Rav Yosef Tendler z"l

After writing my last post I got to thinking about Rabbi Tendler again and I realized just how much I owe him and am indebted to him.

I don't necessarily agree with him on some of his  השקפות but facts are facts: I am forever indebted to him for what he gave me and did for me.

There wasn't really much reason to accept me. I was coming from a modern orthodox high-school, modern-orthodox community, modern orthodox family asking to join in for 11th grade. I'm sure R' Tendler knew at the time (as opposed to my innocent naivete) that I wasn't going to fit into Ner Yisroel or my particular classmates with the smoothest of ease. It was definitely going to be a kink in their program.

But he took me in nonetheless. And when he saw things were going difficult for me he tried to help me. He would learn with me b'chavrusa in the middle of the beis medrash just to "put me on the map" with the other guys and help facilitate their warming up to me (atleast that's what I surmise was his motive). At the time I didn't think anything special of it but looking back I realized how outrageous it was for the Rosh Mechina to be sitting among the Mechina desks in the back learning with a "newbie" talmid.

And those years in Ner Yisroel were probably some of the best of my life, where I grew in just about everything on account of chaverim, rebeim, avreichim, hanhala, and the yeshiva atmosphere in general. All this from R' Tendler.... and I never really took the opportunity to express just how shamefully indebted I am to him for what he gave me.... Thank you Rabbi Tendler. Truly.


Hesped of R' Tendler

Tactile Needs and God, He vs It.

Note the subtle deviation in pronunciation by english speakers for the word "Hashem" . Instead of people pronouncing it correctly as Hasheim (with a tzerei under the 'shin') which would then carry the meaning of "The Name" everyone pronounces it as "Hashem" with a segol (which doesn't then carry any meaning other than sounding like someone's name).

My opinion. Man's subconscious need for The Creator to be personified. Something we can touch. Something we can get our arms around. As humans we have such a difficult time with worshipping an entity of Prime Existence (י-ה-ו-ה), an 'it", that we go out of our way to make that "it" into a "he".

So whereas the Torah and Chazal were sensitive to describe the creator as an "it":
"The Holy One, Blessed is He הקדוש ברוך הוא", "The Name השם"

we go out of our way in our daily language to personify that Prime Existence as a "He"

e.g. "Hashem did this and Hakadosh Baruch Hu did that", to the point that every word for Prime Existence or The Creator becomes bastardized as a regular person's name: Hashem, God, Allah, Moe, Larry, Curly, etc

I never asked him his reason but I now really appreciate how R' Yosef Tendler in Ner Yisroel used to always say "The Kadosh Baruch Hu" and not the standard "HaKadosh Baruch Hu" like everyone else.

To be fair though, personification of The Creator as a "He" rather than an "It" may not be so far off the mark as you might think since in truth every "He" is a description of an existential "third-person" dimension that can't be accessed directly --(הוא (הויה

[ועיין שבועות כט ע"א "משום דעבודת כוכבים נמי אקרי אלוה", ועיין תוס' שם דאפילו בשם המפורש]

A Sum Greater Than Its Parts

Note that both English and Russian depart grammatically from their conventional forms of pluralizing nouns when it comes to human beings/ people.

English: Person -- People  (as opposed to Persons).

Russian: человек -- люли (as opposed to человекы)

I would suggest it stems from a subconscious recognition as to the transformative nature of an individual's integration in to a ציבור / collective.

איפה כתוב?

Along the lines of the Hebrew/Aramaic nuance of לפי vs אליבא and the Yerushalmi/Bavli contrast of תא חזי vs תא שמע I realized a similar difference when wanting to challenge the veracity of a statement.

In english we'll say "Who says?" or "Where does it say that?" but in hebrew we say איפה כתוב?

One for כתב and one for על פה...