IN-DEPTH FEATURES

The Prince of the Mussar Kingdom: HaRav Avrohom Grodzinsky Hy"d -- His 55th Yahrtzeit
by Tzvi Munk

"I write books, while the Alter fashions people," is an expression of the kin'as sofrim of Rabbenu Yisroel Meir HaKohen of Radin. The one who aroused his awe of the power of the Alter of Slobodke was the Prince of the kingdom of mussar and yirah in Kovno, HaRav Avrohom Grodzinsky Hy"d.

Indeed, he was like that, the outstanding student of R' Nota Hirsch (Nosson Tzvi), famed as the Alter of Slobodke. Such also was the testimony of the fashioner himself, the Alter, who once said: "This is my dividend from all my effort."

And he -- R' Avrohom -- was a talmid with all 248 of his limbs, all 365 of his sinews, from the time he first came to study with the Alter as a seventeen-year-old bochur. When the Alter died in the city of the Ovos -- Hevron, and he Reb Avrohom was in Lithuania, he wrote to his nephew, who was in Eretz Hakodesh at the time: "I so wanted to come to Eretz Yisroel while he was living there . . . a time when I could have imbibed genuine Toras Eretz Yisroel from the course of his life, from his general and particular conduct, and perhaps from his train of thought --a small amount or a vast amount which until now I haven't merited to absorb. Now Eretz Yisroel has reverted to its state of devastation -- everything, everything has already passed. I utterly regret that I left the source of living water [the Alter] during the past year and a half, and especially during the new period in the Alter's life, in Eretz Hakodesh, and I regret that I didn't go there at least for a month."

Evident from every letter, and every mark, is his great longing for shimusha shel Torah in the presence of the Alter who, in his characteristic manner, summarized the avoda of the youthful years of his great talmid [R' Avrohom] saying: "He acquired mussar with his blood; he ripped parts of his body and totally broke himself."

"But," the Alter would say, "there was a chiddush in the avoda of R' Avrohom. The sound of the breaking of his middos was not heard from a distance."

@SUB TITLE = A Wound that Did not Heal

Until perishing al kiddush Hashem, R' Avrohom experienced a number of waves of suffering. One of them, perhaps the harshest of all, was the tragic demise of his wife, the rebbetzin, who left him with eight children, the youngest of whom were no more than a year and two years old. That constituted an opportunity for him to learn, on his very flesh, a chapter in tziduk hadin. "We [must] accept [our misfortunes] with simcha."

And he, who had his entire life fought routine and the rote performance of mitzvos, did not recite the boruch dayan ho'emes blessing then and there, right after the petirah. Only two days afterward, when he was in full presence of mind, and his soul was prepared for such a situation, did he recite the brocho of dayan ho'emes according to the halocho (which requires that this brocho be recited with joy).

"It is a gash which does not heal . . . Ten years have passed since then, and I still cannot speak of it as something which occurred in the past," he wrote to his nephew a long time after the death of his wife. In addition to the great void which her petirah created in his life, R' Avrohom bore a heavy burden on his shoulders, that of running the yeshiva and managing his own orphaned household. The gash about which he wrote to his nephew was impossible to heal. Despite the hardship and the difficulties, he preferred to bear the onus of the household and the chinuch of his children alone. To his daughter, he explained that his influence as a spiritual figure would be greater if the bnei yeshiva recognized him as a man who had undergone suffering.

In the midst of the shiva week, one of the bnei yeshiva told him that he had been released from service in the Lithuanian army. For a moment, R' Avrohom seemed to have forgotten his own great adversity. He rose, and kissed his student with much happiness. It was as if he had an only son who had been saved from the gallows.

Already during the incipient stages of his spiritual avoda in Slobodke, a period during which he served his Creator in concealment and hiding, a period about which not many details are known, he toiled for two years to achieve a demeanor which bespoke kovod vikor -- an affable appearance. "This lemida," said Maran HaRav Eliezer Menachem Shach shlita, who saw it personally when he was in Slobodke, "stemmed from the halocho and its finer points, and not from mussar."

His students, from all periods, relate that this trait was a veritable acquisition of his soul. Those who were familiar with the final chapter in his life, a bitter and painful chapter between the grim walls of the Kovno ghetto, related that even then his face expressed joy, and his entire being reflected warm-heartedness and respect for one's fellow.

One night, during his youth, when he was still in Otvocheck, within his family circle, a relative noticed that he was in a particularly happy frame of mind. When asked for the meaning of this happiness, he explained that one of the bnei yeshiva was getting married that night in Slobodke. "Even though I am not participating in the wedding in Slobodke, I can rejoice from afar in the happiness of my friend," he said.

@SUB TITLE = The Pillar of Slobodke

What R' Yeruchom was for Mir, R' Avrohom was for Slobodke -- the crucial element, and the foundation stone for the mussar activity which spread its glory as far as the city of the Ovos in Eretz Hakodesh.

He was the prince of the mussar giants, even if the remembrance of him was somewhat dimmed when he perished along with the many students who had recorded his lessons and teachings, and even if most of his Torah discourses remained concealed, their hiding place never to be found.

He was a gaon in halocho, amazingly well-versed in Shulchan Oruch, which he did not forget in the least, even during hours of dread and horror. Even the fear of death could not divert his fear of the din. When his students were busy building a quarter in the ghetto, he sat, with the clarity of mind and the characteristic calmness which he had acquired for himself, and ruled on dinei nefoshos. Priorities were determined according to his decisions, which were in line with the halocho.

He was the rav rabbonon of the mussar halls, their thought and their yirah. One time, when he passed through Kletsk, HaRav Aharon Kotler invited him to hew his thoughts into the hearts of his students. "He spoke to us five times on that Shabbos visit," HaRav Shneur Kotler later related. "He spoke on Shabbos night, on Shabbos morning, in the afternoon, on motzei Shabbos, and on Sunday morning when we received a farewell blessing from him."

"It was he who drew me closer and introduced me to the depths of Toras hamussar," he concluded with longing.

When Rav Avrohom spoke to a student, the conversation could last many hours. HaRav Meir Chodesh, one of his first students, related how R' Avrohom spoke with him for seven hours on the topic of mental concentration. "For four months, I kept the matter to myself," he later related, "until one day I happened to be present when the police seized a farmer who had attempted to smuggle a bit of wheat in his wagon. The tragic moment of the capture of the farmer severed my train of thoughts for a moment, and I stopped thinking about the topic on which I had been concentrating. At that moment, the cry of the people of Sdom flashed across my mind, `The one has come to live, and he verily judges.' "

Another student, HaRav Mordechai Zuckerman, one of the only survivors of that generation, and one of the sole sources of information about the final days of his rav, later on described the tremendous impact the bircas hamozone of R' Avrohom had on him when he came to visit him while R' Avrohom was finishing his seuda shelishis meal. "Until today," he relates, "the lesson I learned in how to recite bircas hamozone with seriousness and with joy has a profound effect on me."

@SUB TITLE = Early Years

R' Avrohom was born around 5642 (1882), in the Polish city of Warsaw into a family of Lithuanian origin. When he was seventeen, he went to study in the yeshiva of the Alter in Slobodke, and afterward studied for a brief period in Lomza and Radin.

He studied in Slobodke for six years, where he began his spiritual avoda and was revealed as a mashpia. He was attached with every fiber of his soul to the Alter, who recognized him as an illustrious vessel, who would be a guide to many.

Indeed, already in 5665 (1905), when HaRav Eliezer Gordon of Telz asked HaRav Nosson Tzvi, the Alter, to send him a number of students to help impart mussar study to the students of the yeshiva, R' Avrohom, along with two other outstanding students of the Alter, was sent to Telz.

Even when he returned from Telz, the wellsprings of his influence did not cease, and he began to repeat the discourses of the Alter to the students of the yeshiva. In this area, he was revealed as an outstanding interpreter of the teachings of his illustrious rav.

And more than that. In his wisdom, he knew how to clarify where the Alter had spoken vaguely, until the subject matter had become crystal clear to his listeners. The great rav of Kovno, HaRav Avrohom Dov Shapira-Kahana, who was renowned for his Dvar Avrohom, once said that the talmid probed even deeper than his rav.

When he was twenty-nine, he established his home with the daughter of the mashgiach of the yeshiva, the tzaddik HaRav Dov Tzvi Heller, one of the most illustrious mussar figures of Slobodke, and the menahel ruchani of the yeshiva for fifty-three years. He was very close with R' Nosson Tzvi, and had been one of the students of the Alter of Kelm already since the period of the Beis Hatalmud in Gravin. Rav Dov Tzvi Heller, the man of chessed, who was beloved by the students of the yeshiva and who had been ordained for hora'ah by the Netziv and by HaRav Yitzchok Elchonon, carved a niche for himself in Torah, yirah, chessed and the love of one's fellow.

During the period of the First World War, the yeshiva was exiled to Kremenchug in the Ukraine. Here R' Avrohom was a beacon for the yeshiva students, who sought his counsel and help. The question of conscription into the Russian army weighed heavily on the yeshiva students who approached him for solutions and help in this matter. To be able to cope with such problems, one needed a large measure of ingenuity and shrewdness.

As a result of that experience, he honed a special method for acquiring information and grasping common situations which might avail him helping others. When he heard that a particular student had been asked the whereabouts of a specific street, but could not reply, he rebuked him, saying: "A person must be very familiar with his surroundings, so that he will be able to extend help to all who need it."

Even in his final days in the Kovno ghetto, he mentally amassed information about life all over the ghetto -- information which he regarded as a basis for the possibility of saving human lives in the future. Even then, he was a beacon for students who were detached from their families. When an epidemic broke out, he orchestrated all of the efforts to grant assistance to the afflicted. In respect to this period, he wrote to HaRav Dvoratz, about his article "Halocho ve'Aggodo"-- parts of which appeared in the pamphlet Hatevuno -- and which was the basis of his thinking: "I toiled over it extensively when we were in Kremenchug. I reviewed nearly all of the Alfas then, so that it would serve as a basis for the section, `The Halocho in My Mussar.' "

The Communist Revolution, in whose wake came the World War, resulted in new problems for the yeshiva, such as questions of draft orders, which, if evaded, incurred the death penalty. At the advice of the menahel ruchani, the bnei yeshiva did not go out to work, and instead of that he made every effort to help the yeshiva gain recognition as a higher institute of learning, whose students were thereby entitled to exemption from army duty.

During that period, when the yeshiva returned to Slobodke from Kremenchug, R' Avrohom was invited to join the administration of the yeshiva, and once again began to deliver sichos to groups of students. He also had a decisive influence in shaping the image of the famous Kovno Kollel which produced well-known gedolei haTorah.

@SUB TITLE = Founding the Branch in Hevron

The question of conscription did not fade, and as a result the Alter's plan to go up to Eretz Yisroel was considered. In 5684 (1924), R' Avrohom joined the first group of students who went up to Eretz Yisroel for the purpose of laying the first stakes of the yeshiva in Hevron. R' Avrohom had been chosen by his mentor, R' Nosson Tzvi, to teach in the heart of the Ishmaelite settlement in Hevron.

The schedules of the yeshiva and its procedures were determined by R' Avrohom, and in that manner, the foundations for what later on became one of the largest Torah centers in Eretz Hakodesh were laid.

A number of months passed, and a telegram which arrived from Kovno summoned R' Avrohom back to Slobodke. It had been sent by the Alter, who summoned him to return to his place while he, the Alter would come to Hevron in his stead. The night on which the telegram arrived in Hevron, related one of R' Avrohom's students, was a night of weeping for his students, who so deeply loved him.

But R' Avrohom returned to Lithuania in order to assist HaRav Eizik Sher, the son-in-law of the Alter, who had been appointed to head the yeshiva. A remarkable friendship prevailed between them, one which had begun in their youth, when they had both studied Torah and mussar under their illustrious rav, the Alter.

R' Avrohom paid one more visit to Eretz Yisroel, in 5695 (1935). On that occasion, he delivered a mussar discourse in Heichal Hatalmud in Tel Aviv, one which had a deep impact on all of the yeshivos in Eretz Yisroel. Many years afterward, those who had been present at the discourse, still retained the impact of the experience. For R' Avrohom, this was a final encounter with bnei Eretz Hatzvi, am kodosh, who went their way, the way of his friends, his students and his admirers in Europe.

@SUB TITLE = The Final Years

"I briefly say," he wrote to HaRav Dvoratz, tens years before the destruction of the Slobodke princedom, "that the spiritual situation of the yeshiva is very good. There hasn't been such diligence and such pilpul de'Oraisa, both in yirah and learning, for many years, boruch Hashem. The very capable students are increasing, kein yirbu, and the yeshiva pulsates with the spirit of Torah and mussar."

R' Avrohom wrote an illustrious chapter toward the end of his life, a chapter recorded with the blood of his heart and the blood of the hearts of his close ones -- his students, the refined young men who, overnight, became slave laborers in the Kovno ghetto. He did not forego his nobility and his demeanor as the Prince of the kingdom of mussar by one iota, even in the Lithuanian-German inferno. He did not become a number, and didn't descend, even in the slightest manner, from the pinnacle on which he had lived until then.

The following fact is no less remarkable than the wonder stories told about others. One of those who was close to him in the ghetto related that even when he was given a portion of soup, after he hadn't eaten for a long time -- two days or more --he ate in his customary manner, displaying restraint and composure. It was impossible to believe that fifty torture-filled hours had passed since his previous meal. "He was in full control, in all situations and at all times," relate his students.

"I am more amazed by a tzaddik who fulfills what Hakodosh Boruch Hu decrees, than by the fact that a tzaddik decrees and Hakodosh Boruch Hu fulfills," the Chofetz Chaim once said. R' Avrohom who, during the period of the Holocaust with all of its horrible and onerous conditions didn't take even one step without making halachic considerations, was the former type of tzaddik. His students asked him difficult questions -- questions whose answers were likely to determine people's fate. But he never lost his equanimity.

He was well versed in the halocho, his life aspiration being the study of gemora and Tosafos and, with clarity and composure, like an outsider, he would reply to questioners when they asked him to express his opinion on the most weighty issues. Even those who were far removed from the world of R' Avrohom and his students, recognized him as an authority who could be approached for advice and guidance. Among those were also the members of the Judenrat, the Jewish police of the ghetto, who awaited his every utterance.

When the Germans entered Kovno, and its Jewish residents fled the city R' Avrohom was one of the fugitives. The image of the finely dressed man who, even during the time of his flight, appeared dignified, as if he were on his way to the yeshiva, was conspicuous. When one of his close acquaintances asked him about his bearing at such a time, he replied simply that the halocho says that "even during a time of danger, a person should not change his rabbinical comportment" (Sanhedrin 92a).

Even more astounding was another answer which he gave to someone at a later period, when rumors were being spread that the ghetto was on the verge of liquidation. The existential drive which throbs so vigorously in the hearts of nearly every one, young and old alike, had been trained by the force of the mind of the giant of mussar, who revealed himself at that time in his full glory. At that time, it was proposed that he disguise himself as a Christian priest, so that he could be smuggled out of the ghetto. But he refused. "Such a thing is forbidden according to the halocho," he explained, and rejected the idea.

But he was also impelled by the instinct to live -- by a different kind of instinct for life, which is found only in one out of a thousand bnei aliya -- the will that others live. When a certain student was no longer able to bear the onus of the slave labor, and seemed on the verge of expiration, R' Avrohom made efforts to have him taken out of the inferno. The student was taken to a nearby village in order to recuperate and regain his strength.

His trait of "sharing the burden of others" was remarkable. At times, when other people would have been happy to unburden themselves and their family members of their woes, he bore the burdens of others.

His greatness of spirit was revealed when hundreds of thousands of Kovno's Jews reported to the lineup at the plaza during the large actzia. It is difficult to describe the feeling of relief he felt when he learned about those who had been summoned to cross over to the "good side," the line which represented the road to survival, at least temporarily. Whoever found himself on that line knew that his life had been given to him as a gift, for a while longer. R' Avrohom was a partner to each of those simchas. On the other hand, that entire day he wept bitterly over every one who did not merit. Rivers of tears streamed down his noble face over each candidate who had been selected for death by the impure hands of the fiends.

The students of Slobodke clustered around him in the ghetto waiting to hear his every word, witnesses to his tear-filled davening. Although the bnei yeshiva and avreichim of the kollel had become slave laborers, they didn't stop being what they had always been in their essence.

And he among them. Eyewitnesses related that throughout all of his years in the ghetto, his mouth never stopped uttering words of Torah and his mind never stopped thinking -- be it in Torah or in yirah. One of them relates that R' Avrohom could concentrate on one idea for five consecutive hours.

When the shock of the first disaster had subsided and the bnei yeshiva had grown accustomed to the bitter routine of forced labor, he once more began to deliver his Shabbos night shmuessim. A perpetual motif of these shmuessim was the idea of "measure for measure -- midda keneged midda": to examine the profundity of Divine judgment, to study it exhaustively, and to derive the lessons.

While outside, swords ravaged and strewed terror, he searched through the sources in Chazal, and founded causes that led to the Holocaust. He presented these to his students, and exhorted them that in order to merit salvation from the enemy, they must remedy shortcomings in these areas. Following are the sins: (1) Lack of faith; (2) Failure to keep the Shabbos; (3) Failure to maintain family purity; (4) Carelessness regarding forbidden foods; (5) Collecting interest on money; (6) Neglect of Torah education; (7) Neglect of Torah study; (8) Failure to love one's fellow Jew and the Jewish People ; (9) Insufficient kindness; (10) Unwillingness to make do with little; (11) Lack of trust in Hashem; (12) Eretz Yisroel.

When one of the members of his minyan wanted to initiate a rebellion, R' Avrohom rebuked him and claimed that such a step would wreak immediate havoc on all of the occupants of the ghetto. In general, he was self-controlled and calculated when he responded to crucial questions.

When he was asked about going over to fight with the partisans, he totally rejected it too. "That way isn't for bnei Torah," he explained to the questioner. He couldn't tolerate the thought of bnei yeshiva, who pored over their studies, embracing possible options. It was difficult for him to accede to a reality in which a ben yeshiva would be transformed into a murderer and a thief, even if he did so in order to save himself and stand up to his enemies. That wasn't the way.

@SUB TITLE = Engrossed in Kiddush Hashem

"The ghetto years were in-depth and consistent years of preparation for kiddush Hashem," the members of his family write in the introduction to the collection of his discourses, Toras Avrohom. The occupants of the ghetto who, after the shocking and indescribable massacre of the first 800 kedoshim of Slobodke, knew what awaited them, tried to study the relevant sugyos.

HaRav Elchonon Wassermann Hy'd also found shelter in the home of the spiritual helmsman of Slobodke. R' Elchonon had already managed to teach his son, R' Naftoli Beinish, the brocho one must recite over kiddush Hashem, as R' Elchonon himself had learned it from the Chofetz Chaim. R' Avrohom asked R' Elchonon to deliver a shiur on the topic of kiddush Hashem. A number of hours later, R' Elchonon emerged from his room, and delivered his shiur. Afterward, R' Avrohom closed with a mussar thought on current matters.

Although shocked to the depths of their souls, all prepared themselves. "These are truly terrible pangs, unlike any others," R' Elchonon said, with a raised voice, in one of the discourses he delivered during those days, and in an uncharacteristic manner, began to weep profusely before those assembled.

Hashgocho wanted the pangs of R' Avrohom to last three more years after the kodosh R' Elchonon had gone up to Shomayim in a whirlwind. He lived for three years al kiddush Hashem, until his final day when he died al kiddush Hashem.

The noble-hearted, refined R' Avrohom, the harp for the melody of Toras hamussar, was seized in one of the "workshops" of the ghetto by those who constituted the most extreme antithesis imaginable to his Toras chessed. With their impure hands they beat him so cruelly that he fainted from the pain and had to be taken to the ghetto's hospital.

The unfortunate Jews believed that the end of the fiends was imminent. They were right, but they still didn't know who would be fortunate enough to survive. "Yonah the prophet," R' Avrohom said a short while before his petirah, "told the people in his boat: `Lift me up and throw me into the sea.' The word `lift me up' (so'uni) is extraneous in this context, and the only reason he said it, as the Alter explained, was in order to gain additional time.

"This was because one moment of life is a great thing," he added, as he asked that his broken body be brought to the lineup plaza of the survivors of the ghetto, a place where his soul might be plunderable.

However, the excruciating pain which he suffered made it impossible to move him. The effect of the pain-killing injection he had received had worn off, and torment once more beset his pain wracked body.

From the window of his hospital room, it was possible to see the homes of the ghetto going up in flames, regardless of whether or not they had been vacated. "I accept din Shomayim with love. But my heart aches over the tzelem Elokim which will be destroyed by those wicked fiends," he said, with suppressed pain, to a student who was visiting him at the time -- the final student to part from him.

A German entered the room. A gun was in his hand, murder on his face. "What are you doing here?" he shouted wildly at the student, who felt that his back was about to break from the pain of the sudden blow which had landed on him.

The student left the room which on the following day went up in flames.

Ruach Hakodesh replies and says. "Be silent. Such are My designs." With the very blood of his heart, and the weeping of his brothers, he bore the chapters of his final burden, chapters of thought which were formulated in the immense Valley of Death of Jewish history.

When the Russians entered Lithuania and the yeshiva's building was seized, later becoming a place of entertainment, he saw this as midda keneged midda.

"We always thought that we had upheld the Torah out of poverty, and now we see have seen that we neglected it out of wealth."

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