Rabbi Yehoshua Yogel Has Passed Away

Opening post by the Rabbi

Rabbi Yehoshua Yogel Has Passed Away

Sent on 17/12/2006

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Rabbi Yehoshua Yogel has passed away

Rabbi Yogel, the educational director (what in other places is called ‘head of the yeshiva’) of ‘Midrashiyat Noam’ (=the Midrasha) in Pardes Hanna, passed away last night.

The funeral is today (Sunday) at 11:30 at the Midrasha, and afterward at 14:30 at the Shamgar Funeral Home in Jerusalem, to the Mount of Olives.

May his memory be blessed.

There is much to discuss about this dear man, with whom I had the privilege of a fairly close personal relationship (unfortunately only after I had finished my time at the Midrasha), and there is much more to say.

I heard from a relative of Rabbi Shulman, of blessed memory (head of the Slobodka yeshiva), who heard from him that the only genuine head of a yeshiva living in our generation was Rabbi Yogel. His love and concern for his students were like those of (some of) the yeshiva heads of old. He took an interest in every student (and he had several thousand of them), in how each was managing later in life (in yeshiva, in the army, in academia, and the like), or even during a week at yeshiva while still studying. For that purpose he even trudged about, in addition to all the other tasks he had as director of the Midrasha.

Not to mention that he attended every celebration of any one of his students (we are already talking about grandsons’ bar mitzvahs. And I can attest to this personally: in the past few years he really was not feeling well at all, and his grandchildren told me that he was preparing to come to my son’s bar mitzvah in Bnei Brak). In the end he was unable to come.

At an age when other people are usually moaning and groaning, Rabbi Yogel fought for his positions (which I usually did not agree with, and we clashed over this quite a bit. Immediately after the meeting he would come over to me to ask how things were at home, etc.) in the Midrasha’s administration, over every aspect that in his opinion had changed for the worse, and every standard that had been abandoned (leaving on Thursdays for the Sabbath, vacations, and the weakening of study).

His love of Torah was unparalleled in the generation. I did not know anyone with a love of Torah like his. As is well known, when he was troubled by a difficulty he would take his car and drive at 1:00 at night to Bnei Brak (usually to Rabbi Asher Deutsch, who was the study partner of his son Motti, may he live a long and good life), and he paid no attention to whether perhaps he was disturbing someone or whether it was inconvenient. I myself merited several such visits, which admittedly usually began with questions of ‘How are things?’, but it was clear that the point was a difficulty in the talmudic discussion of splitting a statement (which we studied together at length).

There is a well-known story (they do not tell it about me) that one morning he arrived for prayers at the Midrasha with two ties, one in front and one tossed backward. It turned out that he had studied through the night and had flung the tie backward, and in the morning he got up from the table and saw that he had no tie, so he put on another one.

A friend of mine who was a Talmud instructor at the Midrasha told me that he and his friend (who was also a new Talmud instructor) studied together with Rabbi Yogel, who tried to prepare them for the class and made sure they were ready also in terms of the manner of delivery, etc. (!), and afterward, at a very late hour, Rabbi Yogel went home. About an hour later (already the middle of the night) there was a knock at the door, and Rabbi Yogel came in and, without saying a word, began: ‘Regarding the Rashba, I found an answer.’ It later became clear that it never occurred to him that someone wrestling with a difficulty would go to sleep with it. He was sure they were still occupied with the matter.

I know this sounds like old hagiographic stories about great rabbis, and therefore not entirely credible (and perhaps also not always likely to evoke sympathy, at least here). But I can say that although I do not know all the stories firsthand, I knew the man well, and they certainly could have happened.

His political-ideological identity is a riddle in itself (in my opinion he did not really have one. His identity was Torah, and beyond that he saw nothing at all), but let us leave that for another time.

May his soul be bound up in the bond of life.

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Source (forum “Stop—People Think Here”): http://www.bhol.co.il/forums/topic.asp?topic_id=2108085&forum_id=1364