Rabbi Moskowitz Memory #6: His True Memorial

I wrote this Facebook post for the occasion of Rabbi Moskowitz's shloshim. We had a memorial event that day, so I reflected on what it would really mean to memorialize him.

Jun 06, 2024

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The Torah content for this week has been sponsored by Judah and Naomi Dardik in honor of Rabbi Moskowitz's second yahrzeit and in appreciation for all those whose love of Torah and excitement for ideas shines in their teaching.

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In honor of the second yahrzeit of my rebbi, Rabbi Morton Moskowitz zt"l, I will be reposting all the "Rabbi Moskowitz Memory” Facebook posts that I wrote during the period following his passing. I’m not going to edit any of them unless I find a typo. I want to preserve the spontaneous writing I did during that period of grieving.

I wrote this on June 21, 2022, for the occasion of his shloshim.

Rabbi Moskowitz in action, explaining an idea

Rabbi Moskowitz Memory #6: His True Memorial

The Rambam brings down a halacha which carries profound implications, even though it is no longer implemented in practice. He writes: "We mark graves and we build a tombstone on the grave, but we do not build a tombstone for tzadikim (the righteous); their devarim (words or principles) are their memorials" (Rambam: Mishneh Torah, Laws of Mourning 4:4).

The Rambam implies that the chief purpose of a tombstone is to memorialize the deceased. The average person needs a physical memorial to preserve their memory because - although we may find this thought to be morbid - most individuals vanish from all living memory within a few generations. How many of us really feel we know who our great-grandparents were? How many of us even know the names of our great-great grandparents?

But with tzadikim, this is not the case. Their devarim endure long after their demise, and serve as their true memorials, insofar as they represent what made them who they were. Their devarim continue on after they have left this earth.

This phenomenon was evident at Rabbi Moskowitz's funeral. The massive turnout was a testament to the impact of his devarim on his students, friends, and peers. The massive attendance, in person and on Zoom, of so many people from so many generations across the full spectrum of religiosity demonstrated the universality of Rabbi Moskowitz's teachings. Some educators teach particular ideas or give over specific bodies of information. Ideas and information can be remembered and they can be forgotten. Some are passed down but most descend to the grave with their knowers. In contrast, Rabbi Moskowitz showed us how to live a life of chochmah (wisdom), how to think clearly, how to pursue our curiosity, how to embody humility in our intellect and in our character, how to enjoy life. These types of devarim do not die. They endure and are passed down from generation to generation: from parent to child, and from teacher to student. They are his true memorial.

But in the case of Rabbi Moskowitz, the notion that "the devarim of tzadikim are their memorial" has a more literal layer of meaning. In my eulogy I made reference to the Abravanel's interpretation of Elisha's final request of his rebbi, Eliyahu ha'Navi. He asked that his rebbi would continue to speak with him through prophecy, even after his death, just as he spoke with him in person throughout his life. I'd like to elaborate on that thought.

Speaking with Rabbi Moskowitz was a unique experience. His approach to Torah, to thinking, and to life was consistent enough that it would be possible to answer the question, "What would Rabbi Moskowitz say?" with some degree of accuracy. At the same time, he was such an independent thinker that it was truly impossible to predict with certainty what he was going to say in any given interaction.

One of the many things I love about my yeshiva is that we have made it a priority to record as many shiurim (classes) as possible ever since the yeshiva was founded in the 70s. As a result, there are hundreds upon hundreds of Rabbi Moskowitz recordings available for the listening. These recordings weren't made consistently over the course of Rabbi Moskowitz's teaching career, nor are they all conveniently gathered in one place. Some exist on the yeshiva's current website, more are in the old archives, many are in the yeshiva's Torah Tape Library, and many many more exist out there in private tapes and digitized recordings.

Ever since Rabbi Moskowitz's passing, I've been listening to these recordings on a regular basis. Although nothing will ever substitute for the ability to converse with Rabbi Moskowitz in person or on the phone, I am grateful that his wisdom - in the form of his actual words, in his actual voice - is available in abundance. I was present for only a fraction of these shiurim, but many of them were recorded before or after my time.

Some of these shiurim give answers to questions that I would have wanted to ask Rabbi Moskowitz right now. For example, the day I returned to NY after the funeral, I listened to a shiur in which Rabbi Moskowitz addressed the inevitability of death and our fear of it - a topic that had been on my mind that week, which I would have loved to discuss with him after his funeral.

Other shiurim address topics I never would have thought to ask him about. The other day I listened to a shiur in which he presented a theory on how Judaism might view the decision of the Japanese to bomb Pearl Harbor, in light of the Chumash, the prophets, and the ideas of the Rambam. Last week I gave my Monday Night Mishlei shiur, then sent my students a shiur that Rabbi Moskowitz gave on the same pasuk so they could learn from him as well.

I do feel I must mention something about these recordings. Rabbi Moskowitz's style of recording was to only record the questions and the answers - not the discussions that took place in between. For this reason, whenever anyone asks me to recommend recorded Rabbi Moskowitz shiurim, I give them the following analogy: if you read a summary of the conclusions of a Socratic dialogue, would you gain? Sure, you'd definitely walk away with some nice ideas. But the essential gain is in the discussion. The same is true with recordings of Rabbi Moskowitz: you'll most certainly gain from listening to the recordings, but the real learning took place when the tape wasn't rolling. (For this reason, I place a high value on those recordings during which he didn’t stop the tape. Especially when I can hear the back-and-forth between myself and Rabbi Moskowitz, and especially when it got heated!)

But I'm not complaining! To the contrary: I'm grateful to Rabbi Moskowitz for recording so many of his classes. He often found this to be annoying. I have many memories of times when he really didn't want to record, but resigned himself to the task, saying, "I'll do it for posterity." Remarkable that it never once occurred to me at the time that "posterity" would be a future me, in a world without Rabbi Moskowitz. I am grateful that he cared enough about posterity to make that extra effort to preserve his devarim.

Initially, I didn't put two and two together until a friend said: "After listening to the eulogies and reading all the posts I realized I had the ability to make myself a talmid in a way even though I never was a talmid directly, because we have so many hours of his work. That’s a very real 'their words are their memorials' that I don’t know anyone could have imagined in the time of Chazal." This made me realize how fortunate I am to have so many recordings of Rabbi Moskowitz's teachings. Even though I can no longer talk to my rebbi, I can still experience him talking to me - not only in my mind, but in the many recordings he left "for posterity."

I'll conclude with some words about the occasion of Rabbi Moskowitz's shloshim. The Rambam (ibid. 13:10) writes:

We do not cry for the dead for more than three days, and we do not eulogize him for more than seven. To whom does this apply? To ordinary people. But in the case of a Torah scholar, everything is in accordance with his wisdom. But we do not cry for him for more than 30 days, because we have no one greater than Moshe Rabbeinu, and it is written, “The days of crying in mourning over Moshe ended” (Devarim 34:8). Likewise we do not eulogize for more than twelve months, for we do not have among the wise man anyone greater than Rabbeinu ha'Kadosh (Rebbi Yehuda ha'Nasi), who was eulogized for twelve months.

The day Rabbi Moskowitz died, I told some of my friends and students that I was seriously considering making a commitment to posting something about Rabbi Moskowitz every day for a full year. Only later did I fully realize that I was speaking out of grief, not out of rationality. I asked myself, "What would Rabbi Moskowitz say?" I know with near absolute certainty that he would discourage me from doing this. The Rambam writes:

A person shouldn't be too hard on himself over a death ... for this is reality, and a person who aggrieves himself over reality is a fool. Rather, what should he do? Three days for crying, seven days for eulogizing, and thirty days for [the prohibition against] cutting one's hair, and the other five [practices of shloshim]. (ibid. Laws of Mourning 13:11).

While I don't know whether Rabbi Moskowitz would quote this particular halacha to me, he would definitely support the message of "a person who aggrieves himself over reality is a fool."

And so I think that this shloshim will serve to facilitate closure. Of course I will never forget Rabbi Moskowitz. Of course I will continue to quote him and invoke his ideas and methodology every single day of my teaching career, without even making an effort to do so. What I mean is that I intend to use the event of his shloshim to transition from a state of "how can I go on without my rebbi?" to "I will go on without my rebbi." His devarim will continue to animate me. His voice will continue to speak with me, in my mind and on my phone. Most importantly, I will strive to live a life which embodies the principles he taught, and I will continue to transmit those same principles to my own talmidim.

Although there is currently no dedicated repository for Rabbi Moskowitz’s recorded shiurim, you can find many of them at the online YBT Torah Tape Library. Just control-F and search for “Moskowitz.”

If you have any thoughts on this or any of your own memories of Rabbi Moskowitz you’d like to share, I would love to hear them! I’ll make sure they reach Mrs. Moskowitz as well.

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