Would the Persian in the Room Please Stand Up?

“That Shabbat we davened,” Rabbi Shalom-Chaim recalls, “and I presented to the group the wine for Kiddush.” That Kiddush, made in a hotel in Rome, Italy, by a teenager from Persia surrounded by other Jewish refugees, would set the tone for a life of gratitude, commitment, and Torah.

In an American Yeshivah

After a stop in Lakewood and then Baltimore, where the young Iranian refugees were welcomed and dispersed among yeshivos, Rabbi Shalom-Chaim found himself in a makom Torah that would shape his destiny.

“There was a man who was selling greeting cards,” he says. “He had a folding chair, a briefcase, and a tape recorder. He would sit down to sell his cards and at the same time listen to Rabbi Miller’s lectures. I was fascinated. This rabbi spoke so slowly. Who was he?”

Thus began a lifelong relationship.

When Rabbi Shalom-Chaim eventually arrived in New York, he started attending Rabbi Miller’s Thursday night shiurim, which were just across the street from the Mir Yeshivah, where he was learning. Initially those shiurim went over his head.

“I had two problems,” he says. “My English wasn’t so good…and he spoke very slowly, which put me to sleep! I remember that for three months I had a hard time. But I didn’t give up.”

Eventually, he understood. And once he did—he never left.

A Talmid Through and Through

For decades, Rabbi Shalom-Chaim davened in Rabbi Miller’s shul, soaking up his halachos, his mussar, and his hashkafah. “I had one rebbe, a real rebbe—Rabbi Miller,” he says. “And I’m alive because of him.”

What made Rabbi Miller who he was? “No one else can get to his level,” he says emphatically. “I don’t know how he managed to accumulate so much knowledge in his lifetime! How is it possible? How do you explain it? How is there enough time to learn so much? I don’t understand it.” 

But it wasn’t just the knowledge—it was the clarity, the optimism, and his fierce emunah. “He was amazingly positive about everything. He always found something good to say. He made you into a ma’amin.”

In the Classroom

When Rabbi Miller told his devoted Persian talmid, “Go into chinuch,” Rabbi Shalom-Chaim heard and obeyed. He became a melamed and never forgot the lessons he learned from his rebbe.

“For years,” he says, “every day, for five minutes, before starting anything, I would ask a boy to pick something to thank Hashem for. Eyes? ‘We can see the sky!’ Ears? ‘We hear a horn and save our lives!’”

By the end of the year, he says, “there was a long list of different things to thank Hashem for. I said that if my boys leave my class and learn nothing from me, but they learn to thank Hashem, it was worthwhile.”

The Meaning of Gevurah

Rabbi Miller’s hashkafah wasn’t just theory—it was built into his daily schedule.

At one Melaveh Malka, Rabbi Shalom-Chaim remembers, Rabbi Miller was scheduled to be the fourth speaker.

“By the time it came to his turn, it was too late. He said, ‘It’s after my bedtime. Good night!’ And he left!”

This next anecdote explains his actions of that Motza’ei Shabbos: “His grandson asked him, ‘Zaidy, if today was the last day of your life, how would you spend it?’ 

“Rabbi Miller said, ‘I have a schedule. There’s a time to sleep, a time to eat, a time to walk. I have a schedule.’”

“That’s gevurah,” Rabbi Shalom-Chaim says. “That’s greatness.”

Still Spreading Torah

Long after Rabbi Miller’s passing, Rabbi Shalom-Chaim is still spreading his rebbe’s Torah.

He distributes Toras Avigdor booklets every week to six shuls. “I pick them up and I put them on the tables. That’s how I give back.”

He’s also a regular sponsor and continues listening to Rabbi Miller’s shiurim regularly. “Now, baruch Hashem, it’s so easy. It used to be a tape recorder and tapes. Now it’s on the phone, twenty-four hours a day. It’s beautiful.”

A Message

Rabbi Shalom-Chaim has a message for Toras Avigdor readers, straight from Rabbi Miller:

“Rabbi Miller taught us: the yetzer hara has a task—to discourage us from becoming great. A person knows he is destined for greatness, but because the yetzer hara is bothering him, he has to become stronger and smash it.”

And his promise?

“If you look at Rabbi Miller and listen to him constantly, review, write, chazer, keep it in your mind—I guarantee happiness, joy, health, and long life. Everything you need, you’re going to get.”

It’s more than four decades since that seventeen-year-old stepped off a plane facing an uncertain future. But nothing is uncertain now. He knows why he came. He understands what Hashem wants of him. And he found his rebbe for life.

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