Azriel Chayim Behr

On Monday 18 May 2009, כ"ד אייר תשס"ט, our son entered into the Bris of Avraham Avinu, and was given the name Azriel Chayim - עזריאל חיים.

This is a first for us. For all our previous children we put a lot of thought into the meaning of their names, the etymology of each name, the balance between the first and second names, etc. etc. This time around it didn't really matter to us what the names Azriel or Chayim mean or how they complement each other, or even that "Azriel" sounds uncomfortably like our older son's name "Ezra", which could possibly giving the impression that we're obsessed with help (עזר being the root of both names)! There was almost no need for discussion; we simply knew, even from before he was conceived, that our next son would bear the name Azriel Chayim. Because that is the name of the person who, in my humblest opinion, was probably the greatest human being I have ever met.

That's him on the left: Rabbi Azriel Chaim Goldfein זצ"ל, the Rosh Yeshiva of the Yeshiva Gedola of Johannesburg, who passed away about a year and a half ago at the relatively young age of 73. I have written before about him, in a more oblique way; and many others have delivered spoken and written hespedim for him. I'd like to add my angle here.

Rabbi Goldfein was one of those rare individuals who was beloved by practically everyone he ever met. He loved and could relate to every human being, whether the greatest Torah scholar, an assimilated Jew or a non-Jewish nurse taking his blood pressure. He could converse freely and easily with anyone, with sincerity and interest, as one person said at his funeral, as if they were his best friend in the world. "Nay," said this speaker, "when he was talking to you, you were his best friend in the world."

He was a man of profound humility. He did not puff up in self-importance; he declined to grow a beard (other than during sefira and bein hameitzarim); while always dignified, he never felt the need to dress in an overtly "rabbinic" way. I heard that at one major public dinner, there was one table reserved for the Rabbis of the community. Rabbi Goldfein was among the first to arrive, and as he was making to sit down at this table, one of the waiters came and said, "Excuse me, sir, you can't sit here; this table is reserved for the Rabbis!" Rabbi Goldfein simply thanked the waiter for pointing this out, and politely moved away, mingled with other guests, and only later discreetly returned to the Rabbis' table along with his colleagues.

He drilled home the importance of derech eretz, how important it is to behave like a mensch, to dress like a mensch, to relate to others like a mensch. Derech eretz kadma laTorah, he always said: if you don't have the most basic level of menschkeit, how is it possible that the higher level of Torah is going to stick with you? Can you have a house without a foundation?

And speaking of Torah, he was a person who was, if you can have such a thing, the embodiment of pure, unadulterated Torah, with no add-ons of politics or other agendas. Once an Israeli professor met him, learned he was a Rosh Yeshiva, and asked him which camp he was from. "What do you mean, what camp am I from?" asked Rav Goldfein. "I'm a Rosh Yeshiva, not a Rosh Machaneh!" He had no interest in these political squabbles. All he wanted was to know the emes - how to understand the daf, what is the halacha; what does Hashem want us to do? And a love of Torah! He was generally a happy and optimistic person - but when he was giving shiur, he never stopped smiling - not for a minute! Even when he was in hospital, towards the end, in great pain and discomfort, and under strict instructions to relax and not strain himself, he could not resist engaging in Torah discussions with his colleagues and students who came to visit him. He would simply forget his pain, becoming more and more animated and excited as the discussions progressed, until the doctors would come and eject his guests and sternly warn him (again) that he needed to rest.

But to me, the one thing that he represented most strongly was balance. As I mentioned in my previous article, it's actually pretty easy to be stringent all the time. All you have to do is work on your gevura, your ability to restrain yourself, and you can say "no" to pretty much anything. But that's not the whole picture - because for every stringency there is an associated leniency. You want to make your restaurant "mehadrin"? If all restaurants do that, all the "regular" shochtim will lose their parnassa! You want a new, nicer mikveh, with more hiddurim? And cast aspersions on all the people who used the old mikveh for decades before? Every choice in life is something to be weighed up carefully, and casually choosing to err on the side of (apparent) stringency is not automatically the safest route!

Rabbi Goldfein to me represented the struggle for balance - and a thoroughly successful one at that. It is our beracha to our child, Azriel Chayim, that he should take after his namesake in all the aspects I have described above, and that his struggle for perfection throughout his life should be similarly blessed.