It’s Crowded in My Inbox!
It started, as it often does, at a family simchah.
Rabbi Shlomo Schwartz had flown in to Brooklyn for his nephew’s bar mitzvah, when someone handed him a parshah sheet to read. It was Toras Avigdor.
A few weeks later, an email landed in his inbox with a large collection of parshah sheets. Rabbi Schwartz realized that too many were fighting for space in his inbox. Faced with this overwhelm, he made a firm decision: he’d read one, and only one. He chose Toras Avigdor.
Fighting Over the Junior
At first, he printed it out weekly for himself. Then came the request from Toras Avigdor staff: Would he be willing to distribute in North Miami Beach?
“At that time, they didn’t have the printing resources they have now,” Rabbi Schwartz remembers. “They said the best thing would be to find someone local to print. I asked around and found my friend Isaac Saposnick, who davens in the North Miami Beach kollel. His mother owned an insurance company, and she agreed to print a hundred booklets for me every week on her machine.”
“You Ruined My Week!”
It didn’t take long for Toras Avigdor to become a staple of the kehillah.
“You ruined my week!” complained one regular.
This isn’t the kind of thing you’d usually want to hear. But this was the best feedback Rabbi Schwartz could have hoped for. It was a week with a technical hitch, and the Toras Avigdor didn’t get printed. That’s what “ruined” the week of this mispallel!
So great was the thirst for Rabbi Miller’s teachings that when a local shul decided to ban the parshah sheets that were flooding the beis medrash, Rabbi Schwartz was told the ban didn’t apply to Toras Avigdor.
Rabbi Schwartz gets a unique geshmak from Toras Avigdor. “I read it over Shabbos, and I call my kids and ask, ‘Did you read it this week?’”
From Queens to North Miami Beach
Rabbi Schwartz grew up in Queens and began learning at Yeshiva Chofetz Chaim, followed by many years learning in the Yeshivah of Rochester under Rabbi Menachem Davidowitz.
“The yeshivah is centered on mussar, and they follow the Slabodka mussar tradition,” says Rabbi Schwartz. “That’s one of the things that attracted me to Rabbi Miller—he was very into mussar, having learned in Europe.”
Altogether, he spent about sixteen years in Rochester, with an additional year or two in yeshivos in Queens. After his marriage, he returned to Rochester, learned in kollel, and then became a rebbi in the local elementary school.
“After my second year of teaching, a friend called and said, ‘We have a job for you in Florida.’ This was twenty-seven years ago. North Miami Beach wasn’t what it is now. People vacationed in Miami, not North Miami Beach, and it wasn’t very developed. The community was more modern than yeshivish.”
Yeshiva Toras Emes in North Miami Beach was very small—just one class per grade from first through fifth. Rabbi Schwartz started as a fifth-grade rebbi and also taught whatever else they needed. He stayed twenty years.
“During those years, North Miami Beach grew into a place with a thriving kollel. South Florida in general has hundreds and hundreds more people now. People came because of COVID, because of the weather, because of state income tax. Many moved out of New York and other places, and today it’s a big, vibrant place.”
Rabbi Schwartz now teaches in Mizrachi Torah Academy, a small school with around ten boys in each class.
“One thing that was never an issue here was chinuch. Whichever school you sent to, it was run by good people, and that strong chinuch probably contributed to growth. Now there are many more schools. About fifteen years ago, a Lakewood kollel even started here in North Miami Beach.”
Like the Mesillas Yesharim
Rabbi Schwartz notes that Rabbi Miller’s approach was so simple, yet so deep.
“Rabbi Miller wrote a foreword to the original Feldheim Mesillas Yesharim. In it, he says you’ll find a chiddush on every page, but the author’s style is so simple that you won’t realize it unless you’re paying attention to it.
“He could have been talking about himself when he wrote that introduction! When you read the Toras Avigdor, if you’re paying attention to it, every week it’s another chiddush.”
Personally Inspired
Rabbi Miller was no stranger when Rabbi Schwartz began distributing Toras Avigdor.
“When I was in eighth grade, I had a rebbi who quoted Rabbi Miller all the time,” says Rabbi Schwartz. “I had the zechus, when I was a young man in beis medrash, to be in Brooklyn one Thursday night and attend Rabbi Miller’s Thursday night shiur. That was probably forty years ago at least!
“He was definitely underappreciated then, not really famous. I once read that he gave a hesped for the Chafetz Chaim on his yahrtzeit. In that hesped, he quoted a mishnah about how a live animal makes one sound, but a dead one makes eight sounds, because you make drums, flutes, and horns from its parts. He said the Chafetz Chaim, when he was alive, didn’t have as much influence as after he passed away.
“You could say the same about Rabbi Miller. I recently bought the full Toras Avigdor Mesillas Yesharim set. It’s divided into daily portions of about ten minutes a day. I’m on the third volume now, and it’s transformative. It makes you think more. It changes your personality.”
The inspiration is not limited to sefarim. Recordings of shiurim and Toras Avigdor’s daily emails help Rabbi Schwartz appreciate the timelessness of Rabbi Miller’s words.
“I used to listen to his tapes—I think I even still have tape #1 somewhere! What fascinated me was his breadth. He answered questions on all subjects. He wouldn’t call it daas Torah, but it was all grounded in daas Torah.
“I lived through the eighties when Nixon and Reagan were presidents, and he spoke about New York politics. Even now, when they send a daily Q&A by email, it often matches current news so closely it feels almost prophetic. And that’s just because the source is daas Torah. It’s like hearing a Gadol with the Shechinah speaking through him—answers you wouldn’t expect, but when you think about them, you realize they’re right.”
The Brachah Boomerang
Like any good talmid, Rabbi Schwartz has learned many things from his rebbe, but here’s a favorite lesson he tries to internalize and implement:
“Rabbi Miller speaks often about how Klal Yisrael is beloved by Hakadosh Baruch Hu, and anyone who gives Klal Yisrael a brachah, like when you say, ‘Good Shabbos!’ to somebody in the street, or bless them that their wife should give them good children, and they should enjoy being with their family, and they should have shalom bayis—when you say things like that, it’s a brachah to other people, and it comes back to you as well.”
Rabbi Schwartz is encouraged by the difference Toras Avigdor has made in his life.
“Even if you don’t do everything that’s written there, just by reading it every week you become aware of what living like a Torah-true Jew should be. Even if you can’t do everything, can’t aspire to everything, it awakens something in you, and it makes a difference.
“My Shemoneh Esreh is different, my davening is different, my interaction with my kids is different—better—because of the lessons I read from Rabbi Miller every week.”
A Different Kind of Overflow
Remember that overflowing inbox? Too many emails. Too many voices. But the choice Rabbi Schwartz made years back has led to an overflow of a different kind. An overflow of Torah every week, of connection to the One Above, of personal inspiration and growth. And you can never have too much of those.
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