As we move through life, we meet people we never forget; there are just some people that leave a lasting impression on us. I would bet most of us also know Rabbis, and then we know “big” Rabbis. We encounter a Rabbi that just stands out above the rest; we know his impact is different, and perhaps more global. For me, Rav Binyamin Kamenetsky zt”l fits into both of these groups. The world lost both a Torah giant and a giant person last Friday, with Rav Binyamin’s passing at the age of 93. I remember growing up in Woodmere, one of the Five Towns in the early 1980’s. Rav Binyamin was my “big” Rabbi as a child. He always had a presence that made him stand out among others. But it wasn’t his height (in fact he was a relatively short man) that made him a giant, it was his character and his actions that made him both the builder of the community and someone who was beloved by everyone who he encountered.
I had the zechut to spend over two and a half hours at his levaya last Sunday. The eulogies were so inspiring -- I could have listened the entire day. The following is an assortment of thoughts that I culled from the various speakers:
Rav Binyamin was a man full of simcha. He always had a smile for everyone he encountered. Everyone considered him their own Rabbi. Orthodox, unaffiliated, even non Jews. Politicians, local policeman, nurses… everyone!. He cared about and talked to everyone. Rav Tzvi Kamenetsky recalled a story where he was a fe minutes late to pick up his father for shul in the morning and found that Rav Binyamin had already left the house. Knowing he was elderly and likely did not walk to shul, he went up the block to see what had happened. It turned out that Rav Binyamin was friends with the local sanitation workers and they had given him a ride to shul. Literally everyone he met felt that Rav Binyamim loved them and cared about them. On a personal note, I recall as a young boy how Rav Binyamin would always stop to talk to me, kiss my hand, ask what I was learning in school. It didn’t stop there; he would take out a Chumash and share a short Torah thought on the parsha I was learning. If he did that to me, how many more children and adults must he have done this with as well.
Rav Binyamin’s life was all about helping people. Helping people find jobs, a shidduch, visiting the sick and elderly. He had a list of widows he would call every Friday, knowing they had no one else. He felt he was their person to connect to each week. In fact, it was some of the people he called each Friday that knew something was wrong last Friday when they didn’t receive their call from him. They soon learned it was because he had passed away. He would carry job resumes in one pocket and shidduch resumes in the other wherever he went; even to his own yeshiva's dinner; always trying to help people get a job. He never stopped. He didn't know what the words לא אוכל "I can't" meant. He kept going. He did not stop. Even after recovering from a serious fall when doctors didn't expect him to recover, he went right back to helping people. He quite literally didn’t know a life that wasn’t all about helping others.
He was once asked, when does someone transition from a “Yunger man” to an “alter yid?” What age is it? He said you can tell by how the person talks. If a person begins to talk about the past, how things used to be or how they were done, that is an alter yid. A Yunger man is always talking about the future and what work there still is to be done. Rav Binyamin was niftar at the age of 93, but he was a Yunger man. He was always working, talking about what still had to be done. Collecting money for Jewish causes, yeshivot, finding jobs and shiduchim for people. He always was looking to the future and the words "I can't " were not in his vocabulary.
Rav Binyamin and his Rebbetzin built the entire Five Towns community. They came there when it was a midbar, a desert and look at it now 60+ years later. It is a community with thousands of Orthodox Jews, many Yeshivot and Day Schools, shuls on every corner, mikvaot and a full array of kosher restaurants. Rav Binyamin was the son of the Gadol Hador, Rav Yaakov Kamenetsky. One might of thought he would not want to move to a community that did not have the Jewish infrastructure to build an Orthodox family. Yet, his father guided him to move there and build the community. That is what he did, many times over.
For me, another piece of my childhood is lost. I feel my age as the Rabbi of my youth has now left this world. But for the entire community, we have lost our architect, our builder. May all the merits of his life and the lives of all of the community be a zechut for the entire community to continue on the legacy that he left for us.
