With Rabbi Weinberg’s dedication.
Berlin, 1926.
Title on printed wrapper, 57 pages.
In December 1927, the Rebbe arrived in Berlin. During his first few months there, he continued his numerous detailed rabbinic correspondences with the great scholar Rabbi Yosef Rosin, known as the Rogatchover Gaon; and during his very first month there he wrote scholarly notes on a response authored by the Seridei Eish, titled ‘Pinui Atzamot Meitim’. That 57-page response was published by the seminary in 1926, and discusses at great length whether it is permissible for a family that has moved to another country to transfer the burial spot of their loved ones across the border. The Seridei Eish dissects all the Talmudic and subsequent works on Jewish law on this complicated issue. His response was widely praised by many of the great giants of Jewish law in pre–World War II Europe.
The Rebbe’s private notes on the response, written in his very brief style, complete with many references, were found after his passing in 1994 and published as 19 pages in the Reshimot, volumes containing the Rebbe’s notes on many subjects, together with footnotes and explanatory text.
The Rebbe, who was just 25 years old at the time, bravely disagrees with the Seridei Eish on several issues, including on one of the core issues of the various laws related to bizayon, “embarrassment, ” as applied to things one should not do when it comes to one who passes away and is buried.
Rabbi Avraham Abba Weingort, who heads the publishing house that prints the Seridei Eish’s manuscripts, recently said from his home in Jerusalem that he knows why the Rebbe wrote on this response; and he published the story behind it in his latest volume of the Seridei Eish’s writings on the Talmud.
Weingort writes in his introduction to the volume that he heard this story from Rabbi Chaim Nachman Kowalski, who resides in Zurich and is a follower of the Gerrer Hasidic dynasty, and he was recording it word for word as he heard it from him.
“The Rebbe was in Berlin, ” Kowalski related, according to Weingort. “One day he came to Rabbi Weinberg and requested that he provide him with a rabbinical ordination. If I remember correctly, it was so he could have an official certificate that would permit him to use the large Berlin library. Rabbi Weinberg was in favor of the ordination, but only as long as he completed all the tests that any of the other students would need to take.”
The tests would normally be given over a long period of time, and the Rebbe wanted to have the certificate as soon as possible. So the Rebbe “asked for an exemption from this, and Rabbi Weinberg did not agree, ” said Kowalski. “After more discussion, Rabbi Menachem Mendel suggested that Rabbi Weinberg choose a volume from his library and give it to him; he would learn it overnight, and the next day he would be tested on it.”
Kowalski says that it was a brazen move. “Could someone master in one night an entire volume that he had never learned, and be tested on it the very next day? Only one who knew the entire Talmud and a substantial corpus of rabbinic responsa on Jewish law would be able to do it.”
He says he does not know why the Seridei Eish at the end agreed. “It may have been because it was such a challenge that one could not refuse to see the results.”
The Seridei Eish gave him the aforementioned booklet ‘Pinui Atzmot Hamei’t, for which, Weingort says, “one needs to be fluent in all aspects of Jewish scholarship, especially in laws that many do not review daily, such as the laws of impurity and burial.”
Kowalski says that the Seridei Eish told him that the next day, he tested the young scholar and “was shocked by the great knowledge of all that it said in his booklet, and even more than was written there. He immediately gave Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson rabbinical ordination.”
In a recent conversation with Kowalski in Zurich, he clarifies how it came about that he discussed this with the Seridei Eish. “I was a student of the Seridei Eish in Montreux, Switzerland, ” he says, and one day he was speaking to the Seridei Eish and asked: “Why don’t you have contact with the Lubavitcher Rebbe?”
The Seridei Eish said: “I will tell you the truth: he was my student, and now he is Rebbe. If I would write to him, I would need to write to him [the honorific titles] HaRav Hagaon, Hatzadik. I cannot write like this to a student, and to write to him without saying this is not respectful because he is a Rebbe. So, I do not write.”
After the Seridei Eish told this to Kowalski, he asked him: “He was your student? How did that come about?” The Rabbi then told him the above story. While Kowalski says that in his old age he does not remember all the details, he told the story to Weingort many years ago, and he would know it better. He recalls that the Seridei Eish told him that “the Lubavitcher Rebbe is a great man.”
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Lot #77