Rav Henoch Leibowitz: I'm a Good-for-Nothing
When young Rav Henoch Leibowitz called himself a good-for-nothing, his father asked one question that showed such thoughts are the yetzer hara's tool.
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When young Rav Henoch Leibowitz called himself a good-for-nothing, his father asked one question that showed such thoughts are the yetzer hara's tool.
As a boy in Europe, Rav Henoch Leibowitz found his shul so full of people learning Torah at night that he sat on the legs of his father's shtender.
Rav Henoch Leibowitz compared teaching to coaxing an infant to walk; when a student cheekily asked if that is why his shiurim were hard, he just smiled.
Rav Henoch Leibowitz finds his view in a great Acharon after arguing with gedolim, but won't show them, so as not to appear to gloat.
Rav Henoch Leibowitz brings a magazine to his Gemara shiur and explains the real reason a gadol's da'as Torah guides life questions, not just halachah.
After fifty years in a cramped former movie theater, Yeshiva Chofetz Chaim builds a new home. Rav Henoch Leibowitz is still ready to give it up if daas Torah says so.
With plans well underway for Yeshiva Chofetz Chaim's year in Eretz Yisrael, Rav Henoch Leibowitz calls it off, since some people would suffer from the trip.
Rav Henoch Leibowitz stood on tiptoe to check his tefillin in a small hallway mirror, until a bochur quietly put up a lower mirror for his Rosh Yeshiva.
Asked why his first Seder was so short, Rav Henoch Leibowitz explained that the Rebbetzin had worked nonstop to make Pesach. Should he keep her up?
Told that Rav Shmuel Birenbaum called him a gadol ha’dor, Rav Henoch Leibowitz cannot take it in, and finally credits a sugya he once explained.
A neighbor shouts that this is the last year Rav Henoch Leibowitz’s s’chach leaves will fall in his yard, and he does not live to the next Sukkos.
When a barber asks a Chofetz Chaim bachur if the rosh yeshiva is his father, Rav Henoch Leibowitz answers that the talmid is his son.
Told that a second wedding should be small, Rav Henoch Leibowitz agreed to invite only close family: hundreds of his talmidim.
After posing with one of the author’s twin girls, Rav Henoch Leibowitz insists on a picture with her sister too, so she won’t feel left out.
At Kiddush Levanah, Rav Henoch Leibowitz finds ways to greet every bachur with “shalom aleichem,” so that no talmid feels slighted.
Rather than rebuke a bachur for an inappropriate yarmulke, Rav Henoch Leibowitz hands him his own, and the bachur wears it proudly.
A bachur about to drop out hears none of Rav Henoch Leibowitz’s words, but the rosh yeshiva’s warm hug changes his mind.
After he and one bochur were the only kohanim to duchen one Yom Tov, Rav Henoch Leibowitz greeted that talmid for years with a smile and the word 'duet.'
When a bachur races to catch the man tapping the rosh yeshiva’s phone line, Rav Henoch Leibowitz and his rebbetzin stop him: approach him like a mentch.