The Torah Giant Who Never Stopped Caring

A Torah giant surrounded by sefarim, carrying questions and concerns from across klal Yisrael, might be forgiven for overlooking whether the housekeeper had eaten lunch. Yet when Rabbi David Shelby asked Maran HaRav Ovadia Yosef’s longtime non-Jewish housekeeper what she would miss most after Maran’s petirah, her answer had nothing to do with the crowds, the scholarship, or the public stature.

“He never, ever sat down to eat without making sure that I had food as well,” Maria told Rabbi Shelby through her tears.

For Rabbi Shelby, that seemingly small memory captured something enormous about Maran HaRav Ovadia Yosef zt”l. Maran’s greatness was not limited to extraordinary Torah scholarship, kiruv, leadership, or chesed. It was the ability to pursue all of them without allowing one responsibility to erase another.

Rabbi Shelby knew that world from unusually close range.

Growing up in Brooklyn’s Syrian Jewish community, Rabbi Shelby developed a connection with Maran from childhood. Rabbi Shelby’s father brought the family to Eretz Yisrael when such trips were far less commonplace, giving the children opportunities to see Maran and receive brachot. Later, while learning in Eretz Yisrael after high school, Rabbi Shelby became a regular at Maran’s Motza’ei Shabbat shiur.

Rabbi Shelby recalled approximately 2,000 people filling the building, with the audience eventually expanding through satellite broadcasts to viewers around the world. Rabbi Shelby would arrive an hour early to secure a particular seat. Maran would angle the chair slightly rather than sit with the back facing a Sefer Torah, and Rabbi Shelby knew exactly where Maran would be looking.

What began as youthful admiration became something far deeper. After marrying and returning to Eretz Yisrael, Rabbi Shelby lived directly next door to Maran for nine years and learned in Maran’s kollel. Rabbi Shelby described becoming a ben bayit, treated almost as a member of the family.

Eventually, Maran told Rabbi Shelby that it was time to return to America. Rabbi Shelby pleaded for another year, but Maran insisted that the purpose of learning was also lilmod al menat lelamed – to learn in order to teach others. It was time to bring that Torah back to the community.

The move did not end the relationship. Rabbi Shelby continued returning to Eretz Yisrael every few months, sometimes bringing groups who wanted to meet the Torah leader they had heard so much about.

They might land in the evening, reach Maran’s home around midnight or 1 a.m., and find Maran still immersed in learning. Visitors could be taking pictures and communicating with family while Maran remained so absorbed in the sefarim that Maran initially did not realize anyone had entered. Then Maran would look up, recognize the visitors, and put everything aside to greet them.

The desk itself offered a glimpse into another world. Rabbi Shelby remembered once seeing what seemed like a hundred sefarim open as Maran moved among sources with astonishing command. On another occasion, Rabbi Shelby borrowed one of Maran’s sefarim and inadvertently returned it to the wrong place on the desk. By the following morning, the volume was filled with notes. Maran had encountered the sefer, recognized material connected to ongoing learning, and immediately recorded the thoughts.

That phenomenal immersion in Torah makes Maria’s recollection all the more striking. With all that occupied Maran’s mind, the person standing nearby was never invisible.

The same concern extended far beyond the home. Rabbi Shelby related the account of a widow whose circumstances had deteriorated so severely that she spent a night sleeping in a park. Early the following morning, a wealthy member of the community arrived looking for her and promised that she would never again be left without a place to live.

According to Rabbi Shelby, the benefactor said Maran had appeared in a dream and directed him to the widow. Rabbi Shelby stressed that the story was verified with Maran’s family before being publicized. For Rabbi Shelby, it reflected the concern for another Jew that had defined Maran throughout life.

Perhaps one of the most powerful firsthand examples came after September 11, 2001.

“For two weeks after 9/11, he was crying like a baby every single day,” Rabbi Shelby recalled.

Rabbi Shelby was with Maran during that period and remembered Maran repeatedly asking for calls to be placed to America to find stories of people who had survived. Amid the horror, Maran desperately wanted to hear that another life had been spared.

Shortly before Rosh Hashanah, Rabbi Shelby entered Maran’s home, received a brachah, and remained nearby after Maran apparently thought the room was empty. Rabbi Shelby then heard something never intended for an audience. Maran began speaking to Hashem.

Rabbi Shelby recalled Maran pleading for Mashiach, asking how terrible people could inflict such suffering upon innocent people. The public Torah leader who carried enormous responsibilities was privately crying over people thousands of miles away.

Years later, even an ordinary service call brought another glimpse of that relationship with klal Yisrael. A plumber entered Rabbi Shelby’s home, noticed a picture of Maran, and immediately shared a personal story. The plumber said that years earlier, while delivering Maran’s dry cleaning, there had been a persistent hope to receive a brachah. The plumber and wife had been waiting years for a child. Eventually the opportunity came, and according to the plumber, a baby boy was born nine months later.

But Maran did not wait for Jews to come looking for a brachah. Maran went looking for Jews.

Rabbi Shelby recalled that throughout Elul, Maran was virtually never home at night. Well into advanced age, Maran traveled from city to city, sometimes visiting more than one in an evening, delivering divrei chizuk, participating in Selichot, and reaching Jews who needed to be drawn closer.

The attitude behind those exhausting nights was summed up in the question Rabbi Shelby remembered Maran asking: “We’re going to go into a Day of Judgment worrying about ourselves, when our brothers are out there and our sisters need us?”

This was long before contemporary kiruv developed into the extensive network familiar today. There was little prestige in traveling from place to place to reach Jews who had drifted away. Maran simply considered it necessary.

A young Rabbi Reuven Elbaz noticed. Rabbi Shelby related that Rabbi Elbaz followed Maran from synagogue to synagogue and watched the tremendous amount of time devoted to bringing Jews closer. The implication was powerful: If someone who valued every moment of Torah learning could devote hundreds of precious hours to reaching other Jews, then bringing Jews back to Torah must itself be an undertaking of extraordinary importance. Rabbi Elbaz would go on to make that mission a defining part of a lifetime of Torah work.

Rabbi Shelby connected that devotion to an account involving the Ben Ish Chai. Maran’s halachic disagreements with the Ben Ish Chai were sometimes mistaken for a lack of reverence, Rabbi Shelby explained, when the opposite was true.

According to the account Rabbi Shelby related, the Ben Ish Chai appeared to Maran in a dream while Maran was learning. Maran stood and kissed the Ben Ish Chai’s hand. The Ben Ish Chai conveyed how beloved Maran’s sefarim were before Hashem. When Maran expressed a wish to spend even more time writing sefarim instead of traveling, the response was that the work of going out and bringing Jews back was also deeply cherished.

Whether sitting over a sefer or traveling to reach another Jew, the objective was the same: serving Hashem.

Rabbi Shelby occasionally encountered other unusual things during the years spent in Maran’s home. One morning, Rabbi Shelby found what appeared to be a silver kameia with names etched on both sides and photocopied it for a personal binder. Years later, after moving to America, Rabbi Shelby discovered that those two pages were missing. Rabbi Shelby offered no explanation, recalling it simply as one of the unusual experiences from those years.

There was nothing mysterious, however, about Maran’s relentless commitment to Torah.

Rabbi Shelby recalled one Elul night when Maran traveled with HaRav Shalom Cohen zt”l to two cities for Selichot and divrei chizuk. Rav Shalom Cohen, whom Rabbi Shelby noted was approximately ten years younger, was so exhausted afterward that there was hardly strength to continue.

Maran had a different concern. “But we didn’t learn tonight,” Rabbi Shelby recalled Maran saying.

The hours of traveling, speaking, inspiring Jews, and even learning while on the road did not satisfy Maran’s thirst for Torah. Maran continued learning until approximately 6 a.m. With Shacharit approaching, Maran did not want to climb into bed out of concern that it would be too difficult to awaken shortly afterward. Rabbi Shelby remembered watching Maran take a brief rest on the couch before beginning another day.

The vision behind Maran’s work had begun decades earlier. Rabbi Shelby recalled Maran bringing a young Rabbi Yitzchak Yosef to large Ashkenazic Torah gatherings. The boy wondered why they were attending events conducted largely in Yiddish, a language they did not understand.

Maran wanted the child to watch. One day, Maran explained, Sephardic Jewry would have Torah gatherings of this magnitude as well. Rabbi Yitzchak Yosef should remember having witnessed what was possible. Maran lived to see that vision become reality.

And yet, amid enormous crowds, Maran remained profoundly humble. Rabbi Shelby remembered attending stadium gatherings where tremendous numbers of people sang in Maran’s honor. Beneath the acclaim, Rabbi Shelby said, Maran would quietly describe himself as nothing more than dust.

One final story brought the different strands together.

Rabbi Shelby recalled an encounter between Maran and President Ronald Reagan. During the meeting, Maran repeatedly looked at the time. When Reagan noticed, Maran apologized and explained that it was necessary to leave and return to studying Torah.

Why, Reagan wondered, when Maran already knew so much?

Maran’s response was that one can never know everything. There is always more Torah to learn.

That exchange could have served as the portrait of a person consumed entirely by Torah. But Rabbi Shelby had spent years close enough to Maran to know the rest of the picture.

The same person who guarded minutes of Torah learning could spend nights traveling to reach Jews who were distant from Torah. The same mind capable of holding an extraordinary number of sefarim could remember whether the housekeeper had eaten. The same leader addressing enormous crowds could cry privately over victims of 9/11. The same Torah giant who wanted more hours for writing sefarim could surrender those hours to another Jew.

“Use all your strengths for every subject, and don’t minimize anything by focusing on other important things in life,” Rabbi Shelby said.

That was the lesson Rabbi Shelby wanted the audience to carry from Maran’s life. A person can become so absorbed in one worthy pursuit that another responsibility disappears. Torah can become an excuse not to notice someone else; communal work can become an excuse to neglect personal learning. Maran demonstrated that genuine greatness demands something more.

Torah did not diminish compassion. Compassion did not weaken Torah. Kiruv did not replace learning, and learning did not become an excuse to overlook a Jew in need.

Years after Maran HaRav Ovadia Yosef zt”l left this world, Rabbi Shelby’s memories return again and again to that balance: the towering piles of sefarim and the plate of food for the housekeeper; the crowds waiting for Torah and the widow who could not be forgotten; the exhausting nights of Selichot and the insistence that there was still Torah to learn.

For Rabbi Shelby, those were not separate stories about Maran. Together, they were the story.

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Rabbi Yaniv Meirov is the mara d’atra of Kehilat Charm Circle in Kew Gardens Hills and serves as Chief Executive Officer of Chazaq. Now 222 episodes strong, Chazaq Torah Talks continues to inspire by showing that Jewish growth and survival are shaped through lived experience, commitment, and connection.