Rav
Aharon Lichtenstein, Rav Gustman, and the Legend of the Milkman
Rabbi Ari Kahn
For years there has been an urban legend circulating
about a chance meeting between two great Talmudic scholars. The story is usually
told as follows:
During the Yom Kippur war, the Rosh
Yeshiva of Yeshivat Har Etzion, Harav Aharon Lichtenstein ZT”L, felt compelled
to help in the war effort. His students were fighting valiantly at the front,
and he felt the need to pitch in. Rav Aharon approached the Home-Front Command (or,
in some versions of the story, the Jerusalem Municipality) and volunteered his
services. A local milkman had been called up as an IDF reservist, and Rav
Aharon gladly took over his delivery route.
One of the people he met on his route was
the revered Rosh Yeshiva of Yeshivas Rameilis - Netzach Yeshiva, Rav Yisrael
Ze’ev Gustman ZT”L. During this serendipitous meeting, the two Talmudic titans
began discussing Talmud. Rav Gustman had no reason to believe that the clean-shaven
milkman was, in actuality, a prominent Rosh Yeshiva. Duly impressed, Rav
Gustman later remarked to one of his students how lucky he was to live in
Jerusalem – where even the milkman is a “baki
b’shas” (well-versed in the entirety of Talmud).
There are several problems with this
story, the most serious of which is that the meeting it describes never
happened. Here are some historical facts to consider:
·
Rav
Aharon never volunteered as a milkman.
·
Rav
Aharon and Rav Gustman were well acquainted long before this story supposedly
transpired. When the Lichtenstein family moved to New York they lived in close
proximity to Rav Gustman; Rav Aharon first met Rav Gustman when the former was
still quite young. If memory serves me well, I was told that Rav Aharon “inherited” his approach to some of the laws
of blowing the shofar from Rav Gustman. Rav Aharon accepted as authoritative
the sounds he had heard in his youth in Rav Gustman’s Beit Midrash.
·
Rav
Aharon was well-known throughout the yeshiva world as a prodigy. Having grown
up in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn, where Rav Gustman lived and
taught, it is highly unlikely that Rav Gustman did not know who Rav Aharon was.
Additionally, Rav Aharon was a leading student of Rav Yitzchak Hutner, who was
a very close friend of Rav Gustman; it is unlikely that the two Roshei Yeshiva
did not discuss Rav Hutner’s brilliant young student.
·
My
brother, Rav Yair, told me that on one occasion he went to speak with Rav
Gustman about a complicated Talmudic passage. Rav Gustman asked him where he
learned; when he informed him that he was a student at Yeshivat Har Etzion, Rav
Gustman responded, “Your Rosh Yeshiva is a great Talmud Hacham. Why are you
asking me? You should be asking Rav Aharon.”
·
I personally
recall seeing Rav Gustman at the Bar Mitzvah celebration of one of Rav Aharon’s
sons.
·
Rav
Aharon’s son told me that on Simhat Torah in 1973, while the Yom Kippur war was
still raging, Rav Aharon took him and his brothers to the Netzach Yisrael
Yeshiva for Hakafot. (As a Hesder yeshiva, Rav Aharon’s Yeshivat Har Etzion was
empty: all the students were at war.)
All of these facts would seem to indicate
that the story is no more than an urban legend. On the other hand, I was told
many years ago that during the Yom Kippur war Rav Gustman had volunteered in a
local hospital. The hospitals were short on staff, and Rav Gustman would spend
his nights in the hospital, lending a hand and doing whatever he could to help
out. This was his way of taking part in the war effort in a constructive way.
As I heard it, Rav Gustman came to the
hospital every night. He helped change sheets, transported patients to and from
operating rooms, and whatever else was needed. Before long, Rav Gustman struck
up a friendship with one of the other young men who had come to volunteer, an
earnest yeshiva student from overseas. This young man brought his Gemara, and
when there was a lull in activity, he opened his Gemara and started to learn.
Glancing up from his book, he noticed the elderly volunteer and asked if he
would like to learn with him. The young man then proceeded to “teach” Rav
Gustman Gemara during those precious moments of down-time in the hospital.
A few weeks later, this young yeshiva
student received a warm recommendation from a fellow student, who told him
about an exceptional Talmudic genius who had survived the Holocaust and was
currently a Rosh Yeshiva in Jerusalem. The scholar, he was told, had been a dayan in the Beit Din of Rav Chaim Ozer
Grodzinski; in fact, he was the youngest scholar ever appointed to the famed
Beit Din of Vilna. The young volunteer seized
the opportunity and went to hear a shiur
from this great scholar. When he entered the Beit Midrash of Yeshivat Netzach
Yisrael, he was shocked to see that the illustrious Rosh Yeshiva was none other
than his chevrusa from the hospital.
Both of the stories repeated here are
plausible, possible - and in the case of the second story, actually true –
because they share one underlying element: the unassuming bearing and immense
modesty of both Rav Aharon Lichtenstein and Rav Yisrael Zeev Gustman. I
consider myself profoundly fortunate to have studied with both of these great
men.
But what of the milkman? Recently, when I
visited the home of the Lichtenstein family to pay a condolence call, I
expressed my skepticism regarding the veracity of the milkman story, and asked
Rav Aharon’s family if they had any idea how this urban legend got started. Was
there another unassuming, clean-shaven baki
b’shas wandering the streets of Jerusalem?
I was given the following answer:
When Rav Aharon Kotler came to visit
Israel (where his father-in-law Rav Isser Zalman Meltzer was a leading rabbinic
figure), there was some pressure placed upon him to stay and take on a post as
a Rosh Yeshiva in Jerusalem. Rav Aharon (Kotler) responded that he had met a
milkman that morning in Jerusalem, and the man was proficient in all of Shas.
Rav Aharon opined that in Lakewood, where the public is generally ignorant, he would
be able to be a Rosh Yeshiva, but in Yerushalayim, where even the milkmen know all
of Shas, he feels out of his league.
Apparently, “Rav Aharon” (Kotler), the
protagonist in the original milkman story, was exchanged for Rav Aharon
(Lichtenstein) in the later version of the milkman story; such is the nature of
storytelling. Whether there ever was such a milkman or not – only Rav Aharon
knows.
