For the past week, since I received the horrible news that my beloved teacher, Rabbi Chaim Druckman, was called to join his creator, I have had trouble finding the words to describe my feelings and what was going through my head. Now that the shiva is over, I will try to put my thoughts on paper.
My connection with Rabbi Chaim Druckman began years before I was born; in 1983, my father arrived in Israel alone and came to study at the Or Etzion yeshiva. Very quickly, he built a close personal connection with Rabbi Druckman, and so did my grandparents, may they rest in peace, who would host Rabbi Druckman in their home in New York, just as the Druckman family would host them in their home in Merkaz Shapira, Israel. After my grandfather passed, my father became even closer to Rabbi Druckman.
Just hours after I was born, my father left the hospital in central Israel and drove south to deliver the news to the beloved rabbi. Rabbi Druckman held me at my brit, and at my bar mitzvah, he spent the entire weekend with us in Jerusalem, giving part of his speech in English since I had yet not learned Hebrew.
When the time came for me to choose a place to spend my gap year after high school, I was unable to resist going to Or Etzion since I was raised on Rabbi Druckman’s teachings. When I arrived at the yeshiva, no place felt more at home than his study in his home, the same place where groundbreaking political and social movements were formed, where I had spent some time as a small child and would spend many more hours over the years. In yeshiva, we would say that we got to see the great rabbi “in his slippers," that is, we would spend so much time with him, from lectures to Shabbat meals to barbecues out in the wilderness on Independence day. That “gap year” turned into seven years and I honestly still haven’t fully left the yeshiva four years after that.
My life would be nothing without the Torah that I learned from Rabbi Druckman every part of my life can be traced back to his lessons, from my decision to immigrate to Israel and serve in the IDF to my decision to pursue a career in media.
Over the years in yeshiva, including the short period that I had the honor of carrying his books and walking him home on Friday nights after the Shabbat meal, I got to know Rabbi Druckman well. I got to see how this elderly man connected with the youngest of students, even those in preschool. How he cared so much about his students, he would make sure to read the yeshiva’s weekly newsletter, including the joke-laden news section, to keep up with the students. How when the yeshiva was in session over a Shabbat he would never go away. Even when he was asked to come to spend the weekend in a village that had just suffered two terrible terror attacks, he was happy to but insisted on bringing all of us along. How he was perfectly moderate, not ridiculously conservative but also not too liberal, not far-right wing but certainly not a leftist.
I saw how he was so simple and modest, how he would never call himself “Rabbi”, and how he would sit with us in the chartered bus when the yeshiva traveled to Jerusalem for a memorial or prayer service. How everything to him was so simple, how when someone would come to him with a perplexing problem he would answer “What’s the problem?” and give a solution. How he would care and know about every student, like the time I was walking him home one Friday night before my parents were due to visit and he turned to me and said “Nu Yitzchak, we’ll see your parents this week?” or the time only a year ago when my father was mourning my grandmother and he called from his hospital bed to comfort my father, as difficult as it was for him to talk. How even though we had our disagreements over the years, ones that even made it into the media, he still loved me, and I loved him because the love between a grandfather and a grandson never wavers.
The steady balance between public, family, and yeshiva always amazed me, he seemed to be putting his all into everything all the same time. It was inspiring to see his ability to connect between opposite ends of the spectrum, something to see again over the past week at the funeral and the days I spent at the shiva, Bennett sitting next to Netanyahu, Matan Kahana (National Unity) walking alongside Avi Maoz (Noam), Rabbi Yehoshua Magnis from the deeply orthodox Merkaz Harav yeshiva eulogizing right after Rabbi Yaakov Medan of the liberal Har Etzion yeshiva, and so many more.
But again, above all, he was my teacher and like a grandfather to me, I’m proud to have known him and to have learned from him and I will miss him so much.