Torah Scholar
Abba Shaul displayed great dedication to Torah study. He learned and reviewed each subject dozens of times until he knew most of Shas and poskim (halakhic commentaries) by heart.
When Abba Shaul was 20 years old, Attiya selected him to be tested by Rabbi Eliezer Silver, a prominent American rabbi who was visiting Israel together with a prospective donor. Attiya had heard that in another yeshiva which this philanthropist had visited, only one boy was able to answer the rabbi's question, and only after 20 minutes. Silver asked Abba Shaul a difficult question in the obscure Talmudic order of Tohorot (laws of ritual purity). When Abba Shaul gave his answer, Silver remarked in astonishment that he had asked the same question of Rabbi Meir Simcha of Dvinsk (author of Ohr Sameach and Meschech Chochma) 40 years earlier, and that that sage had given the same answer. Abba Shaul later confided to Attiya that he had had a second answer to the question as well, but since the first answer secured the donation, he didn't want to show off.
In 1948, Abba Shaul married Hadassah, the daughter of Rabbi Yosef Shaharbani, a Torah scholar and son of the kabbalist Rabbi Yehoshua Shaharbani, who was a student of the Ben Ish Chai. Abba Shaul studied one-on-one with his father-in-law, and his new wife attended his public lectures every Shabbat. She also tape-recorded his general lecture at the yeshiva; many of his written works come from those tapes.
The couple was childless for many years. After ten miscarriages, Abba Shaul visited the Chazon Ish and the Belzer Rebbe, refusing to leave until each gave him a blessing for a child. Their only son, Eliyahu, was named after Abba Shaul's father.
After his marriage, Abba Shaul became a teacher at Talmud Torah Bnei Zion, which he had attended in his youth. He continued to study at Porat Yosef Yeshiva. In time, Attiya asked him to serve as rosh yeshiva, but he refused to accept that position as long as his first teacher, Tzadka, was still alive. He did agree to serve as a lecturer at the yeshiva. After Tzadka's death in 1983, Abba Shaul acceded to the position of rosh yeshiva of Porat Yosef.
Read more about this topic: Ben Zion Abba Shaul
Famous quotes containing the word scholar:
“Men should not labor foolishly like brutes, but the brain and the body should always, or as much as possible, work and rest together, and then the work will be of such a kind that when the body is hungry the brain will be hungry also, and the same food will suffice for both; otherwise the food which repairs the waste energy of the overwrought body will oppress the sedentary brain, and the degenerate scholar will come to esteem all food vulgar, and all getting a living drudgery.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)