Who Will Comfort Us Now

Rav Nachman Bulman, zt”l, taught and inspired thousands of individuals, but I have the privilege of being able to say, “He was my father.” Although I cannot do him justice, I will try to convey something of the man my father was.

My grandfather, Meir Bulman, lost his first wife in childbirth, and his second wife and newborn son in a pogrom. He was left alone to raise two small daughters. All this happened before he was 25 years old. He married his third wife, my grandmother Ettel, and their firstborn son died of famine during World War I. My grandparents then moved to America.

Years passed; there were no more children. They wrote to the Imrei Emes, the Gerrer Rebbe, for a berachah. At age 43, my grandmother gave birth to my father, Nachman—“the comforter.” All his life, my father kept a framed photograph of the Imrei Emes on his desk.

“Daddy, tell us again about the shtetl where you grew up,” my siblings and I used to joke. We knew our father was American-born, and he spoke English eloquently. Yet there was always something of the foreigner about him. His parents were Gerrer Chassidim from Poland; his Yiddish was warm and rich. He spoke intimately and poignantly of the great Torah personalities of Poland, Russia and Germany.

My father attended yeshivah for elementary and high school, which was highly unusual in those days. In Yeshivas Rav Yitzchak Elchanan (Yeshiva University), he was a talmid of Rav Joseph B. Soloveitchik. Other rebbeim he loved included Rav Moshe Bick and Rav Moshe Polayeff. Ultimately my father received his semichah and BA in philosophy from YU.

It was hard then to find a girl who wanted to marry a rabbinical student, but fortunately the Creator had prepared my mother, Shaindel Freund (may she live to be 120). Like my Zeide Meir, my Zeide Moshe Yechiel held on to Yiddishkeit with all his might in America (“by his fingernails,” my mother says). Despite a limited Jewish education, my mother had a passionate desire to marry a yeshivah bachur. When my parents met, Adam truly found his rib.

They married in 1950 and my father became rabbi of a small shul in Danville, Virginia (the city where I was born). The shul, unlike many others, had a kosher mechitzah, a ladies’ balcony.

To his dismay, my father discovered on erev Rosh Hashanah that the elderly women sat downstairs on Yom Tov, next to a dubious partition. A hastily kashered mechitzah was not an aesthetic success, and there was much murmuring. One lady sat outside all morning in protest. My father scrapped his prepared sermon, and delivered an impassioned defense of the sanctity of the synagogue. His eloquence quelled the rebellion, and he remained in Danville for three more years. Many of his congregants became lifelong friends and loyalists. A surprising number of Danville children were inspired by my father to pursue careers in kiruv, chinuch and the rabbinate.

After leaving Danville, my father served as YU’s mashgiach ruchani (spiritual advisor) for a short time. My father ultimately moved away from the YU orbit, yet often expressed hakaras hatov (gratitude) for what he had gained there.

During the 1950s my father was one of the founders of NCSY, the OU program that brings thousands of irreligious teenagers to Torah. Many people who are now grandparents still remember his electrifying addresses at NCSY conventions.

In 1957, with four young children, my parents moved to Newport News, Virginia. The nearest day school was in Norfolk, an hour away. Our carpool was not always punctual, and one of the fathers threatened to put his daughter in public school. One day, when it was my father’s turn to drive, he was determined to get the children to school on time, despite a terrible pain in his side. In Norfolk, my father collapsed with what proved to be a ruptured appendix. The other father made no more threats, and all his children grew up to build Torah-true homes.

The following year, my father started a day school in Newport News. He taught second grade himself. My siblings and I have vivid memories of him teaching our classes how to daven, telling us that every word of tefillah creates its own malach [angel]–but if the words are rushed and mispronounced, an army of crippled angels go up to heaven, with broken legs or arms! Like the people of Danville, many Newport News congregants maintain strong bonds with my family to this day.

From 1963 to 1967, my parents lived in the Bronx, New York, where my father served as a roving ambassador and troubleshooter for Torah Umesorah, the association of Jewish day schools. He founded the Jewish Observer and served as its first editor. Working with his close friend, Eliyahu Kitov, he translated two of Kitov’s classic books, A Jew and His Home and The Book of Our Heritage. My father’s final resting place is on Har HaMenuchos, near that of his beloved friend.

My youngest brother was born just before the Six Day War, and soon after that my father became the rabbi of the Young Israel of Far Rockaway, a post he held for eight years. As time passed, my father’s longing for Eretz Yisrael became more fervid; he finally fulfilled his lifelong dream of aliyah in 1975.

My father won the respect and admiration of rabbanim, roshei yeshivah and Chassidic rebbeim in Israel across the Orthodox spectrum. He maintained a unique perspective, seeing all sides of every Orthodox group in Israel with perfect clarity. Identifying fully with no group, he was beloved and sought out by all. At his funeral, one of the speakers compared him to Queen Esther, who was claimed by each of the Persian  Empire’s 127 provinces as its own.

While living in Jerusalem, my father played a vital role in thwarting one of Mayor Teddy Kollek’s more nefarious schemes. Kollek thought he could alter the city’s religious character by building a sports stadium near a religious neighborhood. Bringing together Orthodox leaders from the left and the right, my father succeeded in stopping the mayor. As Rav Noach Heisler said at the funeral, Rav Bulman was owed a debt of gratitude not only by Sanhedria Murchevet but by all of Jerusalem, for having saved the sanctity of the holy city.

For many years my father was mashgiach ruchani at Ohr Somayach. With his dream of building up Eretz Yisrael, my father established Kiryat Nachliel, an English-speaking community in the northern town of Migdal Haemek. He commuted to Jerusalem weekly so that he could continue to deliver shiurim at Ohr Somayach.

My father envisioned that his community would be a kehillah, like Rav Samson Raphael Hirsch’s in Frankfurt. It would have a shul and a yeshivah, with some community members learning Torah, others working to support Torah and others serving in the army.

Former Kiryat Nachliel residents Rabbi and Mrs. Dovid Levine remember the time they lived there as being the peak years of their lives. In his hesped of my father, Rabbi Levine said, “Rav Hirsch in Frankfurt had it easy. He only had to deal with Germans. Rav Bulman had to deal with Americans and Israelis, Georgians, Russians, ba’alei teshuvah and frum from birth, kollel men and working men–and the amazing thing is that he kept them all in a state of peace and harmony, with everyone feeling that they were working for a common goal–to serve Hakadosh Baruch Hu.”

Unfortunately the community did not prove to be economically viable. Yet people who lived there during the 14 years it lasted remember with longing the years of inspiration, and the sense of different kinds of Jews being united in one great enterprise.

One story we heard the shivah was somewhat amusing. A man from Kiryat Nachliel had a dog to which he was very attached. My father hated dogs, but he once saw this man’s dog in the local shopping center and realized it was lost. He and another man coaxed the dog into the back seat of a car and returned it to its owner.

A year later, the dog was hit by a car and killed. The grief-stricken owner buried the dog in his yard, and asked my father to say a few words. And he did! My siblings and I were convulsed with laughter. “Daddy made a hesped for a dog?!” But though the dog’s owner realized his request was inappropriate, he remembered above all my father’s kindness.

A man who visited my father in the hospital near the end of his life said gratefully, “I remember how you welcomed me to your community in Migdal Haemek even though I wore a knitted kippah, and how you even said to me, ‘We need more kippot serugot in Migdal Haemek.’”

My father did not believe that the existence of the State of Israel indicated aschalta deGeulah, that the Redemption had already begun. Nor did he celebrate Yom Ha’atzmaut. Yet he most certainly ascribed cosmic significance to the fact that Jews had control of Eretz Yisrael, that millions of Jews were living there and that there were more yeshivos and Torah learning there than at any time since the Destruction of the Temple. He believed we were in the times known as the “Footsteps of the Messiah.”

My father inspired many American Jews to go on aliyah, but there were also many whom he advised to stay in America. In particular, having seen so many American youngsters lost to Yiddishkeit in Israel, he strongly dissuaded people from moving there with teenagers. “It is better to be in America and long for Eretz Yisrael than to be in Eretz Yisrael and long for America.”

My father was an Agudist, but an unusual one: He had a sympathetic view of Mizrachi and a deep appreciation for the writings of Rav Kook. He once said to me, “Look at the students of the serious Mizrachi yeshivos and their wives. Their observance of halachah and their standards of tzenius are impeccable.”

Another time, on a Friday night at the Kotel, we saw a group of students from Yeshivat Hakotel in their short-sleeved white shirts and black pants. My father said to me, “Look at those bachurim. They look so Shabbosdik, and they’re dressed appropriately for this country. It’s a pity our community didn’t adopt their style of dress in Eretz Yisrael.”

As a Chassid himself, my father had warm feelings towards fellow Chassidim. He was intimately acquainted with the writings of all the Chassidic masters, including those of Chabad. Despite his appreciation for Chabad, he was wary of what he considered their messianic excesses. He once told me, “We Jews have to stay on the broad highway. Lubavitch is an exotic garden off the side of the road.” Yet he also said, “As long as they haven’t gone over the line of halachah, you can’t read them out of Klal Yisrael.” His wariness was heightened by the bizarre behavior of many Lubavitchers after their rebbe’s death. While he may not have agreed with every word, my father spoke warmly of David Berger’s book (The Rebbe, the Messiah, and the Scandal of Orthodox Indifference, Oxford, 2001) and said, “A blessing on his head.”

My father once made a wry comment about various principles of Judaism that had been appropriated by one or another stream. “Because of the Zionists, we can’t love Eretz Yisrael anymore. Because of Lubavitch, we’ve stopped yearning for Mashiach. Because of Reform, we can’t have decorum in shul. If this keeps up, frum Jews will have to give up the whole Torah.”

For many years after my marriage, my husband and I had no children. At one point, a woman in Israel who had one son asked my father for a berachah for more children. He told her what the Gemara says: If you pray for someone else, and you need the same thing yourself, you will be answered first. He gave her my name.

We were living in Tennessee when we received a call about a Jewish baby born with defective kidneys. Fearing the worst, the parents were placing him with a Christian couple for adoption. Would Michael and I take him? It was 3 am Jerusalem time when I woke my father and asked him what to do. He replied, “Go get him. However long he lives, his neshamah will know that it is in a home where there is Kiddush Friday night, where there is Shabbos, where there is kashrus.” Our miracle son, Shai, celebrated his Bar Mitzvah a few months ago. His health is fine, baruch Hashem.

When our son was two, my second child, Naomi, was born in Atlanta, Georgia. That very same day, in Israel, the woman who had asked my father for a berachah gave birth to her long-awaited second child, a son. She called my parents to invite them to the bris. (I also have another daughter, Shifra, now 9.)

The above story is found in The Footsteps of the Maggid, by Paysach Krohn (New York: 1992) but the names were changed at my father’s request. He didn’t see himself as a rebbe; he didn’t want people to come to him expecting miracles.

My father also had a beautiful, haunting, tenor voice. In his youth he had learned the classical Modzitzer niggunim. When my father sang at the Shabbos table, one felt the presence of King David, the Sweet Singer of Israel. When my father read Megillas Esther, he read Esther’s line, “If I perish, I perish,” with tragic pathos.

No one in the world davened like my father. Once he told a student who had doubts regarding his emunah, “Come talk to me after Musaf on Rosh Hashanah.” After hearing my father daven, the young man said he had no more doubts. Anyone who heard my father daven the Neilah prayer on Yom Kippur sprouted wings and flew to heaven. Not since Elijah on Mount Carmel did anyone cry out so exultantly as my father did: Hashem Hu HaElokim! The Lord, He alone is G-d!

The wife of the Novominsker Rebbe, Rebbetzin Perlow, z”l, once said to me, “No one has your father’s combination of intellect and heart.” My father knew every sefer in his vast library. At the same time, he felt deeply for every troubled Jew. He understood people in a profound, even uncanny, way. In a few words he could save a marriage, free an agunah, bring an errant child back into the fold, mend a broken heart.

My father was a very emotional man, who laughed and cried freely. He held nothing back when he spoke, taught, sang, davened. He lightened other peoples’ burdens and shouldered them himself. He was a lion.

My father used to say that the Gemara was the math and science of Torah, while Tanach, Jewish history and Jewish philosophy were the liberal arts of Torah. My father’s breadth encompassed everything in Torah, but he majored in the humanities. He could read a book or a sefer almost as fast as he could turn the pages. He didn’t just read the sefarim in his library; he loved them, passionately.

Of all the sefarim he ever read, the one that had the greatest impact on his life was The Nineteen Letters of Rav Hirsch. He found this gem as a teenager in, of all places, the public library. Thereafter, his whole life was guided by the principles of Torah im Derech Eretz.

To adumbrate just a few of the Hirschian themes that animated my father’s life:

• Uncompromising intellectual defense of Orthodoxy.

• “Da ma shetashuv”–knowing how to respond to skeptics.

• Acquiring a command of language.

• Maintaining Austritt, Orthodox independence; not joining any body where Orthodox and non-Orthodox rabbis functioned as peers; having nothing to do with Federation; supporting Orthodox institutions with Orthodox money.

• Reaching out with warmth, friendship and intellectual clarity to non-religious Jews.

• Believing in the ideal of a kehillah.

• Seeing Klal Yisrael as a unified body consisting of twelve different tribes; respecting the followers of different Torah paths.

• Being an idealist, resisting cynicism.

• Knowing the intellectual currents of one’s own time, and above all, what the Torah has to say about everything. Knowing that the Torah has something to say about everything. Intellectual fearlessness and self-confidence. No cowering behind intellectual walls, no defensiveness.

• Seeing Torah Jews as having something vital to contribute to the public square. Working to improve the morality and G-d-awareness of the nations.

• Valuing the unique contributions made by women to the Torah polity. Principled opposition to those who would lure women away from their time-honored Torah roles, as well as to those who would denigrate women.

• Deferring to gedolei Torah, honoring talmidei chachamim.

My father was a tzaddik, but he was not a perfect man. He was a real person. He could lose his temper. He could jump to conclusions, make mistakes, shout at people. He could also admit he’d been wrong, humble himself, apologize to someone much smaller than himself. He was always in a hurry, often late, always drove above the speed limit. He never wrote the books he meant to write, but he also never closed his door to any Jew. His shelves were full of books by writers he had helped and encouraged. Their books will stand in place of the books he never wrote.

Two years ago, at the time of my parents’ 50^th anniversary, my siblings and I had a reunion in Jerusalem. As we lined up for a photograph, my father said, “I have one accomplishment in my life: five decent human beings.” Not one of us can begin to approach our father’s greatness, nor did he expect us to. But it is comforting to know that he was happy with the way we turned out.

In the last weeks of his life, my father suffered terribly, both physically and emotionally. We tried to ease his distress. Our efforts were not very successful.

He was visited one day by an elderly lady from Danville, a former congregant of his. My father was in bed, barely able to speak anymore. I told him Lillian was there to see him, and asked him if she could come in. He nodded yes.

She came in and spoke to my father in her lilting, soft Southern drawl. “Rabbi, I want you to know that you changed my life and the lives of so many people. You taught us to love the Torah. You taught us that there is a G-d and that He always takes care of us and we don’t have to be afraid of anything. Rabbi, I love you and I will never forget you.”

With these words she gave him comfort. She gave back to him what he had once given to her.

Three days later, on Shabbos morning, my father passed away in his home in Jerusalem. As my brother said at the funeral, it was fitting that it happened during the Three Weeks. It was truly a time of mourning for all Klal Yisrael.

Yes, we will remember: Hashem Hu HaElokim.

Good-bye, Daddy.

Toby Katz is a Judaic Studies teacher, writer and homemaker living in North Miami Beach, Florida.