Why the Phone Rang Every Week During the Class of Rav Drukman zt”l
This photo was taken at my chuppah almost 27 years ago. The older rabbi reading our ketuba was my husband’s rosh yeshiva, Rav Chaim Drukman, zt”l, who passed away yesterday at the age of 90.
30 years ago, Rav Drukman converted my husband at his yeshiva, Yeshivat Ohr Etsion, and Josh ended up staying for another 2 years after he decided that his studies at Wesleyan University couldn’t compete with the sweetness of Torah. But Rav Drukman wasn’t just the rosh yeshiva of Ohr Etsion. He was (as his Wikipedia entry puts it) “The most senior spiritual leader of the Religious Zionist community.” The beloved grandfather of the kippot srugot.
Despite today’s relentless thunderstorms across Israel, thousands came to accompany Rav Drukman to his final resting place, not far from the yeshiva he built and shepherded for almost 60 years.
Here’s one of my husband’s favorite stories about Rav Drukman:
“Every Thursday at 11 PM, we had a class on Rav Kook with Rav Drukman at his home. Rav Drukman would always sit behind his desk which was piled high with around 20 holy books next to an old-style rotary phone. And every week without fail, that old rotary phone would ring in the middle of the class. The students would watch on as Rav Drukman patiently assisted that week’s caller with his or her decidely un-rabbinic inquiry. For example, one week the caller was a confused elderly woman who didn’t have the funds to buy the medication prescribed at her most recent doctor’s appointment. Later on, a rabbi close to Rav Drukman explained to me that these weekly calls weren’t a random interruption as I’d assumed. Rav Drukman purposely left his phone on and answered his regular calls in front of his students in order to teach us that Yeshivat Ohr Etsion wasn’t meant to be a cloistered ivory tower. Being a student of Torah, he showed us by example, was a privilege as well as a responsibility. A privilege to learn and grow as well as our responsibility to love another as we love ourselves, to give back to a fellow Jew in need whenever we have the chance.”
B”H, my husband was blessed to have been a recipient of Rav Drukman’s kindness, wisdom, and love for his fellow Jews. And by extension, so was I and our entire family.
Yehee Zichro Baruch.