Sinai Indaba - Rabbi Krohn - Opening Address: 'Creating A Better World'

Short Summary

Main recommendation: Do not merely touch the edge of the mountain of Torah; climb to the top by listening, absorbing, and committing to Torah learning with real diligence. Rabbi Krohn illustrates this with stories of a dying learner in a summer yeshiva, Toscanini's perfect ear for a missing violinist, and a father and sons reunited after the Holocaust.

Key Points

• The Kotzker Rebbe reads Moshe's warning about Har Sinai ("do not touch the edge") as a call to climb the entire mountain rather than stop at the edge.
• A businessman with liver cancer studied Gemara with great diligence at a summer Torah kollel, saying Torah sustained him even while he was dying.
• Rabbi Plaut's point: each Jew is a musician in God's symphony and should be the best musician he can be at his own level, without copying others.
• Toscanini heard over shortwave radio that one violinist was missing, because a conductor knows every note, while the audience hears only the overall sound.
• The Aigar family story shows a father urging his son Yaakov to keep his eyes on younger brother Avraham, and their eventual reunion at the Milan train station.
• The speaker frames the purpose of Sinai and Shavuot as God drawing close to Klal Yisrael again, and as a path toward Moshiach.

Details Worth Noting

• Concrete instructions: Commit fully to the learning you are doing; listen, absorb, and commit during the program; keep climbing rather than touching only the edge; ask questions freely when you are stuck, as the businessman did; and be the best version of yourself at your own level rather than imitating others.
• The Toscanini story: the writer had to confirm the missing violinist with the music director, and the count was 15 violinists expected, 14 present, out of 120 musicians.
• The Aigar family: Rabbi Moshe Aigar, a rabbi from Dosh, Poland, was separated from his sons Yaakov (24) and Avraham (15), and his wife was killed in July 1944.
• Yaakov gave Pesha, the widow of a man he saw killed, a letter confirming her husband's death so she would not be considered an agunah, which later led her to the rabbi at Bergen-Belsen and to the father's discovery that his son was alive.
• The reunion took about three months to arrange, and the sons were at the Milan train station.

Bottom Line

Torah study is meant to be pursued wholeheartedly and personally, and the speaker's stories suggest that God is seeking closeness with each person who commits to climbing toward Him.