Approximately four weeks ago, amidst the darkness of the brutal murder of the Kedoshim of Har Nof, there was simultaneously an explosion of light. Stories carefully guarded and hidden for decades began to surface. I'm going to try בעזרת השם בלי נדר to give a brief, incomplete, posthumous introduction to my brother זכר צדיק וקדוש לברכה. The incompleteness owes to two factors: factor number one, my own inadequacy; factor number two, in case anyone has heard the previous hespedim, I don't want to repeat myself, I don't want to be matriach. אמר חזקיה אמר רבי ירמיה משום רבי שמעון בר יוחאי ראיתי בני עלייה והן מועטין.
What does the term bnei aliya mean? Rav Hai Gaon says, עלייה מעלה עליונה במתן שכר בניה מועטים. Aliya, according to Rav Hai Gaon, it's similar to the usage when Chazal use aliya to designate a loft. So here bnei aliya means those who inhabit the loftiest place in terms of the schar given to them by Hakadosh Baruch Hu. רבי שמעון בר יוחאי says those people are few in number: ראיתי בני עלייה והן מועטין. Presumably, according to Rav Hai Gaon, he would also agree that bnei aliya should be translated as "people of ascent". Aliya in that sense, la'alot. The only way one ultimately ends up as a ben aliya occupying the loftiest place in Olam Ha'emes is if one's entire life is a life of aliya, a life of ascent. That's a point that needs to be emphasized. Take, consider a mashal to the physical life cycle of a person. There's a period, there are tkufos when we grow. And within that, there are tkufos when there are growth spurts. Too often, for too many of us, forgive me for projecting, our spiritual life cycle mirrors the physical life cycle. There are tkufos of growth, maybe there's even a tkufa of a growth spurt, but then we sort of continue and live life on a plateau at whatever height we attained during our years of growth. A ben aliya means that his very mahut, his very metziut, the essence of the person, the entire person is one of aliya, his entire life is a life of aliya. But let's try to elaborate that point a little bit more, perhaps to understand a little better. The Me'or Einayim, my brother knew, if you woke him up at 2:30 in the morning and you asked him any Torah of Reb Chaim, he would tell you, but if you woke him up 15 minutes later and you asked him any Torah of the Me'or Einayim, he would have told you that as well. The Me'or Einayim comments on the lashon HaGemara לעולם יעסוק אדם בתורה ומצוות אפילו שלא לשמה שמתוך שלא לשמה בא לשמה
and he addresses the obvious question: it shouldn't be le'olam. The whole point of the Gemara is that initially, at the outset... A person begins, he learns Shelo Lishma, and then the Torah is Mitaher a person, Torah is Mekadesh a person, the Torah elevates a person and then he learns Lishma. So what's this לעולם יעסוק אדם בתורה ומצוות אף על פי שלא לשמה?
What's the L'olam? And the Me'or Einayim answers that on the madriega in which a person finds himself, he's aware of all kinds of ulterior motives he has, all kinds of negi'os, all kinds of forms of shelo lishma. And he has a certain conception when he bends backward and he looks upward on the ladder which is מוצב ארצה וראשו מגיע השמימה, so he can see a little bit higher and there's a notion of lishma that he's seeking, that he's striving for. When a person gets there, now that he's on the higher madriega, so now he becomes sensitive and he becomes attuned to more subtle forms of shelo lishma that he was ignorant of before, and now he has a higher and more refined conception of lishma. And that's an infinite process. It's a process that never ends. Hence לעולם יעסוק אדם בתורה ומצוות שלא לשמה. It's taka l'olam. It's taka l'olam. Chovos HaLevavos has a very beautiful idea. He says that chasidim, pious devout people, not only do they do teshuvah for aveiros, but they do teshuvah on their teshuvah. Chasidim do teshuvah on their teshuvah. What does that mean? It means again, a person's on a certain madriega. On the madriega in which he finds himself, he's able to feel what he then considers and experiences a profound sense of nechama u'busha and says טאקע בלב שלם ניחמתי ובושתי במעשי. When he reaches a higher madriega, so then now he really appreciates Torah, now he really understands the chomer bitul Torah. Now he really has more yiras shamayim. Now he really understands what it means to contravene the ratzon haborei. And he realizes that last year's teshuvah, maybe it was yesterday's teshuvah, was a superficial teshuvah. He klaps al cheit, על חטא שחטאנו לפניך בתשובה. What both of these insights illustrate, that of the Me'or Einayim and that of the Chovos HaLevavos, there's two types of growth. When we talk about being on a certain madriega of avodas Hashem, so we don't mean a point on the spectrum. A madriega is an area. It's a zone. And there's room for growth within that area, within that zone. But then, there's another type of growth. There's growth where a person doesn't just move inches or centimeters within that same area, within that same zone, upon that same madriega, but a person goes from madriega to madriega l'eyla u'leyla. My brother זכר צדיק וקדוש לברכה was a Ben Aliya. In hearing the stories afterwards, and the stories, a small percentage of the stories have become public, and if they would all become public, it still would be בבחינת אפס קצהו תראה וכולו לא תראה. People wonder how's it possible to grow so big? The answer is that if one doesn't stop growing at a certain age, if the tekufah of growth is one's entire lifetime, one can grow to proportions of a giant. Let's try be'ezrat Hashem to identify some of the derachim of the ben aliyah. A ben aliyah, no matter how big he has become, no matter how great he has become, no matter how well positioned and eminently qualified he is to be a mashpia and is being mashpia, is always looking to be a mekabel. איזהו חכם הלומד מכל אדם, the Maharal comments, ובא לומר שהיה חפץ ומשתוקק מאוד בתורה עד שלמד מכל אדם.
He has such a yearning, such a teshukah for Torah, he goes anywhere and everywhere if there's something to be learned, he goes looking, he goes searching. A ben aliyah is always looking to be a mekabel. My brother was always looking to be mekabel, not only in his youth when for better than a decade he learned so closely, intensely, with the Rav zecher tzadik livracha, whom he considered his rebbi muvhak. He tore kriah for him, sat shivah for a day as is the halacha for a rebbi muvhak. But when he was older and great, always looking to be mekabel. When he had mastered nigleh, quietly, as part of a quiet modest chaburah, he used to go to Rabbi Yisrael Eliyahu Weintraub and was machnia himself and became a talmid in learning nistar. One Chodesh Elul, he was in his low thirties at that point, already living in Eretz Yisrael, so he left Eretz Yisrael for Elul and went to Manchester. So as a rule, I never ever asked him why he was doing things. I knew that he wanted to do things behatzneiah and was not going to intrude upon it. I don't know why, why I broke that, that rule, but I asked him what he was going for. I didn't spell it out, I didn't spell the question out because he would have, he would have objected stridently. But what do you have to learn? So I don't think he necessarily made full disclosure, but he wasn't docheh b'kash either and he told me, "I went to learn how to make a bracha." When he'd be in the car driving to and from Yeshiva or דרך הולך ללמוד תורה או לעסוק במצווה, there were no other derachim with him, so he'd always be listening to tapes. He'd be listening to tapes of chashuv talmidei chachamim, but people who were not his equal, certainly not his equal. But they had what to say, they had what to give. He always wanted to be mekabel and you would hear, you would hear he'd quote what he heard on a tape from so-and-so. Again, chashuv, chashuv person, but not, not in his league. Always looking to be mekabel. Another techunah, another of the derachim of a ben aliyah. The Rambam writes in פרק ג מהלכות תלמוד תורה מי שרוצה לזכות בכתר התורה יזהר בכל לילותיו ולא יאבד אפילו אחת מהן בשינה ואכילה ושתייה וכיוצא בהן אלא בתלמוד תורה ודברי חכמה.
So the Rambam demands, if a person wants to be זוכה בכתר של תורה, the Rambam demands absolute consistency. So on one level, the peshat is clear. Torah. is so wide and so deep, the yam haTorah so wide and so deep without that consistent, concerted effort, how can a person ever, ever dream of being זוכה בכתר של תורה? But clearly, there's more to it than that. The three or four hours of a summer night if a person squanders that, that's really going to make or break the effort and the investment of time and energy and yegia v'amal that's necessary for kesser shel Torah? Those three or four hours are really going to make or break it? So the answer is, they're not going to make or break it quantitatively, but on a different level. To be zoiche b'kesser Torah, so Torah has to be a person's life. It can't just be something that he's committed to. It has to peshuta k'mashma'o כי הם חיינו ואורך ימינו. The Gemara at the end of Brachos: ועוד פתח רבי יהודה בכבוד תורה ודרש הסכת ושמע ישראל היום הזה נהיית לעם.
Today you've become a nation. Klal Yisrael is a nation by virtue of Torah. וכי אותו היום ניתנה תורה לישראל? Moshe Rabbeinu is saying this passuk at the end of the 40 years. והלא אותו היום סוף ארבעים שנה היה? אלא ללמדך שחביבה תורה על לומדיה בכל יום ויום כיום שניתנה מהר סיני.
Torah is so chaviv, so dear, so precious to those who learn Torah, it's as if it's new. The excitement as though the gift is a new one. אמר רבי תנחום בריה דרבי חייא איש כפר עכו תדע שהרי אדם קורא קריאת שמע שחרית וערבית וערב אחד אינו קורא דומה כמי שלא קרא קריאת שמע מעולם.
Astounding. A person every day, day in, day out, says krias Shema morning and night. Imagine, from his bar mitzvah on, says krias Shema day in, day out, 354 days a year, over 700 times a year. Fast forward 50 years. He's said krias Shema over 35,000 times. He misses one krias Shema. One krias Shema. I would give myself a pat on the shoulder with much congratulations. Chazal say: דומה כמי שלא קרא קריאת שמע מעולם. Once when we were visiting and talking, so my brother quoted, I think it was from Rav Aharon Kotler in Mishnas Rav Aharon that Rav Aharon says pshat: If קבלת עול מלכות שמים is what it should be, it means that's a person's life. There's nothing tangential about it, there's nothing peripheral about it, it's a person's life. קבלת עול מלכות שמים is a person's life. If it's one's life, he can't miss it even once. If a person misses it even once, so then סופו הוכיח על תחילתו. Yeah, it's a mitzvah, and he's been very conscientious, and he's worked very hard, but you know what? It's not his life. דומה כמי שלא קרא קריאת שמע מעולם. Anyone knew if you wanted to reach my brother on the phone, that his phone hour was between midnight and 1:00 AM, when he had first come back from the beis medrash and instead of learning in the beis medrash was sitting and learning at the table and would then answer the phone. Couple of years ago on, again, in one of those, so I told my brother that someone had shown me a clip on YouTube. I don't know why privacy was invaded nor do I know whether I should have watched, but I did. And I told him about it, there's a clip of Chacham Ovadia zatzal going to רב חיים פנחס שיינברג זצל and at the time Chacham Ovadia was close to 90, I'm not sure exactly what his age was, somewhere around there, and he was suffering terrible, terrible back pain. So terrible that it affected his concentration and he couldn't learn. And you see in this clip, you see in this clip that Chacham Ovadia's crying. And he's asking רב חיים פנחס שיינברג that he should give him a bracha that he should be able to learn, and Rav Scheinberg is telling him, lo livkot, lo livkot, and he's crying like a baby. So I told my brother I'd seen this clip. And then I don't really have the words to describe his reaction. Controlled, controlled, maybe his, maybe it was slightly, slightly louder than the normal דברי חכמים בנחת נשמעים, but he reacted with such a passion, with such a fire and said, I believe it. Bnei Aliya demonstrate a remarkable unflagging consistency. צמאה נפשי לאלוקים לקל חי, which burns inside of them. The thirst is unquenchable. The consistency is remarkable. A third of the qualities of a Ben Aliya, the Rav in his hesped for Rav Chaim Heller, קוטביות מוזרה ידועה לעולמה של היהדות המקורית. There's a strange polarity within Yahadut. מתנועעת היא כמטולטלת בין שתי האידיאות של גדלות וילדות. It goes back and forth between gadlus, greatness, maturity, the sagacity which comes with age, and the childish quality. And he describes how Gedolei Yisrael are simultaneously old, wise, and mature, and they're children. The sense of excitement, generally we associate aspiration, longing, yearning, wanting more and more, we associate that with youth. But that excitement, that tshuka, that yearning, so characteristic of youthfulness, is something which is forever present in Gedolei Yisrael. My brother remained young, that polarity was very much present within him. Whether it was, whether it expressed itself in his youthful stamina, which he never lost. A friend of his from almost fifty years ago wrote us a letter of tanchumim in which he said that he was astounded to find out, he says, I was astounded to find out that Moshe was still keeping the same schedule that he had forty years earlier. But he was youthful also in his excitement, in his excitement about learning, in his excitement about kiyum hamitzvos, in his excitement about nifla'os haborei. He went this past summer, it was like the earth leaving its orbit. Generally when it came to vacations he used to say that he conducts himself like a Yid from Bnei Brak. What does that mean? The Jews from Bnei Brak come to Yerushalayim on vacation. So he lived in Yerushalayim. So he said when bein hazmanim he said, so I consider myself as a Jew from Bnei Brak. That was his approach. But eich shehu, eich shehu, he went this summer and he saw the Alps. And my nephew described how he started saying borchi nafshi. He was crying. Na'ar Yisrael ve'ohavehu remained very young. He would describe with great geshmak, I think I'm retelling the story correctly. When Rav Shmuel Grozovsky was in Boston for medical treatment and came to visit the Rav, the Rav went to visit him. At one point the Rav told him something and he jumped out of his chair literally. He was so excited he jumped out of his chair literally. Those were the stories that my brother enjoyed telling. A third tchunah of a ben aliya closely related to that of wanting to be a mekabel is on his own he's always looking to infuse more kedusha into his life. Always refining his own hanhagos, always looking to add new hanhagos. Again his children described how in recent years with his wife's advanced consent Shavuos night after davening he didn't go home to make kiddush. The first seder in the beis medrash and learn for a few hours. You go home and you eat, so then one gets tired, one can't learn with the same intensity, with the same clarity. So he would learn until leis bereira a little bit before chatzos he would run home to make kiddush. A new hanhaga always always mosif veholeich, mosif veholeich. Living a life of a ben aliya allowed my brother to become a tamim, to become a shaleim. I think the story is told about Rav Yisrael Salanter that someone once approached him and said you know if your talmid Rav Itzele wouldn't spend so much time on limud hamusar he could really really develop into a gadol of unparalleled proportions and dimensions. And as the story goes Rav Yisrael answered he said in hilchos birchos hanehenin you have the following halacha. If you have a challoh which is whole and then you have half of a large challa which is bigger but it's not shaleim. So the din is that you make the hamotzi on the shaleim not on the gadol. Rav Yisrael Salanter said shleimus is more important than gadlus. My brother was a gadol but more significantly a shaleim. What does it mean to be a shaleim? What elements, what ingredients are necessary for shleimus? First of all, Toras Hashem Temima. The Ribbono Shel Olam's Torah is Tamim. Certainly, for us to aspire to shleimus, it means to make a kinyan in Toras Hashem Temima. My brother had a burning, burning desire to learn and know kol haTorah kulah. The Chofetz Chaim in different places quotes the midrash that le'asid lavo a person is asked, did you, did you learn the Torah Shebiksav? And if he answers yes to that, if he's fortunate enough to answer yes to that, and proceed to the next line of questioning, did you learn Mishna, did you learn Gemara? And the questioning keeps going until did you, did you look, did you gaze at Ma'aseh Merkavah? My brother spent his life preparing himself for those questions. I remember once many, many years ago, decades ago, he told me that a certain renowned talmid chacham had said, was known for saying that it's better to be an expert in one seder in shas than a sort of a kolbo'nik in shisha sidrei. And if your ear was attuned, what you heard between the words, between the lines was that my brother disapproved of the concession of choosing between those two options. He wasn't willing to answer that question, he wasn't willing to address that question, he wasn't going to choose between two bedieved options. The temimus in Torah, not only I'm not ra'uy to say eidus but those who are have said the eidus, so as eid mi-pi eid I repeat it. Not only הן בנגלה הן בנסתר, but often one finds when people learn sifrei machshava, there's a certain niche. Some people learn Toras HaGra. Some people learn sifrei mussar. Some people learn sifrei machshava, sifrei chasidus. Some are drawn to Maharal. Pshuto kemashmao, pshuto kemashmao, my brother learned, mastered, and drew from all those different areas of sifrei machshava. Another major ingredient in shleimus, the Gaon says that all of life is for tikkun hamiddos. We're all familiar with the quote from Rabbi Yisrael Salanter that it's easier to learn and master shas than it is to break and refine and correct a single midda. And obviously Rabbi Yisrael was not in any way minimizing the accomplishment of learning shas. My brother invested tremendous, tremendous effort, tremendous effort without commenting on it, hoping that it went unobserved, which for the most part it did, in tikkun hamiddos. I remember once his telling me that he had gone, a certain famous tzaddik was known, he had a whole avoda in bentching Chanukah licht. That he used to, the saying the brachos before the, before the lighting of Chanukah licht would take him an hour. So kedarko bakodesh, my brother was looking to be mekabel from everyone. He had to go see it once. He had to go see what there was to learn from that avoda. And takeh kach hava. This tzaddik said the brachos, took him an hour, took him an hour to say the brachos before lighting that Chanukah. My brother's reaction afterwards was he told me, he says, I could have done that also. But then on the way out, someone stopped him, I don't remember, I think maybe it was a child or some, someone who needed him, who needed to talk to him, and started talking to him and went on and on and on and on and he said and this tzaddik stood and and listened with gave him his full attention with just endless patience and self-deprecatingly and falsely my brother said I don't know if I could have done that. Another element of shleimus, the mishna at the beginning of Pirkei Avos על שלושה דברים העולם עומד על התורה ועל העבודה ועל גמילות חסדים
the Meiri writes והעניין שבכאן דיברו על כוונת מציאות האדם שהוא להיות בזה שלמות
skipping a little bit ייתכן לומר שבתכלית מציאות האדם הוא להשלים עצמו השלמות שאפשר לו
skipping והשלמות אמנם הוא בג' דברים similarly the Maharal writes והנה יתבאר לך כי ראויים אלו שלושה שיהיו עמודי העולם כאשר אלו ג' דברים משלימים האדם
my brother achieved shleimus in each of these three areas. Gadlus in Torah, tikun hamiddos and chesed. He valued every second of his time, every second was kodesh kodashim for learning. When someone needed an ear, he could sit for hours, literally, with that person and he did. Everyone was received with such a warm and warming smile and my earliest memories such tremendous effort invested in tefillah. Again, a story that that he told me once. People of stature, people of substance don't talk about themselves. One has to piece together and try to gain a window into their soul by seeing what they praise about other people, what stories about other people that they find themselves drawn. My brother told the following story about Reb Velvel. It was Rosh Chodesh and Reb Velvel used to say, as did the Rav as well, used to say the stille Shmoneh Esrei somewhat audibly. So those around him heard that he forgot Ya'aleh Veyavo. So they go over to him and and say Ya'aleh Veyavo. Keeps on going. Ya'aleh Veyavo. Ya'aleh Veyavo. Finally one person has the temerity goes over and and shakes on on the kapote. Ya'aleh Veyavo. Reb Velvel ignores them, continues, finishes Shmoneh Esrei. They go over to him afterwards when he finishes Shmoneh Esrei and they said the Reb didn't say Ya'aleh Veyavo. Why didn't you tell me? On the Chaf-Ches Cheshvan, my brother was standing Shmoneh Esrei, no one knows for sure whether there wasn't I can't tell you that for a fact, it could be that there just wasn't time to react. I think he didn't hear anything. But if shleimos demands shleimos in Torah, Avodah, and Gmilus Chassadim, shleimos also demands knowing how to balance those three. And here, too, my brother was exceptional in that as well. For many, many years, every erev Shabbos, he volunteered as a driver. He was a driver for Yad Eliezer, making food deliveries, pickup and deliveries. A story I heard during the shiva, once he, they needed to communicate with the families, so he asked my niece to, I don't know whether because she had a better handwriting or to type it, I'm not sure which, to write a note and to sign the note הנהג והסבא של יד אליעזר. So she said, "I'm not writing that. You're not a nahag and you're not a sabba." And he said, "Write it, I'm a nahag, I'm a sabba." He was makpid to the nth degree on shmiras einayim, on אל תרבה שיחה עם האשה, and he knew how to find the balance between that and between welcoming family members into his home and making them feel welcome and comfortable. And finally, shleimos also demands ללמוד וללמד לשמור ולעשות. My brother's dikduk b'halacha, again, one can't really know, there's another thirty-five people out there who are also hiding, so one can't really state it definitively. Yitachen, he was a yachid b'doro in terms of his dikduk b'halacha. Some people, chassidim anshei maaseh, so makpid, kashrus, Shabbos, chametz b'Pesach, ner Chanukah מצוה חביבה עד מאד. Brother had dikdukim and hidurim in every single mitzvah בלא יוצא מן הכלל. Ben Aliyah, shleimos, the Navi Michah says הצנע לכת עם ה' אלהיך. The aliyah can't be possible, the shleimos isn't real, unless it all happens be'hatzneia leches, quietly, sha shtil. The Reshis Chochma writes נמצא כי מכלל החנפים הוא העושה מעשה מצוה לקל יתברך בכונתו בשביל שיכבדוהו בני אדם וכתוב בחובות הלבבות כי העושה מעשה בשביל כבוד בני אדם או מיראתם אינו עובד לבורא אלא לבני אדם.
The pshat, to the degree that a person has mora basar vedam which isn't dictated by the halacha, so that detracts from his mora shamayim. To the degree that a person... is interested in, is concerned with the reaction of others where the halacha doesn't warrant it, so to that degree it detracts from the concern he's supposed to have for Hakodesh Baruch Hu's reaction because the yira klappei Hakodesh Baruch Hu, the concern for what Hakodesh Baruch Hu thinks is supposed to be absolute and exclusive. The degree to which one is interested in kovod from others, so to that degree it detracts from the absolute, absolute focus and concern that a person is supposed to have as to what Hakodesh Baruch Hu thinks. My brother did everything possible to hide and did a very good job of it. I remember in the days after the Rav's ptira, again from the praise that a person says, sometimes it rebounds. So my brother commented how very rarely in shiur here in yeshiva the Rav didn't, wasn't oisek too much in Kodshim. Wasn't oisek too much in Kodshim. One summer he learned Dam Chata'as. Wasn't oisek very much in Kodshim and when inyanim came up, he avoided them. So my brother described how when he began learning seder Kodshim and he would go over to the Rav to ask, so he was astounded. Every inyan that he spoke to him about, it was as if the Rav had just finished learning it yesterday. It was so fresh. So how come he avoided it in shiur? Because he didn't think he was short-changing the talmidim in so doing. He was giving them as much, if not more, than they could handle anyway. So why did he have to show it? One doesn't reveal what's not what unless it's absolutely necessary to reveal. We talked before about shleimus meaning striking a balance. So my brother had to strike a balance between being melamed, between teaching Torah and between hiding what he knew. And the balance that he struck was that if the talmid was being sho'el, I don't mean it literally ke'inyan, if he was asking on something that pertained to his learning, so then he wasn't gonna, he wasn't gonna insist on his tzniyus at the expense of the talmid's development. But if he thought the talmid wasn't ready for what he was asking or if he thought the talmid was just probing to see how much he knew, so then he avoided the question. Talmidim tell the story that once at one of the Friday night seudos, so one of the talmidim said to him, "Rebbi, what's Kabbalah?" So without missing a beat, he said it's one of the daled avodos: שחיטה, קבלה, הולכה, זריקה. They asked him what he learns in Bnei Brak, he said Mesillas Yesharim. But there's also an art to tzniyus. There's an art to anavah. Sholchu mitam איזהו בן עולם הבא anvasan ushfal berech שייף עייל, שייף נפיק. I don't know if it says this meforash somewhere or this was the Rav's pshat, I don't know, I apologize for the ignorance. What's pshat shfal berech, right, it's birkayim, the knees. So I remember when the Rav was translating this Gemara, so he said, so שייף עייל שייף נפיק means that when a person walks in, so he walks in low, when he enters he enters that way and when he leaves he leaves that way. So there are two ways a person can do it. A person can lower himself by going like this, but then everyone sees that he's lowering himself. Or he can very inconspicuously, he can bend his knees, and then no one notices that he's practicing tzniyus. My brother was שייף עייל שייף נפיק with an art, shfal berech. In Ruach Chaim, Rav Chaim Volozhiner is paraphrased as follows: the bakasha that we have in Elokai Netzor, נפשי כעפר לכל תהיה פתח לבי בתורתך ואחרי מצותיך תרדוף נפשי,
says Rav Chaim, שתהא נפשי נחשבת לכל הבריות כעפר ממש, שלא ינהגו בי כבוד ואז יוכל להיות פתיחת לב בתורה ולרדוף אחרי מצות.
It was mikuyam in my brother. That same gemara in סנהדרין מ"ז עמוד ב, the gemara says that one of the סימני בן עולם הבא is אינו מחזיק טובה לעצמו. The pshat in not being machzik tova le’atzmo, lichora it stems from at least two different places. First of all, ki lekach nitzarta. אם למדת תורה הרבה אל תחזיק טובה לעצמך כי לכך נוצרת.
If a person pays back a hundred dollar loan, he doesn't give himself a yasher koach. He did what he was supposed to be doing, ki lekach nitzarta. But moreover, the more Torah a person learns, the more, if he's really learning Torah authentically and the Torah is registering on him, impacting him the way it should, so the more he recognizes gadlus haborei and the smaller and smaller he becomes in his own eyes, and how can he possibly, possibly be machzik tova le’atzmo? I remember once, for tachlis purposes, I was asking my brother about someone, someone learning in yeshiva. And my brother thought very highly of him, very, very highly, and the way he characterized him was as follows: he takes what he does very seriously, but he doesn't take himself seriously. ולסיום הדברים למי שאמרה. A dear friend of mine made the following observation: when my brother was maspid our father, he described, I think the phrase he used in the hesped in Eretz Yisrael in Hebrew was yamav ha'achronim hanifla'im. He described how my father davened Ne'ilah, said viduy with an intense, intense look of concentration. After Ne'ilah, as the kedushas hayom ebbed and left, we sang as was the minhag in my father's beis medrash, and my brother was describing this remarkable, if one hadn't been there and witnessed it, too good to be true scene. And what my friend commented to me was, when he heard the news on kaf hey Cheshvan, he thought of Rashi quoting Chazal, אותה מיתה אשר ראית וחמדת מתוך קדושה וטהרה עילאה. Gemara in Shabbos, אמר רבי חייא בר אבא אמר רבי יוחנן אחד מן האחין שמת ידאגו כל האחין, אחד מבני חבורה שמת תדאג כל החבורה כולה.
In general, generally achin should be understood literally in a biological sense, chabura should be understood in its narrow communal, collegial sense. Everyone far and wide understood that the peh kadosh. who were killed four weeks ago died as Korbanos Tzibbur. And when that happens, the achem of Rabbi Yochanan's meimra becomes acheinu k'vnei Yisrael and the chabura becomes chaverim kol Yisrael. It wasn't a middas hadin only against the families, it was a middas hadin against the families but not only against the families. It was a middas hadin not only against the narrow, narrowly defined communal and collegial chabura, but against kol Yisrael. And the deaga has to be channeled to teshuva. That's what deaga, deaga, that's the religious expression of deaga; it has to be channeled to teshuva. It has to be channeled with teshuva and one way to channel it to teshuva is to reflect on some of the drachav haniflaim of my brother זכר צדיק וקדוש לברכה, to think in the context, each one of us, ba'asher hu adam, ba'asher hu sham, what it means to us concretely, practically to become more of a ben aliya, what it means to each one of us ba'asher hu sham, ba'asher hu adam, what it means to strive for shleimus, what it means to live bitzniyus, what it means to make strides in each of the tchumim of Torah and avoda and gemilus chasadim towards shleimus, and in that zchus we should all merit ביאת גואל צדק במהרה בימינו אמן.