Jewish World Review Feb. 20, 2001 / 27 Shevat, 5761


A humble leader and fighter

With the recent shloshim, or thirtieth day from the passing, of Rabbi Mordechai Gifter, dean of the Telshe Yeshiva in Cleveland, JWR celebrates the life of an American original who was never scared to fight the good fight --- no matter how unpopular a position might be.

By Rabbi Hillel Goldberg

http://www.jewishworldreview.com -- QUITE literally, Rabbi Mordechai Gifter could electrify an audience within five seconds of beginning a speech. Not in five seconds, five minutes or even five years can his many disciples and admirers absorb the magnitude of his loss.

I must dispense with "rabbi." It was not Rabbi Gifter. It was Rav Gifter. The Hebrew conveys infinitely more than the English, just as he conveyed infinitely more than I or anyone shall ever be able to reduce to words. Truly, only G-d Himself can understand this great man; not, however, because Rav Gifter was a hermit or the retiring type. If any person did not live the life of a hermit, did not duck a single issue, did not fear a single person or shy away from an unpleasant confrontation; if anyone personified the verse in the Torah, "do not fear any man"; if anyone engendered in his disciples a deep sense of sheer love and adoration and openness, it was Rav Gifter.

I use the word "disciples" advisedly, quite deliberately. Rare today is the teacher of Torah who has many genuine disciples. If stricken or perplexed, who today turns to a teacher of Torah for authoritative guidance? Who surrenders his autonomy and accepts someone else's perspective on critical, personal issues? Many people today consult a rabbi or a yeshiva dean in order to gain insight, to trade ideas, to share pain or to ask for blessing; but who asks for authoritative guidance -- indeed, yearns for it, relishes it, feels privileged to receive it?

Even fights for the opportunity to receive it?

Banish one thought from the mind: that Rav Gifter, in dispensing guidance, was controlling or manipulative. Such are the adjectives that come to mind in 2001 when the term "authoritative guidance" is used. How debased our understanding of Torah authority has become that so many associate it with genuflection or absence of critical thinking.

Rav Gifter's guidance was sought not because he demanded allegiance, but because he commanded respect. Rav Gifter's persona was appreciated not because he played with other people's psyches, but because he consistently and successfully worked to straighten his own. He listened. He discerned. He perceived. He cut below the surface. He read beyond a person's words into his real message. Needless to say, it is no less important that Rav Gifter brought all these qualities to his study of Torah. When one sought counsel from Rav Gifter, one received two gifts: a finely calibrated reading of one's heart, and a finely etched application of the pertinent Torah teaching. This is authoritative guidance.

It is not always what one wants to hear, or expects to hear. Conversations with Rav Gifter could leave the questioner struggling with the truths that Rav Gifter enunciated -- this, amidst an overwhelming sense of gratitude to G-d for bestowing such a mind and soul on the Jewish people -- and for access to it.

Truly, Rav Gifter's every word was an enunciation. Whether a thundering denunciation, a loving word of encouragement, a long sought decision, or a penetrating shaft of humor, Rav Gifter's every word was an enunciation. His diction was crystal clear. His syntax was perfect. His choice of words, elegant. And his delivery -- that inimitable, indescribable delivery -- was mesmerizing.

He had a tremendous depth of soul, that could be moved to great emotion; and he had a tremendous gift of expression, that could communicate his emotions exactly, impeccably. No less, he had a tremendous clarity of mind, and could communicate his thinking precisely, and accessibly. One would usually find him teaching in the Telshe Yeshiva, in Wickliffe, Ohio; but one could also find him dazzling a gathering of law students and law professors, putting the Jewish civil law in terms they could grasp fully, as if he himself had studied the pertinent American law in depth.

Still more: The enunciations of Rav Gifter emerged from a certainty of being, a loftiness of knowledge, a fearless and uncompromising honesty derived from his innate integrity and from complete absorption of the very letters of the Torah. Rav Gifter could unravel uncertainties with a straightforwardness that astonished and satisfied. "There is no joy like the unraveling of uncertainties," says the Talmud. Every conversation with Rav Gifter was, in this sense, a genuine joy. Like the prodigiously talented lawyer he could have chosen to become, Rav Gifter cut through nonsense, obfuscation, arguments and conflicts to reach the truth. When I read in Exodus of G-d thundering at Mount Sinai, the only human voice I can summon that meets the requirements of the imagination is the voice of Rav Gifter.

His personal qualities were sterling. He could introduce himself as "Gifter." It was not an affectation. His humility was genuine.

He would not spare his considered opinion from his closest associates, still less from himself. If Einstein proved that the speed of light was the only constant in the universe, Rav Gifter proved that honesty in human relations could be absolute. Rav Gifter loved the study of Torah. He squeezed every free moment from his manifold responsibilities to study the Torah. His spirituality was the real thing.

Likewise, his integrity: When he ascended to the Land of Israel in the 1970s, hoping to live permanently near Jerusalem, in the new neighborhood of Telshe-Stone, he was already a senior yeshiva dean, worldwide. When, however, Rav Elazar M. M. Shach told him that the untimely passing of Rabbi Boruch Sorotzkin at the Telshe Yeshiva in Wickliffe, Ohio, required him to return to lead the yeshiva once again, Rav Gifter complied.

The integrity behind authoritative guidance is the understanding that it is not just dispensed. No matter how senior one's status, when a still more senior Torah authority dispenses authoritative guidance to you, you follow it. Rav Gifter returned to Wickliffe.

Born in Virginia, his family moved to Baltimore. When he was nine, the legendary Torah scholar, Rabbi Shimon Shkop of Lithuania visited Baltimore and gave the young Gifter a blessing. Calling attention to the greatness of Torah scholars and downplaying his own, Rav Gifter often attributed "whatever success" he had in his studies to that blessing. His uncle was the students' physician at the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary in New York, and as a teenager he went there to study with the brilliant Rabbi Moses Soloveitchik. Then, Rav Gifter left America for Europe in about 1933 to study in the famed Telshe Yeshiva for five years.

"A lion has come up from Babylon," says the Talmud. A lion came up from Portsmouth, Virginia, to occupy center stage in the minds and hearts of thousands of American Jews; to emerge from the pre-WW II Telshe Yeshiva in Lithuania as a dominant force in the reborn Telshe Yeshiva in America; to be mourned by countless thousands of Jews at his funeral in Jerusalem. He chose to be buried on Mt. Olives, not in the sections reserved for yeshiva deans or eminent rabbis, but next to a melamed, a teacher. "I am a melamed," this eminent yeshiva dean would declare. "I have the same profession as the Creator!" (the blessing says, "Blessed are You, G-d, Who teaches Torah to His people Israel"). Yes, a lion came up from Babylon.

What a memorable eulogy Rav Gifter gave for the late philanthropist Adolph Beren in Denver in 1989. Quite literally, five seconds after he began, the audience of mourners was electrified. The dignity he bestowed on the deceased and on his family was incomparable. The life of Rav Gifter, above all, bestowed dignity on the truth. The Torah. In this, he was a nonpareil. His departure leaves us all diminished, his admirers bereft, his disciples crushed.

Rabbi Hillel Goldberg is Executive Editor of the Intermountain Jewish News. Send your comments by clicking here.

© 2001, Rabbi Hillel Goldberg