A Learned Life

Rav Refael Zalman HaKohain Levine (1900-1992) was born in Ilya, on the outskirts of Vilna, in Czarist Russia’s Pale of Settlement. R’ Zalman was a child prodigy trained in Torah contents, memory techniques and study methodologies by his father, Rav Chaim Avraham Dov Ber HaKohain Levine (c.1860-1938). R’ Zalman’s father, a musmach at a young age of the renowned posek, Rav Yitzchak Elchanan Spektor of Kovno, was actively involved over the span of four decades in shaping R’ Zalman’s Torah studies. An acclaimed scholar and much sought-after educator, R’ Zalman’s father structured his only son’s development in Torah according to Maharal’s pedagogic approach of sequentially layered acquisition and mastery of foundational elements as prerequisites for advanced study.

Paths In Life And Learning—Roads Less Travelled By

While the young Zalman’s contemporaries were already involved in their first few years of Talmudic discourse, he was completing and reviewing Mishnayot under his father’s watchful tutelage before plunging into the yam haTalmud. Later, even well after Rav Zalman was widely acclaimed by gedolai Yisrael as an expert in Talmud and Halacha, his father continued to emphasize to him the indispensable value of Torah basics, as well as the need for continuously updated integration of basic and advanced studies. Through a potent mix of towering inspiration and loving exhortation, R’ Zalman’s father urged his son forward to ever greater dedication to and achievement in learning Torah. Edifying glimpses into both the inspiration and the exhortation are afforded by Otzar Iggerot Kodesh, published selections of Hebrew and Yiddish correspondence from father to son from the late 1920s through 1937.  In a mid-January 1929  letter to his son praising R’ Zalman’s daily learning of Rif and accompanying commentaries, Rav Chaim Avraham Dov Ber closed on a note that typifies the life-long messaging. The letter ends with “L’maan HaShem! [also] study Mishnayot with Tosefot Yom Tov daily for an hour and a  half, [starting] from your current point [of study (at the time of the letter, perek Ayn Omedim)]. Through this, im yirtza HaShem, you shall succeed in all your [life-]paths.”

Rav Zalman Levine’s life-paths were, indeed, blessed with success. Many and varied, those paths led from Vilna and Minsk, then through Radin to New York City in 1923 and, finally and permanently, to Albany, New York; from being tutored in colloquial Russian by a Torah scholar in Minsk, to learning American English—with some Shakespeare thrown in “for good measure”—courtesy of the New York Public Library; from dodging Germans, Bolsheviks, Bermontians and Poles in Lithuania, to dealing with anti-Torah Jewish power-players of various stripes in America; from impactful personal encounters with luminaries of the Lithuanian Torah world, to long-lasting friendships with gedolai Torah on these shores and to perennial sidrai leimud with world-renowned American university professors; from serving as RIETS’ segan bochain for Yoreh Yoreh and Torah Vodaath’s shoel umaishiv, to heading Albany’s vaad haChinuch and vaad haKashrut; from mentally recording and analytically mastering Shas and Posekim, to matching wits with and skillfully using COBOL-based, punchcard-fed, mainframe- run systems in the Office of the New York State Comptroller. At age 84, R’ Zalman retired from his job at the Comptroller’s Office overseeing the disbursement of checks to State employees, a position requiring steadfast dependability and absolute integrity. (In the winter of 1969-1970, under extraordinary snow conditions that shut down Albany streets and State offices for several days, R’ Zalman traveled to and from his office under full New York State trooper escort! In explaining the unusual spectacle, R’ Zalman smilingly observed that the helpful troopers were providing a service benefitting all State workers, a service that “just so happens to ensure their own paychecks getting issued.”) The letter of retirement from New York State was effusive in thanking R’ Zalman for his decades of dedicated service, noting also that, given his intellectual pursuits, everyone was sure that leaving the office would be less a retirement and more a commencement for him. Commenting a month after retiring on the thought behind “those nice words,” R’ Zalman quipped that, while not completely sure what had been intended, he had just been mesayaim mesechet Makot, which he had “started last week; it used to take longer.”

Rav Zalman’s life-paths and life-long learning were ever accessible to him through his highly trained memory. At a tender age, R’ Zalman was taught by his father to take five minutes several times each day to mentally picture and review and then report in detail all that he had seen during the preceding several hours; as the young Zalman began to read, the exercise expanded to include picturing the pages and re-reading from memory; later, the five-minute recall sessions included also all that he had heard and all that he had thought since the previous session; and, then, well beyond. (About that training, R’ Zalman once remarked, “Five minutes doesn’t seem like a long time. Try it sometime.” He then stretched a silence across several seconds, demonstrating more clearly with each passing moment his follow-up to the extended pause: “It is.”) The inner cognitive workings of those constantly reinforced memory skills became second-nature to R’ Zalman over the many, many “five minutes,” producing a precise, prodigious and unfailing memory.

Rav Zalman’s remarkable memory lent vibrant, at-the-scene detail to events of his life for all who heard him relate vignettes of his richly textured personal history. His life history actively spanned radically different worlds, some, by now, long-forgotten or morphed into simplistic monochromatic myths. By the time of R’ Zalman’s birth in 1900, Jewish Lithuania’s centuries-old Torah cultural tapestry bore widening blotches of sundry forms of Jewish secularism and was increasingly contorted by deepening sectarian struggles from without and from within the Torah camp. For all the distortions from the stains and strains continuing to spread across the cultural fabric during the first decade and a half of R’ Zalman’s life, there were still pristine areas vivid in vibrant hues of Torah learning and observance. But, by the end of  1920, R’ Zalman had lived through that fabric being repeatedly torn asunder by direct assaults and indirect shockwaves. The Great War (to which no one then imagined assigning a number) and, in rapid succession and with some measure of simultaneity, a devastatingly lethal influenza epidemic, a pair of Bolshevik Revolutions and a trio of Lithuanian Wars of Independence reduced the demographics, economics and morale of Jewish Lithuania to a shambles. While  1920s Lithuanian Torah scholarship was extraordinary, its physical circumstances were decrepit and its future was precarious, with the splotches spreading upon the tattered fabric all too often being pools of innocent Jewish blood. Hindsight, of course, reveals even more sinister, more systematically structured destruction darkly lurking in the following decades.

The shores of refuge selected by Rav Zalman’s far-sighted father for his family, America of the mid-1920s, featured a Torah life of meager—but valiantly persevering—functionality, unity and dignity. Rav Chaim Avraham Dov Ber and R’ Zalman, perhaps due to their formative years having been spent in vastly different eras, had divergent views on what each could best contribute to the ongoing daunting undertaking of vitalizing Jewish America. While their approaches would diverge as to implementation, the shared central platform was Torah scholarship; each would make his own positive mark—in his own fashion and in his own time—upon Torah learning in their adopted country. Differences had arisen between father and son while yet in Europe on how best to progress toward their shared goal of enhancing commitment to and knowledge of Torah, lehagdeil Torah ulehadeirah. Among other issues, they differed in their evaluations of the contribution to maintenance of the corpus of Torah practice and values of such externalities as dress and appearance and of such worldly matters as secular studies. The gulf between their approaches—calling for much love and, in time, moderate distance between father and son, with each person respectful of and, simultaneously, frustrated by the other’s approach—would become more pronounced after their ocean passage to America.

R’ Zalman traveled from Europe to America together with his father and sister. Other sisters had already immigrated to the United States and, over time, as planned, were able to send sufficient funds back to Europe for Rav Chaim Avraham Dov Ber to emigrate with the rest of the family. Father, son and daughter crossed the Atlantic among hundreds of other second class passengers aboard HRMS Mauretania (Cunard Line’s sister ship of the ill-fated Lusitania), arriving in New York harbor in mid-Cheshvan 5684 / late October 1923.

In Europe, R’ Zalman’s father had become known as “der Malach,” a term applied in White Russia, including Kurenitz, where R’ Zalman’s father resided for some years, to saintly people; similar terms had been used to describe him by great scholars such as the Alter of Slabodka, in recognition of Rav Chaim Avraham Dov Ber’s ability to learn Torah tirelessly for days on end, with a bare modicum of sleep and even less physical sustenance. In America,

R’ Zalman’s father gained a following of young American yeshiva students, including some of the best and brightest of mid-1920s Torah Vodaath. Those students, attracted by the deep piety and singular dedication to Torah scholarship of the Malach, were dubbed Malachim and constituted one of the first made-in-America Chassidic sects, initially concentrated in the Bronx, later shifting to Williamsburg. Following darko bakodesh of the Malach, they adopted his pietistic mode of comportment, Chassidic mode of dress, and intense mode of full-time, in-depth, comprehensive Torah study.

After the passing in 1938 of Rav Chaim Avraham Dov Ber, the deceased’s disciples would travel to Albany to connect through R’ Zalman with the Europe of their late master. Those first Malachim, and then, over the years, their children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren came to peer through the clear window of R’ Zalman’s memory onto past vistas. What they and other listeners received was a highly respectful but totally unvarnished view of the past, with a voice-over of wise, wry and spot-on social commentary. What the discerning listener may also have come away with was a sense that Torah greatness—knowledge and practice, Yirat Shamayim and refinement of character—was quite alive, quietly alive, in Albany, New York.

Knowing To Care And Caring To Know—Learning As Invocation, Avocation, Vocation

Rav Zalman lost his mother a year and a half before coming to America. Perhaps because he was motherless as a young man in an unfamiliar country, he was particularly sensitive to the needs and feelings of youth. When one of his long-time students moved from Albany to Monsey in the late 1980s, R’ Zalman made a special side-trip to the family’s new address for the sole purpose—as he expressly and directly informed the student—of checking that the student’s wife and children were settling in well. Well after his own young family had grown up, R’ Zalman would routinely make time to converse with children, listening intently even to verbal toddlers engaging him in earnest discussions about their day, their families, their concerns. R’ Zalman would commiserate, almost conspiratorially, with the young children of his students if the youngsters voiced complaints about their fathers; later, if he deemed it constructive for a particular child’s family, he would direct a corrective “word or two” of advice to the child’s father, often through the all-too-capable offices of the mother. When a complaint came to R’ Zalman from the wife of a student or of any other learning-partner—R’ Zalman, keenly aware both of global features and of finely granular particulars of his surroundings, would usually intuit there being something amiss; in those cases he did not wait to receive a complaint—about an insensitive behavior or attitude toward the wife or other family members, R’ Zalman would handle the details of the matter with delicacy, but with an attached ultimatum to the husband, “Change or I can’t learn with you anymore.”

Rav Zalman’s intuitive empathy, flawless recall, broad knowledge and analytical prowess breathed relevance, precision, comprehensiveness and clarity into vast swaths of his learning that he shared with friends, colleagues and close students. Though a wonderfully gifted educator, R’ Zalman did not seek teaching venues in Albany; rather, those who had more than an inkling of what he could offer, sought him out. There developed around R’ Zalman dedicated groups that were, by predilection of all involved, unpretentious in scale and modest in mission, small numbers of people engaging together with him with classic sefarim, consistently, persistently, with no publicity or fanfare. R’ Zalman gave freely of his time and energy to those intimate learning groups, providing enrichment of depth and flavor for seasoned scholars and bright newcomers alike. Albany, being both the state capital and a multi-university town, saw a steady turnover of government functionaries, lobbyists and appellants, and of professors, researchers and students. The circles around R’ Zalman, while basically steady at the core over the decades, would undergo shorter-term periodic shifts at the edges. A transient student, professor, doctor, scientist, lawyer or rabbi would join for a year or a few and then move on. Some would return years later; some few, to augment the core. R’ Zalman would remember everyone, what they had ever said to him and what he had learned and spoken about with them.

Rav Zalman’s curiosity about knowledge was voracious and relentless. The college student, professor, doctor, scientist, lawyer, rabbi or other new participant joining a learning group could find himself taken aside to be debriefed as to his field of study or work. R’ Zalman would probe inquisitively about the field’s history, basics and details, and then expect to be informed of ongoing developments. When R’ Zalman, as a young man, had been in Russian- speaking Minsk and was mortified to have only a rudimentary facility to communicate in that language, he insisted on his father arranging for him to be tutored in Russian. Similarly, when R’ Zalman would encounter any other new-to-him “language of thinking”—be it in Torah learning; in history, philosophy, technology, science, mathematics—he sought a degree of facility at least sufficient to be intelligently conversant as a non-expert in the new “language.” A long-time talmid in a science-heavy university program would often attend academic lectures or conduct laboratory experiments with part of his mind processing the new information for future presentation to R’ Zalman. R’ Zalman would ingest the new knowledge, making it an indelible, instantly accessible part of his memory, dynamically linked with everything else he remembered.

Rav Zalman, all of whose past was openly arrayed before him in the present, was ever looking to the future. An Albany shul had a proud, staunchly Orthodox past dating famously from the congregation’s very public mid-1800s rejection of Reform “rabbis” and their practices. By the late 1930s—early 1940s, the shul had developed a peculiar, albeit unannounced, practice of its own. As enforced by the shul’s gabbayim, young teenagers were given no aliyot laTorah after their “bar mitzvah aliya,” nor any other form of recognition. R’ Zalman, unsure since lo raeinu ayno raaya but suspecting an inimical behavior pattern, made some pointed inquiries. He discovered that the practice of ignoring the teenagers was, indeed, policy; the rationale was that they had no money to pledge to the shul. R’ Zalman’s remonstration to the gabbayim against marginalizing Albany’s Jewish youth was blunt, “Children are the future; involve the young people in the shul or you will have no future.” R’ Zalman made a point of finding another shul.

In the late 1960s through early 1970s, as the post-Six Day War teshuva movement was building momentum, the Albany shul that Rav Zalman had found (that he had, indeed, been instrumental in founding), gained a small band of young men new to Torah, eagerly if initially awkwardly exploring a previously hidden world. One midweek Shavuot morning, one of the baalai teshuva somewhat sheepishly approached R’ Zalman to apprise him of minhag Yisrael being to learn through the night; yet, everyone had seen R’ Zalman leave shul around midnight and not return until just before shacharit. R’ Zalman’s response that “I’m not as young as I used to be” satisfied the inquisitive baal teshuva, but was artfully nontransparent. On Shavuot, R’ Zalman would only slightly modify his daily personal learning schedule, which consisted every workday of night-time learning, often to late hours, followed by rising at 4:45 AM to resume learning. Non-workdays differed from workdays by additionally featuring learning sessions strategically spanning the daytime hours. Characteristically, R’ Zalman attributed his discipline of time and of mind, as well as his memory and his learning, to his father.

Teachers, Colleagues And Students—Friends, Acquaintances, And Others

Besides his father’s early and ongoing personal tutelage, Rav Zalman received other training as a young man in the breadth and depth of Torah from individuals and yesheivot selected by his father. However, the path toward mastery was through R’ Zalman’s own singular dedication of his youthful years and energies to the diligent application of time and to concerted focus of mind. As attested to by Rav Eliezer Rabinowitz, the Gadol of Minsk, R’ Zalman had “greatly worked and toiled” in Torah during those years. Rav Refael Shapiro, Rosh Yeshivat Volozhin and son-in-law of the Netziv, wrote that the young R’ Zalman was “filled with… gemara and posekim.”  Signatories to one of R’ Zalman’s several semichot were the rabbi and the dayan of Brisk, Rav Chaim HaLevi Soloveichik and Rav Simcha Zelig Riger. That semicha, signed in 1918 just three months before Reb Chaim’s passing, praised R’ Zalman as “very great in Torah and Yirah”; that very document was affirmed and countersigned in 1923 by Rav Chaim Ozer Grodzinski of Vilna.

Between Reb Chaim’s and Rav Simcha Zelig’s signing of Rav Zalman’s semicha and its affirmation by Rav Chaim Ozer, R’ Zalman studied under Rav Baruch Ber Leibowitz, one of the foremost disciples of Reb Chaim. It was through Reb Baruch Ber, from 1919 until 1923—chiefly in Vilna—that R’ Zalman absorbed the powerful, painstakingly thorough analytical approach of Reb Chaim. Alongside R’ Zalman’s illustrious father, it was Reb Boruch Ber whom R’ Zalman considered his rav hamuvhak, much admired and very beloved. Even after transitioning to America with his father, R’ Zalman remained connected with Reb Boruch Ber, who saw his geographically distant student as a close and dedicated disciple. During Reb Boruch Ber’s visit to America in 1929, R’ Zalman hosted his rebbi for ten days in Albany, where R’ Zalman had moved that very year upon marrying the daughter of the Rav of Albany, Rabbi Avraham Yaacov Halevi Horowitz. R’ Zalman’s wife wanted to stay close to her family; R’ Zalman, sensitive to her needs and desires, made the move permanent. R’ Zalman’s father, it is said, viewed the distance between the Malach’s Bronx and R’ Zalman’s Albany as providing his fiercely intelligent and independent son with some, but not too much, breathing room outside the broad shadow spread by his very similar father.

During Reb Boruch Ber’s Albany visit, Rav Zalman and his rav hamuvhak succeeded in finding some quiet time together, a considerable portion of that time spent in contemplative strolls around and around Albany’s scenic Washington Park Lake in discussion of Talmudic, halachic and life matters.  During one of those ¾-mile circuits, Reb Boruch Ber mused that,  given an opportunity to revisit the matter of allowing the study of mussar in his yeshiva, Knesset Bayt Yitzchak, he could envision having formally introduced that study into the sayder haleimud even before the yeshiva’s mid-1920s move from Vilna to Kamenitz. “Der eiliker Reb Chaim” had been against the introduction of mussar into yeshivas’ schedules and Reb Boruch Ber had followed his late master’s edict. But, by 1929, a decade after Reb Chaim’s passing, Reb Boruch Ber had come to feel that mussar might be a necessary anchoring component in the development of a talmid chacham in a turbulent world. Reb Boruch Ber’s Albany stay included animated discussions of and penetrating insights into learning well beyond what is now thought of as typical Lithuanian yeshivish territory. Among R’ Zalman’s lifelong learning endeavors were the works of Maharal. In Albany, Reb Boruch Ber spent time with R’ Zalman in Maharal’s Neteivot Olam, particularly Neteiv Gemeilut Chassadim, which Reb Boruch Ber concluded contained particular passages encapsulating the fundamental kernel of Torah’s transmission on har Sinai.

During his years with Reb Bouch Ber, Rav Zalman had developed a warm relationship with Rav Refael Reuvain Grozovsky, son-in-law of Reb Baruch Ber and his successor in Kamenitz. That relationship was rekindled toward the end of World War II when Rav Reuvain settled in New York, where he was to lead Torah Vodaath of Brooklyn and Beth Midrash Elyon of Monsey. R’ Zalman was personally and providentially able to supply Rav Reuvain with a gift of several major sets of sefarim that Rav Reuvain, still new to New York, had been greatly pained to be borrowing but could not afford to buy without jeopardizing his family’s well-being.

A family in Albany had lost its elderly patriarch and approached Rav Zalman to give him the deceased’s Talmud Bavli, Mishneh Torah and Turim, for which they had “no use.” R’ Zalman, who had his own well-worn sets, was not able to turn down the mourning family. A few days later, R’ Zalman set out by car to Manhattan, the bequeathed sets in his trunk. Several hours later, he pulled up in front of Goldman’s Otzar HaSefarim bookstore on the Lower East Side, intending to sell the sefarim to the store so that they could eventually be purchased and be put back to use. R’ Zalman exited his car to encounter his friend of old, Rav Reuvain, right in front of him on the sidewalk in front of Goldman’s. After an intense session standing beside R’ Zalman’s car updating each other on many years of personal, family and yeshiva happenings, R’ Zalman inquired of Rav Reuvain as to why he happened to be where he was when they met. To Rav Reuvain’s reply that he had been about to enter Otzar HaSefarim in search of a set of Bavli or Rambam or Tur that he could afford with the monies he had managed to save, R’ Zalman walked Rav Reuvain to the back of his car, explaining why it was that he had driven from Albany to Otzar HaSefarim, and unlocked the trunk to reveal the treasures within. R’ Zalman told his old friend that, given the clear demonstration of Celestial choreography in which they were participants, he could think of no one better to use the sefarim than Rav  Reuvain. R’ Zalman drove Rav Reuvain back to the Grozovsky’s walk-up apartment and helped carry the sefarim up the stairs. Rebbetzin Grozovsky was in tears as she took in the scene, the men’s explanation, and her growing comprehension of what had transpired. When Rav Reuvain went to search for money with which to pay R’ Zalman for not one but three sets of sefarim, R’ Zalman signaled his goodbyes to his rebbi’s daughter and friend’s wife, indicating to her that he had to leave quietly and quickly before Rav Reuvain could pay him anything. As R’ Zalman put it, “I made a clean getaway.”

Among the other North American gedolai Torah with whom Rav Zalman was particularly close were Rav Moshe Feinstein and Rav Pinchas Hirschprung. For many years starting in the late-1930s, R’ Zalman would consult on Halachic matters with Rav Moshe. Most of their early conversations were carried out by telephone, R’ Zalman calling from Albany. That practice ceased when R’ Zalman came in once to see Rav Moshe personally in the early 1950s  and was asked “how the chaleitza in Albany” had worked out. R’ Zalman was shocked at the question; he knew nothing of an Albany chaleitza. In explanation, Rav Moshe related that, several weeks before, he had received a long-distance telephone call that the operator had announced as being from Albany, New York (all long-distance calls then being operator- assisted), inquiring about where the correct shoe for chaleitza could be found. The caller had not disclaimed being R’ Zalman when Rav Moshe, assuming he was talking to his usual Albany contact, used that noun of direct address in speaking with his telephone interlocutor. Rav Moshe expressed disappointment that there could be people in Albany who—despite knowing enough and caring enough to inquire about locating the correct type of shoe—were not only insufficiently straightforward to identify themselves but also devious enough to let Rav Moshe be gonaiv daat atzmo as to their identity. R’ Zalman confirmed that Albany did, indeed, harbor such individuals, with each of whom he had weathered at least one and, in some cases, multiple “less than pleasant” encounters. What was worse, added R’ Zalman, was that not a one of them knew enough to properly conduct a chaleitza even with the correct shoe. From that point on, R’ Zalman consulted Rav Moshe exclusively on a face-to-face basis.

The association with Rav Hirschprung, Rav of Montreal, was established at a later stage in Rav Zalman’s life. After R’ Zalman lost his beloved wife Fannie in 1973, he began to venture away from home for Yamim Tovim as a widower. At first, he would have a seudat Yom Tov or two at the homes of Albany friends. Then, he began to leave Albany for Yom Tov, spending an occasional Yom Tov with relatives such as the OK’s Rabbi Berel Levy or with select first-generation Malachim. He later tried out some of the Jewish resort hotels that catered to strictly observant clientele. (Once, a student, together with his wife and their two-year old, spent  Shemini HaAtzeret and Simchat Torah with R’ Zalman in such a hotel. While the two-year-old was the youngest person on the premises, the student and his wife were not that far behind! R’ Zalman needed a much more vital and/or learned crowd.) Finally, R’ Zalman settled on a hotel that was frequented on some Yamim Tovim by Rav Hirschprung, who was blessed with a phenomenal eidetic memory that he utilized productively in Torah and Halacha throughout his life. Rav Hirschprung had been one of the outstanding young students of Rav Meir Shapiro of Lublin and, later, was the bochain on the any-200-dapai Bavli be’al peh requirement for acceptance into Yeshivat Chachmai Lublin. An Albany professor who learned with R’ Zalman from the early 1960s until close to R’ Zalman’s passing, had lived in Montreal in the early 1950s and had frequented Rav Hirschprung’s many exceptional shiurim. The professor, a psychologist, understood the thinking patterns of both R’ Zalman and Rav Hirschprung and was delighted that two such similarly exceptional minds would have opportunities to commune. Rav Hirschprung and R’ Zalman thoroughly appreciated each other’s knowledge, memory capabilities and views of life. R’ Zalman reveled in learning, and simply talking, with Rav Hirschprung.

Rav Zalman’s close association with world-renowned gedolai Torah had begun during his years in Vilna. There also, his young age notwithstanding, his personal contact with venerable Torah luminaries went beyond their “official” public capacities as lomedim, melammedim, posekim and rashai aida. It was from these more private moments that R’ Zalman drew life-long lessons as to the refined, yet emulable personality traits of the gedolim. The closeness his father enjoyed with many of the Lithuanian Torah giants provided R’ Zalman access to some incidents; others came his way, apparently, on his own merit. An incident of the first type came on the heels of Rav Moshe Soloveichik accepting the leadership of Mizrachi’s Tachkemoni Rabbinical Seminary in Warsaw. Several years later, that relationship would end abruptly upon Rav Moshe refusing to grant semicha to almost all the students there because he deemed them underqualified. However, at the outset of the promising appointment, Mizrachi newspapers were trumpeting it loudly and widely. The headlines emphasized that “Rav Chaim’s son” was to be their Tachkemoni rosh hayeshiva, a move that was viewed by some in the anti-Mizrachi camp as Rav Moshe “spitting on his father’s grave.” R’ Zalman’s father, with his son firmly in tow, marched in on Rav Chaim Ozer and displayed the headline emblazoned across the front of the Mizrachi newspaper he had just purchased (a highly uncharacteristic purchase for Rav Chaim Avraham Dov Ber!), urgently seeking a statement of the Vilner Rav’s position on the matter. After voicing a stern reaction in his initial shock at the turn of events and the fashion in which it was showcased by the newspaper, Rav Chaim Ozer was melamaid zechut for Rav   Moshe Soloveichik’s action. He explained that Rav Moshe’s elderly father-in-law, Reb Chaim’s mechutan, the saintly Rav Eliyahu Feinstein (R’ Elya Pruzhaner, uncle-by-marriage of Rav Moshe Feinstein), no doubt wanted his daughter’s young family to afford to eat despite the grinding poverty of post-war Lithuania—and Tachkemoni actually paid a living wage.

An incident of the second type occurred on Rosh HaShana. Rav Zalman was a talented tokaya whose shofar-blowing Reb Boruch Ber attentively listened to because of R’ Zalman’s ability to consistently produce sounds conforming to Reb Chaim’s stringencies of tone and timing. (R’ Zalman’s skill as a tokaya would continue to benefit many over the ensuing decades, including Albany-bred youngsters who gained an appreciation of the virtuoso precision of R’ Zalman’s shofar-blowing only upon being away from home in yeshiva gedola for Rosh HaShana.) Reb Boruch Ber informed R’ Zalman of the desire of “R’ Meirle’s brother,” who of late was staying in Vilna but would not be davening with Reb Boruch Ber’s yeshiva, to hear the Brisker kolot shofar as per Reb Chaim. Reb Boruch Ber explained that Rav Chaim Ozer had asked that a Brisker tokaya be given R’ Meirle’s younger brother’s address to go there after  seudat Rosh HaShana. So it was that, well into the afternoon of Rosh HaShana, R’ Zalman stood before R’ Meirle’s brother’s house, a dilapidated Vilna hovel with a swaybacked overhang above the entrance. R’ Zalman, a moderately tall man, ducked under the overhang to get to the doorway. Within, there were two rooms, in the front of which sat R’ Meirle’s brother at a table with a meager handful of sefarim. The man, approximately twenty years R’Zalman’s  senior, “had a light beard.” R’ Zalman and R’ Meirle’s brother exchanged Rosh HaShana greetings and introductions, and spoke briefly in learning. R’ Zalman blew shofar; R’ Meirle’s brother listened attentively. R’ Meirle’s brother spoke again in learning; R’ Zalman listened attentively. Having reviewed and assessed their pre-shofar learning session, R’ Zalman kept his own contributions to the post-shofar exchange to a minimum so as to maximize his focus on what he was hearing. R’ Meirle’s brother, the unassuming man in the unassuming house, then extended an open-ended invitation to R’ Zalman to return later in the year to continue talking in learning and, perhaps  also, for a seudat Shabbat. R’ Zalman, sensing a very private individual living in dire poverty, made a polite but noncommittal reply and departed, mentally noting not to take R’ Meirle Karelitz’s brother upon an invitation that might overextend the host—though, as R’ Zalman recounted, he was strongly tempted to return just to speak further in learning. “R’ Meirle’s brother knew how to learn!” That assessment was confirmed years later as R’ Meirle’s younger brother, Rav Avraham Yeshayahu Karelitz, became more widely known as the Chazon Ish.

Rav Zalman’s sensitivity to the circumstances of others went far beyond his own circles of talmeidai chachamim and their immediate families, and his thinking on these matters was, as typical for him, multi-dimensional. More than a half-century after R’ Zalman’s Vilna years, one of his married American talmidim was finding that the degree of dedicated focus required for proper progress in advanced professional studies was severely limiting his time and energy for Torah learning. The student expressed his decision, made after considerable deliberation, to take  a leave of absence from graduate research “to learn full-time for a year or more.” R’ Zalman considered the idea “noble, except for” the diminishing likelihood of a resumption of graduate studies the longer the hiatus; “except for” the mockery that might then be made of Shemaya’s dictum in Avot 1:10 to love work, as expounded in Maharal’s Derech Chayim to be a directive to highly value the consummate human grandeur of self-support; “except, for” all those who might continue “to suffer from illness because you stopped your research”; several additional pointed “except, for”s; and, “bottom-line, except for” the burden it would place “on the back of your wife and of other Jews to support you and your family and your children’s schools and their teachers, all for your noble undertaking.” The student, therefore, found ways to be more efficient in his graduate work so as to have more time, energy and focus for Torah learning while completing his professional training. Several years later, after establishing himself as a degreed expert in his field, the student—this time with R’ Zalman’s approval, encouragement and guidance—returned to full-time learning, but still not quite completely, for he was mandated to “keep a foot in the door” with a one-day-a-week stint in a university research laboratory. 

Prior to Rav Zalman working at his “retirement job” in the Department of Audit and Control in the Office of the New York State Comptroller, he had supported his family and his learning for some decades as an agent for a major life insurance company. (Upon reaching the insurance company’s mandatory retirement age, he shifted to the State job, which had a twenty-year higher retirement age). Back in the late 1800s, the company had introduced “workingmen’s insurance” that provided small-policy coverage to mid-to-low income families, with modest weekly premiums collected by agents directly at the policyholders’ homes. Company training literature recommended that agents set their collection appointment at a given client’s home for the same time each week to increase “familiarity and contact.” As a frequent visitor, an agent would have ample opportunity to feel the pulse of the hopes and concerns, trials and tribulations of the hard-working client and his family. In the 1940s, when R’ Zalman was starting out in the insurance industry, such small policies and associated collection protocols were still quite popular. Thus, R’ Zalman became intimately acquainted with the dire plight of many a low- income family struggling to stay afloat in post-Depression Albany. In a period without the massive State and Federal social welfare programs of later decades, there was little expectation of governmental aid and, often, even less desire for such help; a strong sense of dignity and pride kept many needy families from seeking assistance. The vast majority of his clients being Christian, R’ Zalman would meet privately—unbeknownst to his clients; not as an insurance agent; not as a representative of the Jewish community; rather, simply and quietly, as a concerned fellow human keenly sensitive to kevod habereiot—with local Catholic priests and Protestant ministers to plead the cases of individual suffering families, usually succeeding in securing for them some measure of succor through their church and community.

Horizontal And Vertical Processes of Mind—Time-Spanning And Soul-Penetrating

The panorama of life flowing across and being absorbed into Rav Zalman’s very active mind could lend an immediacy of interconnection to incidents decades apart. Living with and learning from that vibrant immediacy was a vital component of R’ Zalman’s presence. In 1977, R’ Zalman blacked out on Yom Kippur, a victim of heart failure. His life was saved by expert on-the-spot administration of CPR by a quick-witted medical student in the shul, followed immediately by the arrival of EMS personnel and then swift transport to an emergency room. Several days later, as R’ Zalman was convalescing in an Albany hospital suite from the episode in shul and from ensuing cardiac pacemaker implantation, the medical student made a bikur cholim visit. He had been informed by the grateful people in the shul that the man he had saved “knew the entire Talmud by heart.” As someone new to Torah learning, the medical student was awed and inspired by that achievement. Perhaps, he ventured, the recovering patient had the time and energy for some questions in Torah learning...

Before R’ Zalman’s mind’s eye, overlying the Albany present, there opened a scene from almost sixty years before. During the deadly Spanish flu pandemic after the First World War, R’ Zalman was convalescing in a primitive Polish infirmary. A small number of other young talmeidai chachamim, likewise stricken, were present in the “not much more than an expanded pharmacy,” along with numerous other Jews less well connected to learning. R’ Zalman had clear instructions from his father as to the course of action most appropriate for the setting and circumstances: “Learn!”

The 1977 clinical surroundings, this time far from primitive, were about to host an exchange of Torah. R’ Zalman had already been informed by one of his long-time talmidim that the   sincere baal teshuva medical student possessed a mind that was always active, endlessly curious, keenly perceptive, wonderfully creative, totally retentive and capable of instantaneous   correlation of anything new with all things old; or, as R’ Zalman summarized the superlatives, “you’re saying he has a good head.” So, R’ Zalman listened in eager anticipation as the medical student readied his questions.

In the Polish “pharmacy,” R’ Zalman engaged his few learned ward-mates and began to conduct with them a sefer-less learning session. Together, with R’ Zalman as text-resource, they analyzed Rishonim and Acharonim on Ketubot 67-68 and Horayot 13a. The analysis—in legal theory lahalacha; certainly not dealing with practical application pesak lemaaseh—became increasingly intricate and intriguing. Synergistically with their learning, the discussants became increasingly engaged and active, shaking off their flu-induced exhaustion of body and spirit.

In the Albany hospital suite, the questions began to be framed. The young medical student had questions regarding Chumash. He was learning Chumash with Rashi and found some matters perplexing, even on topics on which Rashi was not sparse. R’ Zalman listened with intensified attention; for, another overlay directly informing the 1977 present had formed in his mind, playing out simultaneously with the Polish infirmary drama.

Well before R’ Zalman became a bar mitzvah, he had achieved a milestone in Talmud studies and his father took him to Reb Chaim. When Rav Chaim Avraham Dov Ber and R’ Zalman entered, they saw that Reb Chaim was engrossed in learning the weekly sidra, one of the parashiot haMishkan. Father and son waited for Reb Chaim to finish the pasuk he was learning. When Reb Chaim looked up, he immediately engaged R’ Zalman’s father in analyzing a particularly perplexing Rashi on the sidra. The two adults, both eminent scholars and master pedagogues, worked assiduously on the single Rashi until resolving Reb Chaim’s questions to both men’s satisfaction. That done, R’ Zalman’s father took his son by the hand and departed, letting Reb Chaim get back to learning Chumash. Not a word had been said about the young Zalman's accomplishment. The lesson learned: Perhaps just anyone could go through the sedarim of Shas Bavli at least once, but to really understand Chumash with Rashi would take far greater levels of knowledge and of focus.

The 1977 Chumash questions in Albany dealt with the not-quite parallel names in the genealogies of Beraisheit 4:17-18 and 5:9-25. Why did identical names, such as Chanoch or Lemech, and almost identical names, such as Kayin and Kaynan, appear over the generations of the two genealogies; why the different order of appearance of seemingly parallel names; what did the names’ word-roots, such as Metu-, mean; where else and when were similar names or roots used? As R’ Zalman felt the contours and contents of the questions individually and collectively, and the orderly development of their presentation, he thought “He does have a good head”; and then also felt a third thread weave into the pattern of the vividly sensed past.

R’ Zalman’s father had on a particular occasion astounded Reb Chaim with a deep and broad clarification of a philosophical statement of Rambam with which Reb Chaim had been unsuccessfully grappling. Rav Chaim Avraham Dov Ber responsed to Reb Chaim’s admiring “How could you have thought of that?!” with “I learn Chassidishe sefarim.” R’ Zalman’s father was recognized as a world-class expert in early Chabad literature among other works of the various Chassidic / kabbalistic / machashava genres, but Reb Chaim, inveterate mitnagaid that he was, could not entertain the possibility of a Chassidic source of elucidation of a Rambam. Reb Chaim demurred, “No. No. It must be just that you have a good head.”

After the 1977 Chumash questions were fully presented, R’ Zalman reviewed them with the medical student. Simultaneously, he mentally reviewed and evaluated sources in Tanach, Chazal and later works that had potential bearing on the topics involved. Among dozens of sources: Braisheit 25:4 and 46:9 and the corresponding pesukeim in Divrai HaYameim, for Chanoch; Braisheit 34:30 and Devarim 2:34, for Metu-; Yeshayahu 8:1, for the term, if not the name, Enosh; Ayruvin 18b, for Shet and pre-Shet; Sukka 52b, for Adam, Shet and Metushelach as a unit; Bava Batra 121b, for Adam and Metushelach as generational bridges; Beraisheit Rabba 23:2, for several of the names in the Kayin lineage; Rambam Avodat Kochaveim 1:1, for historical developments in the era of and involving Enosh, and Moreh Nevucheim 2:30, for Shet; and Maharal Neteiv HaTorah 14, for a positive view of the term Enosh.

In Poland, the enthusiastic learning session, approaching its third hour, was shut down by stormy protest from the many not-as-learned Jews in the infirmary. They were sure—and very vocally furious!—that such a protracted and animated discussion about personal and communal priorities of tzedaka-distribution (in Ketubot) and about triage-like prioritization of life-saving measures (in Horayot) was dealing with practical considerations of the discussants’ and their own immediate life-threatening situations. R’ Zalman described the unfortunate consequence of the crowd’s anger in a note delivered that day via an infirmary nurse to Rav Chaim Avraham Dov Ber, “…cannot learn under these circumstances.”

In 1977 Albany, the sources assembling in R’ Zalman’s mind shed light on the questions, but R’ Zalman instantly realized that the answers they indicated were only partial at best. They satisfactorily encompassed sections of the questions but neither their totality not their thrust. He also realized that, notwithstanding the incomplete nature of the answers taking shape, he would never have had an opportunity to view and configure, sift and link those sources in such an interesting manner had he not encountered the posed questions. R’ Zalman pared down the set of sources to the most germane and introduced their implied partial answers to the medical student with expression of the first realization, saying—together with a straightforward “I don’t know”—that more studying would be needed for a satisfactory approach. R’ Zalman closed his brief presentation with expression of the second realization, thanking the medical student for the questions—together with a marveling “I have never thought of this before”—and inviting him to return, “and not just in the hospital,” for more learning.

Recounting the brief in-hospital learning session later to the talmid who had apprised him of the capabilities of the baal teshuva, R’ Zalman bestowed a very high accolade on the medical student, “I learned from him!” R’ Zalman then added, “Think what he can do!” Several years later, the medical student, by then a practicing physician, was presenting to learned audiences detailed analyses of practical Halacha traced and integrated from Chumash, Midrashai Halacha, Yerushalmi, Bavli, Gaonim, Rishonim and Acharonim. Meanwhile, the long-time talmid and R’ Zalman would continue over several years to research the topics brought in 1977 in the Albany hospital suite to R’ Zalman’s past-plaited, future-oriented and very present attention. With a good head, focus and knowledge (preferably, also, in the absence of a loud, angry crowd), one could learn, and the learning would continue under those circumstances.

The immediacy of interconnection produced by Rav Zalman’s exceptional mind was not limited to juxtaposable occurrences nor was its effect limited to the realm of thought. R’ Zalman, shaped in his youth by Maharal and steeped throughout his learning-life in Maharal, saw personal life-moments and unfolding world events alike through the finely cut jewel of Maharal’s works. R’ Zalman was constantly reviewing and reflecting, teasing apart and weaving together rays of Maharal-illumination emanating from facets of that jewel. R’ Zalman felt and responded to the linkages among Maharal’s thoughts not only mentally, but also viscerally, emotionally, physically, practically. He was driven to keep studying, testing, adjusting and strengthening those links. Well into his 80s, when intensive night-time Maharal study-sessions with students would, on occasion, exhaust him to the point that he had to stop after only twenty minutes, he would sometimes be able to gather his strength after a few minutes’ rest and then plunge back into Maharal for more than an hour. (When R’ Zalman was still not strong enough to learn even after resting, the remainder of the session would often become a history-tour conducted by him to the dramatic semi-sotto voce accompaniment of amazing, edifying, unforgettable seichat chulin.)

Rav Zalman’s practical pesak Halacha lemaaseh in the early 1970s for a student who was feeling overly constrained by the limited learning choices available tisha beAv afternoon, was “Learn Netzach Yisrael.” In that work, Maharal delineates in frighteningly fine-grained Torah political theoretical terms the existential but very real spiritual-physical and national-individual state of galut, a fitting topic for study on a present-day tisha beAv. Maharal’s Netzach Yisrael masterfully delineates the territorial borders and topography of galut, so as to reveal—through inversion—the contours and contents of geula, the living motif of the future tisha beAv.

In his advanced 80s, Rav Zalman, who was perennially balanced and affable, became despondent, distressed and agitated just before shiva asar beTamuz one year. To his concerned students, R’ Zalman waved off any discussion of the subject of his worry. While R’ Zalman maintained his rigorous schedule of learning and teaching over the Three Weeks that year, his depressed mood and agitation remained. About a week after tisha beAv, finally looking more relaxed and settled, with his equanimity restored, he broached the subject indirectly. The depression and agitation of the preceding weeks appeared to have been connected with the closing and outcome of the seemingly interminable and all too often horribly severe Galut Edom. R’ Zalman stated, “I feel much better now. I realized that I had not been reading the Maharal accurately, and now I am sure that everything will be alright”

Blessing And Book—Fatherly Favor

In 1923, just before embarking for America, Rav Zalman spent a Shabbat in Radin with the Chafetz Chaim. The Chafetz Chaim presumed that R’ Zalman, a fellow Kohain, a musmach of Reb Chaim and of Rav Chaim Ozer, had come to Radin to learn in the Kollel Kadashim in preparation for the re-establishment of the Avoda service in the imminent, third and final Bayt HaMikdash. At the Shabbat table, the elderly sage inquired as to whether his young guest had already made lodging arrangements for the year. R’ Zalman explained that he was only passing through Radin on his way to the seaport to voyage to America. The Chafetz Chaim, immediately assuming or, perhaps, hoping that R’ Zalman had spoken in jest, interjected with “Zalman, don’t be joking [about such matters]”; upon realizing that his Shabbat guest had been totally serious, the Chafetz Chaim admonished him regarding the materialism of America and was adamant that R’ Zalman not make the journey and not speak with him further on the matter. When, late on Shabbat day, R’ Zalman succeeded in indirectly relaying that he was to meet his father at the port and that they would be emigrating together, the Chafetz Chaim relented on R’ Zalman going to America. The venerable Sage of Israel then blessed R’ Zalman’s future endeavors, adding “You should only know what a good friend you have in your father.” As attested to by Otzar Iggerot Kodesh—letters that R’ Zalman had kept and cherished for decades, private letters from an elderly father to an adult son, letters of divrai Torah, hadracha and tochacha, much of the tochacha being pointedly severe, but all of it being loving—R’ Zalman knew that for a surety.

After publication of the second edition of Otzar Iggerot Kodesh, which contained more letters of severe reproach than appeared in the inaugural (and unauthorized) edition of the early 1950s, a somewhat shocked reader asked Rav Zalman why he had bothered preserving such harsh iggerot over the years rather than discarding them immediately. “If you had had a father like mine,” said R’ Zalman, “you wouldn’t have to ask.” R’ Zalman elaborated that he loved his father, he knew his father loved him and he had deeply appreciated all input from his father. He added, with a gleam in his eye, that what was published was mild compared to letters that were yet “hotter—the good stuff” that he equally treasured but had withheld from publication at that point. Subsequently, R’ Zalman released some of “the good stuff” for the third edition; for all their severity and expression of inter-generational exasperation, those “hotter” letters are suffused with earnest concern and abiding fatherly love.

Expansiveness Of The Rabbi—Asot Mishpat VAhavat Chessed VHatznaya Lechet Im Elokecha

Like his father and his other great teachers, Rav Zalman abhorred honor, recognition, publicity and expansiveness. R’ Zalman eschewed titles, particularly “Rabbi.” Both Rav Chaim Soloveichik and Rav Boruch Ber were widely known and addressed as “Reb,” rather than “Rav”; so too, R’ Zalman, who made a point of being known to observant Jews as “Reb Zalman” and, to others, simply as “Mr. Levine” or “Zalman.” (A case in point: R’ Zalman’s numerous semichot, never displayed, were only rarely mentioned by him; the documents surfaced posthumously, saved among his personal effects and papers.) He would even caution rabbis and others who consulted him on matters of pesak Halacha to address him as “Reb Zalman,” and never to address him in the third person. Talmidim quickly learned R’ Zalman’s strong preference for being directly addressed by the pronoun “you” (some talmidim would fantasize, but knew better than to voice, that they were using the more formal “You” rather than the familiar “you”—and that was in English, not Yiddish!) or, in extremely rare cases, by the noun “Rebbi”; and they learned that indirect, third-person face-to-face address of R’ Zalman was not acceptable. (A visitor to the world-famous REITS shiur of Reb Chaim’s grandson, Rav Yosef Dov HaLevi Soloveitchik, was repeatedly ignored as he asked “What would the Rebbi say…?”, “Could the Rebbi explain…?”, “How is the Rebbi meyashaiv…?” Finally, Rav Soloveitchik turned to look directly at the persistent questioner and pointedly queried “Why don’t you ask him?!”) 

Rav Zalman carried himself lightly and simply while carrying his Torah with honor and dignity. R’ Zalman, who by nature nurtured his anonymity, felt even more strongly about not bearing the honorific “rabbi” when, upon arriving on these shores, he grasped the relatively low standards of 1920s American semicha. With wonderful individual exceptions, his general experience with American rabbis over the ensuing decades did little to change his assessment. In the mid-1980s, a talmid receiving semicha from R’ Zalman—the culmination of a twenty-year- plus program of study satisfying R’ Zalman’s exacting standards—asked with no little  trepidation, “So, now I’m supposed to be called ‘Rabbi’?” R’ Zalman’s answer: “That way, you won’t get too proud of yourself.”

As Rav Zalman learned from his teachers, there were select areas of life in which expansiveness—even public expansiveness—was, indeed, appropriate. Reb Chaim once had his shamash openly herald the impending entrance of the “great Rav of Brisk, Rabbi Chaim Soloveichik” for the benefit of the self-esteem of a widow whom Reb Chaim was about to visit. The most public place where the title “Rav” is associated with Reb Chaim’s name by his directive is on his tombstone in Warsaw. His epitaph there reads, “Rav haChessed,” eternalizing in stone Reb Chaim’s dynamically practicing what he preached, that a rabbi’s essential task is championing the cause of the widow and the orphan, to care deeply for his community and to strive mightily to meet their needs. The open expansiveness of Reb Boruch Ber’s love and concern for his talmidim, as a whole and individually, is the stuff of legend, but was attested to   as everyday palpable reality by hundreds—R’ Zalman among them—each of whom would speak fondly of his own personal “rebbi, Reb Boruch Ber.” R’ Zalman, in his own hatznaya lechet fashion, found where and when to be appropriately expansive.

Throughout the years, Rav Zalman’s birkat kohanim was an exercise in pristine grandeur, as one student put it “what you imagine Aharon HaKohain sounded like.” On Rosh HaShanah,  his extraordinary single-note tekeya gedola stretched toward, and oft-times beyond, half a   minute. Through his mid-seventies, R’ Zalman served as shaliach tzibbur for ne’eila; his tefilla, usually unencumbered by a machazor or by inhibition of emotion, was an exercise in devarim hayotzeim min halaiv, with even some of the teenaged boys in the shul weeping openly with him. In his mid-eighties, R’ Zalman excused himself to a student one erev Pesach for not offering his hand in greeting; his hand hurt too much from having written out over five hundred pre-Pesach tzedaka checks. Several years later, when R’ Zalman was sitting shiva in Monsey as the sole surviving mourner for his hundred-plus-year-old sister, there arrived a famed local mechanechet, walking cane in hand, intent on neichum avayleim. Her late husband’s Spring Valley bayt hamidrash had provided a haven for R’ Zalman during his first decades in America, giving him access to sefarim and a site to learn them, both when escaping from New York City and in transit to and from Albany. R’ Zalman saw that the mechanechet’s advance toward him was stymied by the thick throng of talmeidai chachamim, benai Torah and chassidim seated and standing roundabout. With an expansive wave of his hand and a few unambiguous commands, R’ Zalman parted the “Yam Suf of men,” clearing a wide path for the woman he remembered admiringly as “that tough young lady.” R’ Zalman lavished graciousness and care upon his consoler, investing disproportionate time and energy into revisiting with the elderly widow the people, personalities and events of her past. (R’ Zalman was well aware of, but chose to generally ignore and occasionally even be mildly amused by, the approach-avoidance conflicts going on around him as some of his male visitors, eager to hear what he was sharing with the mechanechet, would venture too close, by their own standards, for comfort.)

Closing And Caution

There is much more that can, and someday likely will be written of Rav Refael Zalman HaKohain Levine, an adam gadol who would have been mortified to have even a davar katan written about him, “especially,” he once warned, “anything nice.” There is also much that should never be written: Details, which he remembered with the staggering clarity with which he remembered everything, of his less-than-positive encounters with people and institutions that R’ Zalman predeceased and that, at least through descendants and in name, still now live on after him. Individuals, families, organizations; perceptions, sensitivities; and the times themselves—all change. While the war may still have to be waged, yesterday’s battles are not those of today. But, for R’ Zalman’s carefully chosen students and close friends, for his talmidim muvhakim, all those matters that he felt could be presented orally in closed close circles and that were to stay in those circles, were edifying on many levels: Seeing the past as it was, the present as it is, the future as it should be; where to draw the line between the real and the ideal (and how to inch from the former toward the latter); empathizing with and accommodating most everyone but the arrogant and the insincere (and how to pinpoint, avoid, evade and escape those horrible traits, most importantly in oneself); relating to gedolai Torah and striving to emulate them far beyond breadth and depth of scholarship; when to be quiet (R’ Zalman’s advice: “Most of the time.”); and when to overcome even one’s deepest yearning for privacy and take a vocal public stand.

The one factor that might assuage Rav Zalman’s mortification at even this short piece having been written about him, is its role in underwriting Torah study lehagdeil Torah ulehadeirah. Touro University’s Endowed Distinguished Talmudic Scholar Award in R’ Zalman’s name may be a fitting memorial for a man who exemplified a scholarly, learned life lived through the prism of Micha 6:8. This writing is intended to afford each scholar who is a beneficiary of the Touro University Rav Refael Zalman HaKohain Levine Endowed Distinguished Talmudic Scholar Award, and other interested readers, a glimpse, through the word-pictures drawn herein, of the man whose name the Award bears. Yehei zichro livracha.