Shmaryahu Yosef Chaim Kanievsky was born in 1928 in Pinsk, now Belarus. His father, Rabbi Yaakov Y. Kanievsky, was the widely revered Steipler Ga’on. When Chaim was six, the Kavievsky family moved to Israel. On the sea voyage, Chaim sat day after day with his father, absorbed in Torah study. As they neared the shores of the Holy Land, they were about to complete study of Exodus, when suddenly his father kissed the book and closed it. “Let’s wait until we arrive,” he explained, “so we can celebrate in the Holy Land.”
This gave young Chaim not only an appreciation for the preciousness of Torah study, but also love for the land of Israel. Since then, he never departed the borders of Israel, and became a lifetime advocate for aliyah, encouraging people to move to Israel.
Rav Chaim’s childhood home was the center of the Torah world, where people from around the world gathered to confer with some of the greatest rabbis of the 20th century. In addition to his revered father, Rav Chaim’s uncle was Rabbi Avraham Y. Karelitz (the Chazon Ish), the premier Torah leader during the critical years of Israeli independence. The Chazon Ish, himself childless, showered Rav Chaim with constant tutelage and individual attention, grooming him in the art of Torah scholarship.
Rav Chaim, a child prodigy with a photographic memory, elucidated complex talmudic teachings at a young age. As a boy, he studied at Yeshiva Tiferes Tzion in Bnei Brak, amusing himself during recess breaks – not with a ball or board game – but by counting the number of times various sages are quoted in the Talmud. For his bar mitzvah, he completed the Babylonian Talmud (Shas), a feat that many do not manage to achieve in a lifetime.
In the 1948 Israeli War of Independence, when five Arab armies attacked, a state of emergency was declared and every Israeli was mobilized into the IDF, no exceptions. At the time, Rav Chaim was a 20-year-old student at the Lomza Yeshiva in Petach Tikva. On one occasion, a truck pulled up to the yeshiva and transferred all the students to the site of an artillery battle near Tel Aviv. Rav Chaim was ordered to climb a large hill and, due to the vast shortage of armaments, was given a stick and two stones to fend off potential attackers. Rav Chaim took along a volume of Talmud, climbed the hill and – in classic form – managed to study Torah the entire time until the skirmish was over.
Rav Chaim married Batsheva, the daughter of Judaism’s leading legal decisor, Rabbi
Yosef S. Elyashiv and granddaughter of Rabbi Aryeh Levine, beloved Tzaddik of Jerusalem. While Rav Chaim’s illustrious lineage was unmatched, that alone is insufficient to ensure success. Metaphorically, “nine zeros is not a billion” unless an actual number is added in front. So too, Rav Chaim was surrounded by Judaism’s leading Sages, but the number he added at the beginning made it all count.
Torah Study🔥 Rav Chaim was a private citizen, leading no synagogue or yeshiva, and with no official teaching or rabbinic position. For years, he occupied a nondescript seat in Kollel Chazon Ish, conducting uninterrupted in-depth research and writing. As a young man, he considered taking a paid position, but his father said: “Your contribution is to sit and learn. Period.” Rav Chaim never wavered from that advice, becoming this generation’s paradigm of has’mada, diligent nonstop Torah study.
Inside Rav Chaim’s modest home at 23 Rashbam Street, every room and hallway was lined with bookshelves, crammed with thousands of Torah commentaries. On Shabbat, Rav Chaim would play a game with his children: They would name a book title, and Rav Chaim would educate and entertain them by immediately identifying its precise location among the volumes filling every inch of wall space.
Rav Chaim maintained a breathtaking schedule, awakening at 2 a.m. for a rigorous 20-hour-a-day study of Kol HaTorah Kulah – the entire biblical and rabbinic corpus including Tanach, Mishnah, Babylonian and Jerusalem Talmuds, Midrashim, Zohar, and all the primary works of Jewish law: Maimonides’ Mishneh Torah, Tur, Shulchan Aruch (Code of Jewish Law), and Mishnah Berurah.
Rav Chaim toiled day and night, saying that the mental energy expended on Torah study is more physically taxing than digging ditches or laying bricks. Few people manage to study these intricate works in a lifetime. Rav Chaim completed them all – every single year. This year, he completed the annual cycle one day before his death!
Rav Chaim had a Google-level command of the entire canon of Jewish writings at his fingertips. He was once asked how many times the name “Moshe” appears in the Torah. Rav Chaim made a quick calculation and replied, “614.” The questioner countered that a computer search says the total is 616. Rav Chaim explained how the computer erred: While the name Moshe (mem-shin-heh) is written 614 times, the same letter-combination appears two additional times – in Exodus 12:4 and Deuteronomy 15:2 – to spell other words.
On another occasion, Rav Chaim was asked to list all the two-letter combinations that never appear together in a Hebrew word. He immediately rattled off גט, זץ, זט, גק, and סץ.
Modest Home
The Kanievsky’s had a small apartment, and the children slept in a room filled to the brim with beds. When a wealthy visitor once offered to buy them a spacious house, they declined, explaining that it encourages people to see that economic hardship does not preclude devotion to Torah study.
Rav Chaim learned before dawn with a study partner, and they wanted to be able to awaken and study right away. Despite the already over-crowded conditions, a spot was found for the study partner to sleep in the Kanievsky’s apartment on a regular basis.
Rav Chaim published dozens of volumes that are modern classics, including Derech Emunah, Derech Chochma, Shoneh Halachos, and Ta’ama D’kra. With unparalleled breadth of knowledge, Rav Chaim was uniquely qualified in obscure topics of Jewish law, such as lunar cycles, agricultural laws in Israel, and a groundbreaking commentary on the Jerusalem Talmud.
They preferred a modest apartment, to demonstrate that economic hardship does not preclude devotion to Torah study.
On one occasion, Rav Chaim was composing a complex treatise on the kosher species of locusts (Leviticus 11:21-22). He was having difficulty understanding the limb structure of kosher locusts, when suddenly a locust jumped through the window and landed on his desk. He examined the legs, obtained the necessary information, and the locust departed.
Rav Chaim authored tens of thousands of rabbinic responsa on nearly every conceivable aspect of Torah. Each week he would sequester himself in a room with stacks of hundreds of letters, and patiently respond to every single one. Due to the sheer volume and to maximize his time, Rav Chaim’s responses were record-breaking brief – often limited to one word in microscopic letters, occasionally adding a reference to the Jewish codes.
Rav Chaim made an art out of brevity, to save precious seconds. When delivering words of encouragement, he invented the word “Boo-ha,” an acronym for “blessings and success.”
Home Visit
Rav Chaim was renowned for being honored multiple times – every day – as sandek, holding the baby at a Bris Milah. In 1999, Rav Chaim accepted my invitation to attend the Bris of my son. At the appointed hour, he swept through the front door of my home and, with nary a word, unfurled the tattered tallis – inherited from his saintly father – that he wore at every Bris. In our living room, Rav Chaim served as sandek, lovingly dropping wine into the baby’s mouth, imparting spiritual influence and praying intently for the baby’s future success.
Serving as sandek is considered a merit for becoming wealthy, and someone once asked Rav Chaim, “If you serve so often as sandek, why aren’t you wealthy? He replied that “wealth” is not limited to money, and quoted his father that wealth is attained by publishing Torah commentaries. Rav Chaim added his own opinion that grandchildren are a source of tremendous wealth.
Rav Chaim’s time was highly structured, and keeping to such a rigorous schedule comes with intendant risks, particularly regarding one’s private life. Rebbetzin Kanievsky had every right to voice opposition to his hyper-focus on Torah study, which ostensibly came at her expense. Yet she was his biggest supporter. Someone once made Rav Chaim a generous offer, which involved him spending two minutes not related to Torah study or community matters. Rav Chaim presented the proposal to his wife, who nixed the idea, saying that two additional minutes of Torah study were worth more to her than anything else.
Rav Chaim was a living, breathing Torah scroll, infused with a pure Torah perspective of the world, a living embodiment of its eternal values.
Fittingly, Rav Chaim passed away on Shushan Purim, a day when Haman – descendant of the biblical Amalek – fought to annihilate the Jewish people. Amalek represents those ideologies antithetical to Torah; our best weapon against that is the study and practice of Torah. For 94 years, Rav Chaim Kanievsky zt”l fulfilled that mandate to the utmost.
Yehei Zichru Baruch
