David Rosen’s family room seemed typical. Actually, I discovered, it is a treasure trove containing 47 years of research into Torah sources, research from which he gleans amazing anecdotes and extraordinarily obscure historical facts. As interesting as David’s ongoing endeavor is, it is even more astonishing considering that he has suffered from severe chronic pain, 24/7, for the last 25 years.
David Rosen’s passion for Jewish history began when he was a 16-year-old tenth grader in 1972. It bothered him that he did not know anything about Jewish history – including the churban (destruction) of the first and second Temples, the Rishonim and Achronim, the Geonim, the miracles of Chanukah and Purim, and the kingdoms of Beis Yehuda and Beis Yisrael.
“I tried to create a timeline by putting the history in chronological order,” begins David. “The average yeshiva bachur only knows a limited amount of Nach by what he learns from a pasuk that is quoted in the Gemara.”
Inspired by a Date Line
David found his interest in history through “happenstance,” sparked by a question a girl asked him on a date in 1979. She wanted to know in what chronological order the prophets Yechezkel, Yeshaya, and Yirmiyahu lived.
“I said, ‘That’s easy!’” David recalls, “‘They pretty much lived at the same time.’ She said it wasn’t so. Needless to say, that date didn’t go anywhere! It bothered me that a girl proved me wrong. That started me on my journey into learning more deeply about Nach and getting to know at least the major players and what they accomplished – and yes, there was a 210-year difference between Yeshaya Hanavi and Yecheskal Hanavi!”
The timeline grew and grew until David had a chronology from maasei Bereishis (Creation) until the present, including every significant event in Jewish history.
“Every event became fascinating to me – Crusades, expulsions, the opening of the Radin yeshiva in 1869, and the sefer Chofetz Chaim’s debut in 1876,” remarks David. “As I wrote down the chronology, it led to further research. As an example, when I did research on Rav Boruch Ber Leibowitz opening up his yeshiva in Kamenetz, I wanted to know more about Rav Boruch Ber. What was his gadlus? What was the gadlus of other gedolim? It started branching out. When I was employed, I was kovea itim; at night, I would learn history for a couple of hours. It was enthralling.”
Picking up a sefer, the Pnei Yehoshua on Gemara, written by Rav Yaakov Yehoshua Falk, David mentions that he was inspired to know more about the author. “I learned that he lived from 1681 to 1756, and that the gedolei hador testified that ru’ach hakodesh rested in his beis medrash. His talmidim came to him in his yeshiva one freezing morning in Lvov, Poland, to find him so deeply engrossed in writing his chiddushim from the night before that he was totally oblivious to the cold – to the point that he was unaware that his beard froze and was stuck to the table!! Is this story considered limud Torah? No! Does it give me a better appreciation when I learn the Pnei Yehoshua? Absolutely!”
As David started learning Nach, he wondered, who is the Radak? When did he live? What did he do? Research about the Ralbag, Rashi, and all the meforshim followed and then branched out into numerous other arenas of interest.
Adds David, “My curiosity was also piqued about all the yeshivos – Telshe and Slabodka, etc. My father-in-law, Harav Elchonon Scheinerman, zt”l, learned in Baranavitch under Rav Elchonon Wasserman and also in the Mir. What was their derech (way) of learning and what made them unique? I started writing about the history of many yeshivos, which led to my research into the history of the chasidishe dynasties, such as Skverer, Vizhnitz, Belz, and Bobov, and all the Admorim. I wrote up the entire history of the dynasty and anything else unique I could find, including amazing stories about the Rebbes and their courts. Everything I write is meant to inspire and bring Torah history alive. I’m always looking for the unusual stories that will evoke a strong reaction.”
David shows me how he first recorded his research on each parsha: stacks of index cards bound by rubber bands. He made an index file of cards for every date of the year, recording significant Jewish historical events that took place on that day throughout history. David’s wife Fagie notes that after David showed them to his Talmudical Academy principal, Dr. Gershon Kranzler, z”l, a noted historian, Dr. Kranzler remarked that he considered David an accomplished historian.
The index card endeavor expanded to card files on Sefer Shoftim and Sefer Shmuel. Then, David started recording the biographies of many gedolim, including obscure ones that people would not readily have information on – all extremely organized, alphabetized, and in his artistic handwriting.
The projects kept expanding. The cards turned into extensive notes on all the midrashim. Today, the Rosens’ family room stores 69 thick loose-leaf notebooks that hold between 13,500 and 14,000 pages! The topics in these volumes include Yerushalayim, Eretz Yisrael, all of the holidays, the Beis Hamikdash, tefila, the parshiyos, Pirkei Avos, as well as the histories of Spanish Jewry and German Jewry, among many other Jewish communities throughout the Diaspora. Each page, which is protected with an acid-free slip cover, takes David about seven-and-a-half to eight hours to write, because he has to do the research on his own. “The more incredible it is, the longer it takes. I do my research from the Yerushalmi and Bavli Gemaras, Medrash Rabba, the Zohar – wherever I can find information.”
David does not use the internet for any of his research; he admits to not being computer savvy as he barely knows how to turn a computer on. Instead, he uses his collection of 2,500 sefarim, many of them unusual, to extrapolate these obscure facts. In addition, over the years he has requested many unusual photos from various publications.
The Magid Speaks…of David’s Research
David started recording the histories of many shtetlach, including photos, maps, and charts. In fact, before Rabbi Paysach Krohn gave his first European tour, about seven or eight years ago, David received a call from him.
“He said, ‘Hi, this is Paysach Krohn,’” recalls David with a chuckle. “Thinking it was a prank call, I said, ‘I’m not in the mood for jokes.’ The person then said, ‘This is really Paysach Krohn!’ He told me he was going on a European tour. As a magid, he wanted some complementary historical material to share with his audience. He happened to be speaking to my sister-in-law, Shani Strickman, and she mentioned that her brother-in-law had a wealth of information on all the places he was going to and could help. I said to Rabbi Krohn, ‘I don’t know what I can tell a great magid such as you.’ He asked me what I could tell him about Kelm, the famous mussar center in Lithuania. I said I could talk for hours about the depiction of its distinct qualities.”
When Rabbi Krohn visited David in Baltimore, he was very much taken with his extensive work and copied about 350 pages of his notes. Among them were stories such as these:
In Kelm there were two sides of the main street – one side was for men, the other for women. If you walked on the wrong side, you were given a knas, a fine. You had to go to Beis Din and give an accounting of what you did, and you were pretty much ostracized by everyone for your actions.
Another story was about the famous Talmud Torah in Kelm, comprised of only 35 bachurim. It was extremely careful and rigid to avoid any possible bad influences. A father had to have a special pass just to daven with his son on Shabbos, and the Talmud Torah’s garbage cans looked like genie bottles (very narrow at the top and very wide on the bottom), so bachurim would not crush a paper and throw it out haphazardly. Everything had to be thought out; you had to think about what you were doing, even down to how to discard the trash.
Another Kelm story was about a gentile general who was passing through with all his troops. He had a two-hour layover and went to the mayor and said, “Usually, during my layovers, I see the town’s points of interest. Is there a statue or something of interest, here?” The mayor replies, “I will show you something you have never seen in your life; follow me and bring your drum majors. We are going to a school where the Jews are learning. When we go up to the front, a place called the bima, have your drum majors stand in the aisles and start playing. Then watch the faces of the boys.” They played the drums for eight minutes. During that time, not one bachur lifted his head from the Gemara. The general walked out and told the mayor, “I’ve been doing this for 30 years, and I have never, ever seen anything like that in my entire life!”
The Secrets of the Palms
David mentions that he has written stories of how Belzers and other chasidic groups rose from the ashes of the Holocaust, and how he once did a documentary for Rabbi Berel Wein about it. “I wanted to know about all these gedolim, and little had been published at the time,” says David. “I started collecting stories, pictures, and anything and everything about them. My hope now is to publish the chronology and the chiddushim in a sefer.”
David next shares a vort on the secrets you can get from palm trees, as noted in the Gemara regarding Rav Yochanan ben Zakai. “He knew the language of the palm trees,” David explains. “Some say he knew how to extract all the medicinal properties from each tree and plant. Other meforshim say he also knew there was a chochma that if you stand between two palm trees and it’s a non-windy day you can cover the trees and watch how the leaves move. This can tell future events and the actual nature of each person – not what they show in public. This is all brought down in the teshuvas of the Gaonim, and took me a long time to look up. Why did the prophetess Devorah b’davka pick a palm tree to judge people under? There was a reason.”
David is constantly on the lookout for the “unusual.” The more extraordinary the medrash is, the more he has to get the exact lashon, he says, because they are too fantastic. “Sources are very important,” notes David. “One word can change the whole thing. So, I have the Zohar, which I look at very often, and I have all the midrashim in the Medrash Tanchuma, the Medrash Talpios, the Yalkut Shemoni, whatever I can think of. When I am learning, I have 10 or 12 sefarim in front of me as sources. I could give a guided tour of the second Beis Hamikdash, if it were in existence now.”
One More Line, One More Line
Although David looks healthy, about 25 years ago, when he experienced an onset of severe pain, his Jewish history hobby turned into a labor of meticulous exertion. In spite of many years of physical challenges, David stubbornly perseveres, sitting in his den over his shtender, learning all day.
“Twenty years ago, David had surgery on his right hand,” his wife, Fagie reveals. “There were many unforeseen complications that led to David being unable to use his right hand, thus making his writing impossible for several months. So determined was he to continue in his labor of love, he taught himself to use his left hand! Baruch Hashem, he eventually regained the full use of his right hand.”
Currently, David acknowledges, “Each line of these pages is handwritten, painstakingly, one line at a time. I keep telling myself, one more line, one more line; that is how I get through the pages. If I had clarity of mind, what takes me an hour to write, would only take 10 minutes. At any part of the day, I have a million excuses to just lie in bed, but I keep on pushing and pushing – even if I have to be learning or writing while lying on the floor, because of my back pain.”
David still miraculously manages to learn about seven or eight hours of each day. “Having pain, I can deal with; not being able to think is much harder to deal with,” admits David. “It’s pushing and a little bit of adrenaline, also. It’s a passion. I learn all day, and when I find something very interesting, I put it into my sefarim. When my mind is not functioning as well, I go to the history; when I find it difficult to focus on historical figures, I research the animals that appear in the Torah and their characteristics.”
David ends with a chuckle, “I tell my children that I have a job – I’m a CPA, Constant Positive Attitude. I can’t do anything to change my physical state of being, so it is all about coping with it mentally. I have every reason to put down my pen and call it a day, but that’s the last thing I want to do. It’s all about not feeling sorry for yourself.”
If this article inspires even one reader to forge ahead beyond their physical and or emotional challenges in life, then David Rosen will feel that he has fulfilled his tafkid (task).
This article originally appeared in Hamodia’s Inyan magaine.
