position as Rosh Yeshivah of Yeshivah Torah Vodaas in Brooklyn.

As my father made the turn from Saddle River Road onto Albert Drive, on his way up to the top of the hill, where it meets the semicircle of Sylvan Road, he couldn’t help but notice that aside from the bucolic setting,  the house at 20 Sylvan Road met his requirements perfectly. A walk down the hill to Rav Yaakov’s house would take no more than five minutes.

The Minyan

Within three or four weeks my father decided to join the minyan that met every Shabbos in Rav Yaakov’s basement. Rav Yaakov was a reluctant Rav, forced by circumstances to assume leadership of his own minyan. When he first moved to Monsey, he had davened at Mesivta Bais Shraga, which was located only a few steps from his home. To his dismay, however, he immediately saw that people were waiting for him to finish davening rather than waiting for the Rosh Yeshivah, who was then Harav Shmuel Faivelson, shlita. Unable to change this behavior, which he felt was a diminution of the Rosh Yeshivah’s honor, he stopped davening there. Eventually, a private minyan was started in the living room of his neighbor, Reb Moshe Duvid Weissmandl, which  eventually migrated to Rav Yaakov’s basement.

A year after he joined the minyan, my father was elected its gabbai; he was soon  joined by another minyan stalwart, Rabbi Kasriel Kaufman, who was elected as the second gabbai. Rabbi Kaufman, however, was reluctant to accept the post without first consulting the Rosh Yeshivah.

“And so we went upstairs to Rav Yaakov and got his permission,” my father said. “Rav Yaakov never gave direct mussar, but after giving his permission, he turned to me and said, ‘Dos iz richtig - this is the right thing to do.’ I took it to mean that I, too, should have asked his permission before accepting my appointment.” But the mussar was so characteristically gentle that it accomplished its goal without inflicting hurt.

The minyan was woven into the fabric of my youth. Almost every Shabbos, my mother, sisters, and I would make our way down the hill, walk up the driveway to the side door, and descend the steep steps to the women’s section, taking our seats in the back. Some weeks we’d arrive before the Rebbetzin came downstairs. Even if I was immersed in davening, I always knew when she came in by the rustling of skirts as all the women stood up for her as she passed by on her way to her seat in the front of the room.

The patterned white tablecloths bedecking the tables; the bookcase in the front of the room with the cracked glass pane, behind which rested siddurim, Chumashim, and spare reading glasses; the pitted wooden benches, worn smooth with age - the entire room enfolded me in its warmth, its familiarity, its tangible aura of holiness.

Every Shabbos after davening my siblings and I would trek back up the stairs, knock on the door, and enter the kitchen, where the Rosh Yeshivah, along with the Rebbetzin, would be waiting for us, his radiant smile dispelling the chill of the coldest outdoor temperatures. My younger brothers would join us as Rav Yaakov took out a jar of lollipops from the pantry and handed them out, in exchange for a brachah, to all children not yet too dignified to accept. The taste of candy, through the alchemy of memory, somehow fuses with the sweetness of Shabbos and the savor of a mikdash me’at that became ingrained in the core of our identity.

The sounds and the melodies of the davening, especially of the Yamim Nora’im, are imprinted in my psyche with all the acute clarity of girsa d’yankusa, impressions gained in early childhood. (It was with a sense of serendipity that I later discovered that a niggun I had always associated with the prayer V’ye’esayu, sung movingly by Rav Shimon Rosengarten during the Yamim Nora’im, was actually composed by my father-in-law, Harav Dovid Cohen, shlita.)

Ad Delo Yada – With a Twist

At its peak, the minyan was comprised of seventy-five men and about thirty-five women. Rav Yaakov vetoed requests for expansion, not wanting to diminish the size of any other shul. Those fortunate enough to belong were keenly aware of the privilege of being part of a charmed circle. Even visitors were struck by the atmosphere. When my uncle, Rav Yaakov Gutman, zt”l, a prominent mashgiach in Bnei Brak, visited in Adar 1983 for my sister’s wedding, he davened with my father on Purim. He was awed, he told us, by the utter silence during the Megillah reading. The yiras haromemus transcended sensory boundaries; it was something you could smell, taste, touch.

On Purim afternoon, they returned to Rav Yaakov’s house to deliver mishloach manos and to spend time with him. At one point they ran out of wine, and my father went to the kitchen, where the Rebbetzin handed him a fresh bottle. He presented it to Rav Yaakov, who picked it up and studied it intently, perplexed by its unfamiliar label and the apparent absence of a hechsher. Suddenly, his face lit up in recognition.

He related that he had recently visited the Lev Simcha of Ger in Eretz Yisrael, who gave him a bottle of wine. Rav Yaakov thanked him, “and I told him that I would drink it on Purim.” When he came home, he put it away and forgot about it. But in Heaven, the words of this quintessential ish emes were remembered. Hashem brought the bottle to the Rebbetzin’s hand to enable him to keep his word.

Ways of Pleasantness

Rav Yaakov gave a regular Pirkei Avos shiur on Shabbos afternoons in the summer, for which the beis medrash was jammed beyond capacity. Some of the regular congregants asserted their right to have reserved seats. My father posed the issue to Rav Yaakov. In his characteristic way, not wanting to be forceful, he said, “Ken zein - maybe,” a grudging assent. My father then printed “Reserved Seat” notices and put them in an envelope before Shabbos.

When he came in on Shabbos afternoon, he found that the envelope had sealed itself, denying him access to the notices. Smiling gently, Rav Yaakov said that it was min haShamayim, a clear sign that Hashem agreed with him in not projecting a message of exclusion.

Although Rav Yaakov was strict in the observance of his own customs, it was rare that he imposed his opinions on others. My father remembers one such time. The wife of one of the minyan members had given birth to a girl on Friday, and the entire extended family came to shul on Shabbos to celebrate the giving of her name. However, there had been no time to prepare a kiddush before Shabbos. When my father reported this to Rav Yaakov, his reaction was unexpected.

“He was adamant that there was to be no naming without a kiddush. The birth of a girl is as much of a yom tov as that of a boy. You don’t make a bris and name a boy without a seudah, and a girl has to have a ‘seudah’ as well.” The disappointed father trekked home to a daughter for whom he had no name but perhaps a deeper appreciation.

It is hard to find a photograph of Rav Yaakov in which he is not smiling. All who knew him were touched by his inner joy, his serenity, and his sense of balance, a quality sorely missed in our increasingly polarized world.

Close friends of our family had recently moved to Monsey from Lakewood and had joined the minyan. The summer was hot, and their young daughter came to shul in socks. Some of the women objected, and the issue was brought to the Rosh Yeshivah. Rav Yaakov ruled that according to halachah, there was no problem. “Uber vus ken mir tohn?” he said. “Der oilam iz frum gevoren! What can we do? People have become frum!” One can almost see the twinkle in his eye. 

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