The driver sat impatiently at his wheel, waiting for the lights to change. Loud music belted out from his car, thumped through the open window, and barreled into the line of traffic. Mindlessly, he nodded along, until he noticed that his choice of entertainment had competition. Stiff competition.
Someone in the car next to his was yelling.
“TELEVISION IS LIKE A SEWER PIPE IN YOUR HOUSE!”
He looked. He couldn’t see anyone remotely angry in the next car. Just one of those religious-looking guys from Brooklyn sitting there.
Oh. It was a recording. He leaned over.
“Yo, man, what’s the guy screamin’ about?”
His neighbor looked at him innocently. “Let’s say you have a baby sitting under the table. He’s six months old, and you and your wife are arguing about the electric bill, or whatever. You think, He’s only six months old. He doesn’t understand anything, right? But the kid knows everything. He hears everything! He might grow up to be a billionaire and he calls in his lawyer.
“‘The IRS is drinking my blood!’ he rages. ‘I had to pay $1 million on my $40 billion earnings!’
“You know why he’s complaining? Because when he was a little boy, he sat under the table and heard his parents complaining.
“Perhaps they complained about the rain. ‘Now we have to cancel our picnic. It’s not fair!’
“They should have told him, ‘Strawberries are falling from the sky! How does a strawberry grow? It comes from the rain!’
The man paused.
“There’s going to be a lot of rainy days in a child’s life. Isn’t it great that he won’t grow up to be a whiner?”
The driver was nonplussed. “That’s what the rabbi’s talkin’ about?”
The lights changed, and the religious-looking guy from Brooklyn drove off.
Joining the Toras Avigdor Family
That religious-looking guy from Brooklyn was Refael Aryeh Smith, and he liked nothing better than spreading Rabbi Miller’s lessons to anyone who’d listen. Seriously, anyone.
Rabbi Smith, who prefers not to be addressed by his rabbinic title (this is the only time we’ll use it), now lives in Ramat Beit Shemesh and is a whirlwind of energy, taking on roles in the Jewish community and beyond. A trained paramedic, he served as a volunteer police officer in Ramat Beit Shemesh (though he claims he had nothing to do because there was no crime to tackle!). After earning his semichah a few years ago, he now heads the semichah program for Yeshiva Chonen Daas and rbssemicha.com. Community service is second nature, and he never stops.
It was simply natural to start distributing for Toras Avigdor. He prints hundreds of copies weekly, in Hebrew, English, and Yiddish, folds them, staples them, and drives around to ten or more shuls to make his deliveries. He’s a one-man-show and takes no compensation for his work. And he loves every second of it.
Best of all is the silent feedback—all copies are gone by Sunday!
A Talmid Muvhak Who Never Met His Rebbe
Refael Aryeh is self-deprecating about his involvement, considering it completely normal.
“I grew up on Rabbi Miller’s cassettes,” he says. “One regret I have in my life is that I lived so close to Ocean Parkway but never went to his shiur.”
Well, he’s been making up for it ever since. The encounter with the driver was just one of many. He made it his mission to share Rabbi Miller’s Torah wherever he went. Even the deacon who gave sermons across the street came for his weekly fix, which he then shared with his congregation. Apparently, everyone needs Rabbi Miller’s wisdom.
In His Own Life
Refael Aryeh didn’t just bring Rabbi Miller into his own life. His whole family has absorbed his teachings.
“If someone had told me not to argue about money in front of a child, I would have said, ‘Okay, from the age of a year, I’ll keep my mouth shut.’ Rabbi Miller said, ‘No, from before they’re born you keep your mouth shut. Concentrate on raising adults, not children. They’ll be children without your help.’”
As a young couple, Refael Aryeh and his wife put a great deal of effort into this very lesson. He recalls how much he disliked tuna, yet whenever it appeared at the table, he would take one of his children on his lap and enthusiastically praise the meal, feeding his child the delicious supper, without them ever noticing that he wasn’t eating it himself. To him, there was no reason to be negative, even about something as insignificant as a bowl of tuna.
Standing Up for Torah
Like his Rebbe, Refael Aryeh is not afraid of controversy. When Rabbi Miller’s groundbreaking book A Divine Madness was released, he bought twenty copies and gave them out to family and friends. The book, whose manuscript lay unpublished for forty years, deals with the background and reasons for the Holocaust from a Torah perspective.
“I met some opposition,” Refael Aryeh remembers ruefully. “Many people’s origins are in Europe. They were shocked by the book and couldn’t fathom why their grandmothers deserved to suffer in the Holocaust.”
He continues, “In America, the lesson learned from the Holocaust for many was simply a resolve not to buy a German car. My friend Michael Goffman pointed out that no Holocaust museum mentions Hashem. Not one. And that’s why the takeaway for so many was ‘I won’t drive a Mercedes.’
“Rabbi Miller was there (in Europe, before the Holocaust). ‘They called yeshivah boys parasites,’ he said. ‘“You’re bugs,” they said. “Why don’t you get a job?” The Torah was gone already.’
“He was hard-hitting.”
It Always Comes Back to the Apple Seed
“The seed weighs nothing,” says Refael Aryeh in awe, even after all these years. “The ground is five hundred pounds. I put the seed in. I don’t even water it. I walk away. Two years later, there’s a three-thousand-pound tree! There’s the same amount of soil. The five hundred pounds is not diminished. The sun became wood and bark!”
Refael Aryeh has integrated Rabbi Miller’s Torah into the smallest events in his life.
“When you’re walking past a house and you see a mezuzah, bless the people inside. What does that take? You don’t even need to stop walking. Say, ‘I hope everybody’s got shalom bayis in there.’ Or ‘Look at this guy coming with an umbrella. I hope when he opens the door, everyone screams, “Daddy’s home!”’”
Refael Aryeh’s enthusiasm is palpable. “Rabbi Miller brought Slabodka to Brooklyn. I brought Brooklyn to Israel,” he says with a smile. Everything Rabbi Miller said is as applicable today as it was then.”
Emulate Him
Refael Aryeh has a message for readers. “We can all be like Rabbi Miller. It takes a little bit of brainwashing because of all the schmutz in our brains that needs to be washed out. But once you hear the voice, you’ll know it. Rabbi Miller said that sometimes you can just look inside yourself and you’ll know the answer. Look at your background and your life, and you’ll see certain themes appearing again and again. Find what it is that you struggle with, that’s against your nature. This is what you must work on.”
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