Every day, a short text about the Portion and current events is posted here. Today - no. A year ago today, Rabbi Yeshayahu Hadari, founder of the Hesder Yeshiva, HaKotel, passed away. I had the privilege of meeting him, and yesterday I looked for a short idea of his, something catchy and short, as always, but everything that I read in his writings was interwoven with something else: the weekly portion and the commandment of Shemitah which appears in it, immediately led to Sefirat HaOmer and the connection between Passover and Shavuot; the quote he presented from the books of the Maharal and the Sefat Emet were connected to the words of Rabbi Kook and Rabbi Tzadok HaKohen of Lublin, and everything was accompanied with historic tales that are connected to personal memories. A whole rich webwork, with countless layers and strata.
I wasn't successful at trying to cut- and edit-out one small idea. And then I suddenly thought that perhaps this is the biggest message: not everything can be made easily accessible. Rabbi Hadari educated thousands of pupils for decades to be deep, uncompromising learners, not to suffice with short texts the length of a social media post. In a fast paced, high tempo age like ours, he tried to elevate a whole generation of learners upwards, to higher levels. So today we will not bring here a quote for the elevation of his soul, but it seems to me that the fact that such a catchy quote by him was not found poses a whole lesson in itself.
