Know someone who would love this shiur?
The shiur in English
The Yanuka’s own words in this shiur, translated into English by Lehallel · 1,675 words · 9:50. Press a time to hear it said.
0:00 At what age did you get to know the Rav? About 14 and a half, if I'm not mistaken, something like that. I used to be at his home, in his room; he had the upper part of the house, with an entrance to a separate room. He would be there learning all day. The niggunim on the piano, too: when he began, I was with him. Once he played for me the first niggun he started with. How did it go? The Baal Shem Tov's, if I'm not mistaken. He played me the first niggun, the Baal Shem Tov's, and he learned it by himself.
0:28 I mean, he didn't take lessons; he learned niggunim on his own. There was someone who played, who came to him, and he asked him, "How am I playing?" And the man told him: "You, in two weeks, or a week, or three weeks" - yes, it was three weeks - "you play like a person who has been playing for some seven years, eight years." That is the level he played at. There were times I would come to him and he would play niggunim.
0:55 What did his room look like? It was a room like this one. He had a picture of, I think, the Name Yud-Kei-Vav-Kei, as if in fire, something like that, he had sefarim, a bed, modest, you know, like that, and he would learn there all day.
1:20 He would learn, write, stand, write. Once I opened Sefer HaMiddos: the whole of Sefer HaMiddos, forwards and backwards. I mean, from the end, line by line going forward: he reads it in order, and he reads it in reverse too. At age 15, in those days. He writes tefillos for me, "To my dear friend" - at age 15 he writes this to me, he writes me letters, I mean, you don't understand, I mean, you see it now, I mean, but to see something like this when, as a child, when he was a child, to see something like this is unreal.
2:08 I would sit with him and he would write tefillos for me, because it was hard for us to have a child; it took us three years to have the child. And all those three years I was with him, and he would lift me up. I was depressed; I was disappointed all the time, disappointed, disappointed, disappointed. And he, at age 15, lifts me up, when I am 27 or so, and he helps me, lifts me up, and prays all the time that a child should come.
2:33 And really, after three years - he would go with me to places and so on - after three years, we were blessed. Yes, a baby boy came, as if he had aimed for it. My son: the moment I took him out of the house for the first time, I took him to his home, to the room, I mean, where he was, in Holon, and he placed him... his first time out - he took the child and put him on his own bed, and so on.
Read the whole shiur in English (12 more parts)
2:57 "How much we prayed," he said, "how much we prayed for you, that you would come." That's it; those are all the things that... This is a sefer that was very important to him. He gave it to me when my wife, I mean... he hadn't... he opened... he received it from someone very important, and he had kept it for many years. He brought it to me: when my wife became pregnant, he brought me this sefer.
3:26 And look, it has been here until now. I think he will remember it - it has the wrapping; he wrapped it like this. And he told me, "Take this; let it be a gift for you." He was always giving out gifts to everyone. To everyone. From the age of fif-, I mean, fifteen, fourteen, he would give things to everyone. Anyone who needed something, he would... give him... He gave me this, and my home was broken into, and they tore this wrapping he had given me. And then I saw that it...
3:56 "No," he tells me... This too he brought me. The moment I met him for the first time, he brought me this. It is a piece of a tallis. He told me, "Keep this with you; it will always protect you." And this too. He loved everyone with a free, unconditional love. I mean, from age fifteen, I mean, he had nothing - he had nothing bad against anyone, even when they did him wrong or something like that; he always judged them favorably, I mean, even when they did something crazy to him. To see that at age fifteen, fourteen - it was crazy. So he started talking with me, asking me questions - and you know, he was always probing - and then he suddenly took this out and gave it to me in the car, the first time he saw me.
4:43 At the first meeting. - At the first meeting he gives me this: "Keep it, it will protect you," and things like that. We would come to a bookstore. He would tell me, "Drive from here, drive from here, stop here." We would go into a place at night, an old, ancient bookstore. He would go up to the seller - a seller of about 70, and he a child - he would come to him and say, "Do you have such-and-such a sefer?"
5:08 "No, no, you will never get that sefer in your life. That sefer doesn't exist. How do you even know about that sefer? Where do you know that sefer from?" In the end he would get the sefarim. He would get everything he wanted; he would get it. It was something crazy. He also almost never went out on a regular day, by day, in the sun, I mean in daylight; he almost never left the house. Maybe to the shul - say, when he would finish Tractate Berachos; I was at that.
5:36 Several times he finished Tractate Berachos; he invited me for Tractate Berachos; he was finishing it at age fifteen or so. He did not like to go out in daylight, and if he did go out, he would take a sefer and go out like this, with the sefer, so as not to harm his eyes. Yes, at such an age, I mean, he doesn't look; he would go about almost only at night. I would take him to the park here, stop for him at the park, and he would strengthen children, teenagers and the like.
6:03 Something crazy. I stuck to him like a magnet. He was here at the shul too, when children were outside playing soccer or something like that. So there was a case - several cases, I mean - where they were playing, and they tell one of them, "Stand there, you lost; stand facing the wall," and they have to kick and hit him, the child, with the ball. So he would say to him, "Move, I will stand in your place - I will stand in your place, so it won't hurt you." At age fifteen I would go around with him in Jerusalem - in Jerusalem, I mean, at the mikveh. Once we drove and stopped at some place; he would immerse in a mikveh - I mean, he told us, "Drive here, drive here," and takes us into some forest;
6:41 we drove to the mikveh, I mean... - A mikveh or a spring? A spring, a spring, a spring. Something that makes no sense, I mean: an older man who learns so much - he would sit and tell him something, and the man would be astonished. I mean, you have no idea what it is. What comes out of his mouth - you have no idea what it is. And he knows combinations of letters and things like that. Once he told me, I mean, once he told me: "You know, every movement of the hand..."
7:13 I believe it now too: every movement he makes with the fingers of his hand has a meaning. The movements of the fingers truly have meaning... there is a whole Torah of the fingers. That is what he said, at age 15. I was afraid; and he would open the Zohar, I mean, I was afraid. I would tell him, "No, I don't want to know, I don't want to know; it sounds... it's not..."
7:43 His grandfather was a tzaddik. We would learn together and so on, but you see that it's not... I mean, he is doing it for your sake, that he... learning with him, that's it; he is altogether in other sefarim, in other worlds. - Yes, in other worlds, not in other sefarim. This is his too. This - he would write flyers every so often.
8:11 These are flyers he would print himself? - Yes. There were flyers: a tefillah to awaken... this one I, this one I keep. Wow. This one... this is the one about the child. "To my friend, my brother and my good companion, a man of kindness, a dear person, ...ben Aliza." I never saw him get angry - a 15-year-old boy, I mean - I never saw him get angry at anyone, I never saw him say a wrong word to anyone, I never saw him be insolent toward an older person; I never saw him - you know, a child has all kinds of urges and things like that - he did not have that.
9:02 He did not have that. He wasn't... he wouldn't talk. If there was someone older, he kept his head lowered when he spoke with him. From back then, with this plastic. All the time, pictures of tzaddikim. That was it; that was his lineage - who his lineage was, his lineage. It is a sefer; he would sit and gaze at them: "I want to be like that."
Get the week’s best, by email
One email a week — a handful of shiurim and music. No account needed.
Know a family who would use this? Give a Lehallel membership.