Rabbi Eliyahu Krieger was my menahel in high school. Born in Berlin to an Eastern European family, he arrived in the United States when he was young and studied in Yeshiva Torah Vadaas under Rav Shraga Feivel Mendelovitz, who single-handedly created Torah chinuch (education) in the United States. Rav Shraga Feivel created Torah Umesorah, whose mandate was to build Torah day schools in every small Jewish community in the United States. To accomplish this, he rallied gedolei Yisrael from across the spectrum to support Torah Umesorah’s activities and programs. Yet this was a sidebar to his official endeavors, which were to build Yeshiva Torah Vadaas in Brooklyn, Kollel Beis Elyon in Monsey, and various programs to train Torah teachers. He created the yeshiva settings whereby Rav Shlomo Heiman, Rav Reuven Grozovsky, Rav Yaakov Kamenetsky, and many others were able to influence the American Torah scene, and he was also instrumental in the building of several other yeshivos in America.

Returning to Rabbi Krieger, whereas most of his contemporaries who arrived on the American shores as refugees from the Nazis were eager to start businesses or pursue professions, Rabbi Krieger was interested in studying in yeshiva and became a disciple of Rav Shraga Feivel. This meant that he became committed to chinuch, as did the most of Rav Shraga Feivel’s talmidim. As happened to many, he also became the de facto “rabbi of his family,” since he was the first one to receive a yeshiva education and develop that perspective on life.

When I moved to Brookline, Massachusetts, in the late 1960s, Rav Levi Yitzchok Horowitz, better known as the Bostoner Rebbe of Boston,* had a shtiebel-type shul on Beacon Street, right near the border of Brookline (which is a separate municipality) and the Brighton neighborhood of the city of Boston. At that time, the Rebbe himself no longer lived in the shul building but in an adjacent house, but the building still contained the room where the Rebbe held his seudos (today they would be called tishin), had his sukkah, baked matza (using a firewood oven in the basement), and had numerous hachnasas orchim rooms upstairs. The shul part of the building on the main floor still had all the appearances of a somewhat converted house.

The Rebbe himself was the attraction of the shul. There was no community to speak of at that stage. The shul had a few gabbayim to make sure that the daily minyan was somewhat organized. There wasn’t much of what we would call an organization. All of that would happen later.

Rav Chayim Dov Keller and his brother-in-law, Rav Avraham Chayim Levin, zt”l, together started the yeshiva gedola of Telz, Chicago branch, which now is responsible for the education of a grandson of mine and also sports my nephew in its kollel, both of whom are named Nachi Kaganoff, after my father. Rav Keller’s wife was one of the three daughters (and one son, Rav Avraham Chayim) of Rav Eliezer Levin, who had left Lithuania in 1939 to become a rav in Erie, Pennsylvania (very briefly) and then in Detroit for over 50 years, until his passing. The other two daughters were married to Rabbi Yaakov Lipschutz, zt”l, who, in his day, was one of the greatest experts in kashrus, and ybl”c, Rabbi Berel Wein. Rav Levin was probably the last surviving talmid of the Kelm yeshiva. We can hardly even imagine what it was like to have been a true product of what was called the Kelm Talmud Torah.

Most of what I learned from Rav Gifter was from the times I heard him speak publicly or read his published material. Rav Gifter was a fiery speaker, with both exceptional content and powerful delivery in three languages: English, Hebrew, and Yiddish. But first, a small introduction to his unusual development as a gadol baTorah.

Rav Mendel Gettinger, zt”l, was a mammoth talmid chacham, in the image of those trained in the glorious days of the greatest Lithuanian yeshivos – yet he was born (in 1925), raised, and educated in Brooklyn. He was a rav of a very American-style shul in Manhattan, did post-graduate work in mathematics and engineering at Columbia University, and researched the heavens with his own telescope. His father was a Stuchiner chasid, but if Rav Gettinger had any chasidic influence in his life, I am unaware of it. Although few of his contemporaries in Brownsville received any serious Torah education, Rav Gettinger was sent to yeshivos.

He became a talmid of Rav Yitzchok Hutner, zt”l, at Yeshiva Chaim Berlin, through whose influence he dedicated his life completely to Torah. Rav Gettinger completed Shas the first time at the age of 17! Not bad for an American boy of his generation. Rav Gettinger received much of his shimush (apprenticeship) in psak halacha from Harav Eliyahu Henkin, the preeminent posek of America in his era.

Rav BenZion Chayim Shloime Twerski, zt”l, was the oldest of five very esteemed brothers: the late well-known prolific Torah author and psychiatrist Rabbi Dr. Avraham Twerski; Rabbi Motel Twerski of Flatbush and, yibadlu lechayim, the Milwaukee Hornosteipel Rebbe Rav Michel Twerski, shlit”a; and law professor Rabbi Aharon Twerski, shlit”a.

I first met Rav Shloime in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, when I spent the summer there on a SEED program. He was there for a Shabbos in honor of the yahrzeit of his father, a rebbe who had served for many, many decades as rav of a shul in Milwaukee.? My kesher with Rav Shloime deepened a few years later, when I was in kollel in Baltimore and his son-in-law, Rabbi Yitzchok (Itchie) Lowenbraun, and his wife Miriam (zichronam livracha) regularly ran kiruv Shabbatons. Rabbi Lowenbraun asked if my wife and I would like to join them on a Shabbaton. We did, and after that we began seeing Rav Shloime regularly, as he came in several times a year for these Shabbatons.