Discovering the Netziv and his Ha'amaik Davar - Rabbi Naftali Zvi Yehudah Berlin

Judaism, Summer, 2002 by Henry A. Sosland

THERE IS A TALMUDIC APHORISM THAT "A PERSON DOES not fully understand the words of the Torah until he stumbles over them." (1) Surely the circumstances of our lives, the people whom we meet, the unexpected events that leave impressions onus--all of these things have away, at times, of prompting us to search within our sources for further understanding and insight.

That rabbinic saying, attributed to Rabbah bar Rab Huna, was illustrated for me in July of 1996 when my wife and I took part in a tour of Jewish sites in Eastern Europe. But first let me paraphrase that expression to read: Sometimes a person does not appreciate a stellar teacher of Torah until he has stumbled over him and his teachings.

This is how it happened. One of the stops on our tour, a stop that is certainly de rigueur on such a trip, was that area in Warsaw where the Nazis had created the ghetto. We paused at several locations there, which today resembles a large park with little if any resemblance to the purpose it served during World War II, and our guide pointed out several historical locations. We were shown the approximate location of the headquarters of the Zydowska Organizacja Bojowa (the Jewish Fighting Organization) which had planned the Warsaw Ghetto uprising in April, 1943, at 18 Mila Street. We stopped at the stirring depiction of the Ghetto's heroism and its heroes in Nathan Rappaport's sculptured monument, and we were shown an open sewer, which was very slightly covered, which had marked the direct path leading from the ghetto to the Aryan side of the city. Then, as we were about to leave the area, we came to the Umschlagplatz just outside, from which people were sent to concentration camps.

From there, as I recall, we walked across Okopowa (formerly Gesia) Street to the Jewish Cemetery, not far from Mila Street, the only pre-war Jewish cemetery in Warsaw to have been preserved. (2) The entrance way was marked with numerous broken monuments from the graves of children and others who had died in Warsaw during the war, which had been vandalized and then put together in an orderly way. Once we were inside the grounds of the cemetery, it seemed as though the graves had been preserved in their original form. Our guide went out of his way to take us to see a number of graves of renowned Jews who had died prior to the war.

Some of them were remarkably elaborate, artistically designed memorials to many outstanding individuals. The very juxtaposition of the graves of so many famous Jews in one locale was overwhelming. It was doubly impressive, too, for with all the losses our people had sustained in this part of the world, here we also stood before impressive monuments to pre-eminent cultural figures prior to the Holocaust, as well as some who had died after the war. We stopped at the grave of Adam Czerniakow who as head of the judenrat took his life in 1942 when he learned what was about to happen to Jews. He is prominently buried there with an attractive monument erected to him and his descendants in 1950. A memorial in Esperanto to Dr. Lazardo Zamenhof the creator of that language, commanded our attention.

There was a large, imposing marker to Joseph Goldszmit, the father of Janos Korchak, who died in 1946. A nearby plaque to his son read, "Janusza Korczaka (Henry Goldsmita), born Warsaw 1878, died Treblinka, 1942." Our guide pointed out the grave of Dr. Bernard Mark, a leading modern (Communist) Jewish historian who had chosen to be buried in this cemetery in l966. (3) We noticed a huge, impressive monument to three noted Jews, the Yiddish writer Y. L. Peretz, the ethnographer and playwright (of "The Dybbuk") Sh. Ansky, (4) and the Yiddish writer Jacob Dineson. There was also an attractive memorial to Esther Rachel Kaminska, a world-famous Yiddish actress.

Then we were taken much further inside the cemetery to what appeared to be an older section to the graves of Rabbi Naftali Zvi Yehudah Berlin and his grandson by marriage, Rabbi Hayyim Ha-Levi Soloveitchik, known as the "Brisker Rav," son of Yosef Dov Soloveitchik. (5) The graves are next to one another with a simple yet dignified monument appearing to cover a part of one side of the graves. This type of marker is known as an ohel. Our guide commented that the Netziv (1817-1893) was a descendant of the Vilna Gaon, who had led the opposition to the Hasidic movement. (6) Yet, he added, in spite of that, and in spite of the fact that in his day he approved of teaching Torah to women, and was even known to read newspapers on the Sabbath, people still regarded him with such homage that they placed "Kvitlach," or prayers of intercession, at his grave.

Over the years I had often come across Rabbi Berlin's teachings, but I had never taken pains to examine his work closely. From his various writings what I had seen or heard most often cited was his commentary on the weekly Torah portions, the Ha'amaik Davar. Somehow on that day when our tour brought us to this cemetery in Warsaw, I found myself moved as I realized that we were standing at the graves of two such pre-eminent rabbinic figures of the entire pre-modern Jewish world. I felt impelled to acquire a copy of that work on my return to America in order to attempt to understand the Netziv's unique approach to the weekly Torah portions.