The Kosher Bookworm

“...With All Your Heart...”

A Torah tribute to a true hero on Tisha B’Av

Issue of August 8, 2008

Grenade! Grenade! The very mention of this word can send shudders down the spine of even the most battle hardened. The instinct is to run. However, on the first of Av, two years ago, one brave G-d-fearing soul, IDF Major Roi Klein, z”l, yelled these words in urgent warning and threw himself upon the grenade, thus shielding the men under his command from certain death.

Roi Klein was a hero and his life’s story is heroism personified. The accolades expressed by a grateful people filled the papers, magazines and airwaves in Israel for months. However, there is one tribute that was published in Roi’s memory that is unique and deserves your attention and patronage.

Simply titled “...With All Your Heart...,” this volume, published by Binyan HaTorah in Eli, Israel and edited by Netanel Elyashiv, is based upon the shiurim of Rabbi Eliezer Kashtiel, who was Roi’s chavrusa in his last years.

This book, first brought to my attention by Danny Taubenfeld of Cedarhurst, one of our community’s leading activists and advocates on behalf of Medinat Yisrael, is one of the most spiritual books that I have ever encountered in the English language. Roi’s legacy centers upon the lumdus of Rabbi Kashtiel’s lectures, focusing upon the quality of adinut, the refinement of one’s soul. Based upon the writings of Rav Kook’s Orot Hateshuva, the text elaborates upon the importance that one must give to the concept of adinut in an attempt to strive for the spiritual perfection that will result from the successful application of adinut.

This book is not a simple biography of Roi. Rather, it is a tour of his spirit that informed his life’s work on behalf of his faith, of his people and its holy land, Israel. According to Elyashiv, Roi was a combat officer who studied the Daf Yomi every day, thus enabling himself to delve into the “yam haTalmud” study on a daily and consistent basis. Each of us who engage in the Daf Yomi routine can easily relate to Roi’s life story; after all, he was one of us.

Therefore, this observation should come to us as an apt expression of our shared sentiments concerning Roi’s last moments.

“In his death, the officer who redefined bravery and courage as he leaped on a live hand grenade to save the lives of others while sacrificing his own, who clearly and loudly said ‘Shma Yisrael’ with his last breath, symbolized the synthesis in his personality, Jewish and Israeli traits both in his noble life and in his heroic death.”

This book gives the reader a unique look into the spiritual world that was Roi’s. It opens the portals to the spiritual milieu in which he lived, first in Ra’anana, then Eli, all the time under the influence of the Bnai Akiva movement and its hashkafah of Torah v’avodah.

Writer Chana Weisberg, in a beautiful essay written shortly after Roi’s death, expressed it this way: “Roi’s enemy was willing to die to bring death and mourning to as many as possible; Roi was willing to die to ensure life and liberty for others, to preserve a world in which Jews could pray to G-d in their synagogues, perform G-d’s commandments and make our world a better, more moral and more conscientious place... Just over a half century has passed since the echo of the Shma resonated in the Nazi gas chambers where Jews were suffocated and then burnt into ashes in the crematoriums, just because they were Jews.”

Roi’s recitation of that same Shma was to affirm that same faith, but not as a persecuted and despised minority, to be tormented and murdered at the will of Nazi and Communist tyrants; rather as a defender of his faith, his people and his land. This is the spirituality that will serve as Roi’s lasting legacy in the glorious pages of Jewish history.

Rabbi Berel Wein, in his review of this book, put it this way: “There are heroes of the body and there are heroes of the spirit. This book is about a unique Jew who combined both types of heroism in his life and death. It is an inspirational and educational read that should be a part of every Jewish library.”

As we enter the fast of Tisha B’Av, may we each give Roi, whose yahrtzeit was observed this past Shabbos, a special place in our hearts, together with all the kedoshim whose sacrifice we recall this week.