Not Your Run-of-the-Mill Yeshivah Bachur
For a yeshivah guy from Yerushalayim, Rabbi Benzion Teller is unusually well-traveled. Growing up in Arzei Habirah—another branch in the family tree of Rabbi Hanoch Teller and his wife, Aidel—he was clearly destined for a life of Torah and klal work. As a bachur, Rabbi Teller spent time in South Africa strengthening the community, made his way back to Beit Shemesh, where he was a dorm counselor to bachurim from Chutz Laaretz, and ended up at the University of Buffalo as campus rabbi. Later, he became the rabbi of the Sandton community in South Africa.
Oh, and in between, he studied in yeshivah and earned himself semichah from Rabbi Yitzchak Berkowitz. Not bad.
But these days he lives in far-off Johannesburg, sixth-grade rebbe in Yeshiva Maharsha.
Discovering Rabbi Miller
It was during his time as dorm counselor that Rabbi Teller discovered Rabbi Avigdor Miller.
It was a fifteen- to twenty-minute trek between the yeshivah where he was learning and the yeshivah where he was a counselor.
“I had to go back and forth often,” says Rabbi Teller. “I wanted to use the time to listen to something. My yeshivah had a computer with shiurim, so I downloaded everything.”
Five of those shiurim were from Rabbi Miller.
A single shiur was all it took.
“His Torah entered me like an arrow. He was a man—a giant—whose words and deeds showed a fraction of who he was. This was a person I wanted to follow.”
Those five were the only shiurim of Rabbi Miller he knew of, and he listened to them so often that he eventually knew them by heart.
Granny Anne and the iPod
Rabbi Teller’s most valuable possession is the iPod loaded with Rabbi Miller’s shiurim that he inherited from his wife’s grandmother.
“Granny Anne was a very wise and special woman,” he remembers. “She was a successful businesswoman, but every night she’d sit and listen to Rabbi Miller on her iPod. I’d speak to her every week for around forty-five minutes and our conversation was always about Rabbi Miller.”
Printing and Distributing
One day in shul, Rabbi Teller saw an amazing sight: Toras Avigdor booklets on the bimah! He tracked down Reb Ari Slasky, the driving force behind the distribution.
“Ari is one of the tzaddikim of Johannesburg,” says Rabbi Teller. “I drove to his house and told him, ‘I want to be a partner. Tell me what to do.’”
At the time, Mr. Slasky was printing up to forty copies a week at a local print shop. With the agreement of Rabbi Raff, Rabbi Teller’s father-in-law, who is the principal of Yeshivah Maharsha, the weekly printing moved over to the school’s printing machine. Every Thursday, Rabbi Teller and his class would print, staple, and fold, until the booklets were ready for distribution. Mrs. Teller designed the cover, including an offer for sponsorship to cover costs.
On Erev Shabbos, with Granny Anne’s iPod playing Rabbi Miller’s shiurim into his ears, Rabbi Teller walked around town leaving Toras Avigdor booklets in all the shuls.
Later, Mr. Slasky arranged for two local kosher stores to carry the booklets, widening the distribution. These stands, donated l’iluy nishmas Henka bas Yitzchak (Granny Anne) became the central pickup points during COVID, when the shuls were inaccessible.
As demand grew, assembling the booklets became more difficult, so when Rabbi Teller heard about a printing machine that also stapled and folded, he knew this was the way forward. He bought a machine for the school, and Toras Avigdor got to use it too.
They now print up to four hundred booklets a week, ten times the original number.
Impact
Toras Avigdor has had a clear impact in Johannesburg. Last year, Rabbi Teller’s fifth-grade son was working on a Gedolim project with his class. Three boys chose Rabbi Miller. No coincidence.
“When it rains, does the ground get wet?” asks Rabbi Teller rhetorically. “If such a small community gets four hundred booklets, the impact is going to be great.”
He tells a heart-warming story.
“I was once walking in the street holding the booklets, on my way to the kosher store, and a car stopped next to me. The driver was a guy wearing a big necklace and no kippah.
“He opened the window and asked, ‘Are you the one who puts out those booklets?’
“‘Yes,’ I said.
“‘They’re amazing! Awesome! Great!’ he gushed.
“In South Africa, the Jews are very traditional—even the secular people. The dissemination is so central, and everyone shops at the same stores, so Toras Avigdor is reaching crowds that would otherwise never have had such an opportunity—to come into contact with Rabbi Miller.”
And it’s not only Jews.
In the kosher butcher store, the non-Jewish manager once asked anxiously whether the booklets had arrived yet. He takes one home every week and reads it with his family.
Emulating the Rav
Rabbi Teller has a message for Toras Avigdor readers.
“The litmus test of a Yid is the level of simchah he has. The happier a Yid is, the more he’s an eved Hashem. If someone is besimchah, he’s serving Hashem. If he’s not besimchah, he’s serving habit, society, and peer pressure. He needs to be deeply grateful and deeply besimchah.”
He adds, “My dream is to emulate Rabbi Miller and to spread Torah even a fraction of what he did.”
Well, it looks like you’re doing just that, Rabbi Teller. May you continue to inspire and spread Rabbi Miller’s Torah for many years to come.
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