Maran Rav Chaim Kanievsky ZT”L – Rav Eliezer Berland Shlit”a’s Eulogy

WITH GREAT GRIEF AND SORROW THE WORLD WAS INFORMED OF THE PASSING OF MARAN, PRINCE OF THE TORAH, RAV CHAIM KANIEVSKY ZT”L.

THE STRONG CONNECTION BETWEEN OUR REBBE, RAV ELIEZER BERLAND SHLIT”A AND HIS FAMILY WITH THE KANIEVSKY FAMILY IN GENERAL AND RAV CHAIM HIMSELF IS WELL KNOWN.  THE BERLAND FAMILY PURCHASED THE APARTMENT OF THE STEIPLER (RAV CHAIM’S FATHER, RAV YAAKOV YISRAEL KANIEVSKY ZT”L), AND THEY WERE NEIGHBORS OVER THE COURSE OF TWENTY YEARS, AS THE RAV RELATES BELOW IN HIS EULOGY.

“We were neighbors for twenty years, doors across from one another.  I would see him every day several times, pray with him at Lederman together.  This was our regular synagogue over the course of twenty years.  My children, from the day they were born, all of them prayed at Lederman together with Rav Chaim.  All of them merited to see him every day.

“Really this was something of the likes of which hasn’t been for hundreds of years, such a revelation of G-dliness that is revealed within flesh and blood.  This is something which it’s impossible to contain or understand.  It’s impossible to measure it with any measure in the world, to live in proximity to the giant amongst giants, ‘the great man who is a giant amongst giants,’ to live for twenty years beside him every day.

“When the Rabbanit [Berland] would teach until four in the afternoon, and the girls would return from school and there was no food in the empty refrigerator, from the age of six to fifteen they would regularly go up to Bat Sheva [Rabbanit Kanievsky a”h], [and] she would feed them.  This was every day from the age of six until the age of fifteen.  All my daughters would eat by Bat Sheva.  She would come down and prepare food for them.

“We were close to each other like family mamash, more than family, and Bat Sheva mamash was a mother to my daughters.  She would take care of them and nourish them, because from eight in the morning already until four in the afternoon, the Rabbanit wasn’t home.  [Rabbanit Kanievsky] took care of sustaining them and took care of everything.  If not for Bat Sheva, who knows how they could have grown up.  Then this was material help which was totally spiritual, because Bat Sheva and Rav Chaim were an aspect of the cherubs of the Ark of the Covenant!  In every generation, there is a couple who are the cherubs of the Ark of the Covenant.  In our generation this was Rav Chaim and Bat Sheva.  They were the cherubs whose ‘faces are man [facing] his brother.’

“So we know the situation of the generation, that Hashem forgives all iniquities, because the death of Miriam is next to the Red Heifer [in the Torah], because the death of the Tzaddik atones more than the Red Heifer.

“The death of Tzaddikim is twice as hard as the destruction of the Holy Temple.

“This day is a terrible and awful day.  It’s totally impossible to bear it, the terrible tragedy.  This is the most terrible day that could be; it’s impossible to describe at all.  We didn’t dream that there would be such a thing.  We were sure that Rav Chaim would live until 120 with us together and would continue to lead and guide us with his light and counsel.  The very fact that he is alive here in this world draws the G-dly light, the holy Shechinah [Divine presence].  Because the Tzaddik is the Shechinah and his wife is the help to the Shechinah; she is the Sefirah [Divine emanation] of Malchut [Kingship] of the Shechinah.

“Rav Chaim and Bat Sheva, both of them together, with their children, grandchildren and great grandchildren, continue to illuminate the Jewish people, they continue to shine!  It’s forbidden to think that the soul departs.  It’s written in ‘Gesher HaChaim’ that the greatest sin is to think that the soul departs.  This is the greatest iniquity of all iniquities.  The soul doesn’t depart; it remains with us!  As it’s written in the Gemara Shabbat 152, that Rabbi Yehudah went to comfort someone who didn’t have family.  So he brought him ten people, and after the Shiva, he came [the dead person in a dream] and said, ‘I was there!’

“As Rav says, ‘Deliver a moving eulogy, because I will be standing there’ (Shabbat 153a).  ‘Deliver a moving eulogy!’ – however much we eulogize it’s only a thorn in the sea.  It’s not even a drop from millions and myriads of kindnesses and good that Rabbi Chaim did with us through the essence of his being amongst us, through the essence of the Divine light which he would draw onto us, because all the Torah of the generation – boys and girls, all the strengthening was in his merit.  Everything is his merit.

“Just to see him for one second, it would be possible to learn Torah all 120 years continuously without distraction, without taking the head out of the book.  This was the lesson that we learned from Rabbi Chaim, because I followed after him for twenty years -- in his life, he never took his head out of the book!  Whether walking to Kollel Chazon Ish, whether… she would run, run after him; I remember to this day.  He wouldn’t look at all if she was walking with him or not.  On the way with the children to kindergarten, he would only hold the book!  His face only in the book.  With difficulty he knew the streets, how to reach Kollel Chazon Ish!  So I followed after him for twenty years every day.  Such an exceptional figure already won’t be until our righteous Mashiach comes!  He is the letters of Mashiach [the initial letters of Maran Shemaryahu Yosef Chaim, his name, are the letters of ‘Mashiach’].

“He was the Mashiach of the generation without any doubt!  If we were worthy, he would have been revealed, we would have seen his revelation.  As the Chatam Sofer says in Siman 98, Choshen Mishpat in Likutim, that Mashiach is found in every generation.  There is no generation without Mashiach.  Only that we don’t have the merit.  We don’t have the merit that King Mashiach will be revealed to us.  But he was King Mashiach of this generation without any doubt.  He was really Mashiach, and that he departed suddenly is [because of] the sins of the generation; this atones for the generation.

“Because really there was a decree of extermination on the entire Jewish people and he now sweetened this decree.

“Because in every generation there are decrees of extermination.  Therefore, Mordechai couldn’t devote himself to learning, because then there were terrible decrees of extermination, ‘to exterminate, kill, destroy all the Jews.’  Therefore, he ‘found favor with the multitude of his brethren,’ because they didn’t understand that he was obligated to fight the decrees of extermination.  However, the moment that [the decrees] stopped, he ascended to the Land of Israel and returned to his learning, after the [time of] the Megilah.  This was Rabbi Chaim, who sweetened all the decrees.

“All that we’re living here in the Holy Land already for 94 years, we are living here without enemy or destroyer.  No enemy succeeds.  There are endless enemies and only the merit of Rabbi Chaim stands for us, and it will stand for us for our generation and for all the coming generations until our righteous Mashiach comes, speedily in our days, Amen.”