By Gavi Tropper, Features Editor
Rabbi Kalman Ber, the Ashkenazi chief rabbi of Israel, visited Yeshiva University’s Wilf campus on November 26, meeting with YU roshei yeshiva and delivering a shiur in the Glueck Beit Midrash. The visit to YU was a segment of Rabbi Ber’s recent trip to America, during which he visited numerous Jewish organizations such as the Beth Din of America and gave a public address at Congregation Ohr HaTorah in Bergenfield, New Jersey.
Rabbi Ber was born in 1957 in Tel Aviv. He learned at Yeshivat Kerem B’Yavneh and served as a combat soldier in the Nachal infantry brigade of the Israel Defence Forces. After years of studying in the Kerem B’Yavneh kollel, Rabbi Ber became a teacher there in 1986. In 2014, he was appointed Ashkenazi chief rabbi of Netanya, and in 2024 he was elected Ashkenazi chief rabbi of Israel following an extremely tight election against Rabbi Micha Halevi, chief rabbi of Petach Tikva.
Josh Reback (SSSB ‘28) appreciated YU’s efforts to bring Israeli leaders to the school. “I think it’s very good they brought him in and Naftali Bennet,” he said, referring to former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett’s visit to YU on November 11 and the public panel he held with YU President Ari Berman.
“It’s so nice Rabbi Ber’s visit was able to bridge between America and Israel,” Eitan Barenholtz (YC ‘28) said.
Rabbi Aryeh Lebowitz, the dean of REITS (the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary), introduced Rabbi Ber by discussing their personal connection, stretching back over 30 years to when he was a student at Yeshivat Kerem B’Yavneh and would hear a shiur from Rabbi Ber weekly. “We felt we were in the presence of someone destined for great things,” he said.
Rabbi Ber began by explaining that unlike his other destinations in America, where he had to speak with difficulty in English, he was told the students in YU were fluent enough in Hebrew that he could speak entirely in his native language. He praised YU Rosh Yeshiva Rabbi Hershel Schachter personally, as well as the institution of YU itself, explaining that Israel could benefit from a place like YU.
The shiur focused on the laws of lighting Chanukah candles. Rabbi Ber explored the discussion of whether the requirement is for each individual to light candles or for the house to have Chanukah candles. This question, he explained, comes with practical differences, such as the possibility that a guest in someone else’s house can rely on their host’s lighting or that a traveller need not light at all. He also discussed the unique idea in the mitzvah (positive commandment) of lighting Chanukah candles of mehadrin — ascending levels of performance — the lowest level being lighting a single candle and the highest being adding a candle for every night. Rabbi Ber presented the Brisker Rov’s understanding that these mehadrin levels are not improvements of the lighting, but rather entirely different modes of performing the lighting.
Eitan Nissel (YC ‘27) appreciated Rabbi Ber’s halachic analysis. “To the extent to which I understood it, I really enjoyed how the method came out of the lomdus [halachic analysis],” he told the YU Observer. “It wasn’t just made up from a gematria [numerical value of Hebrew letters] or something.”
Rabbi Ber also discussed Rabbi Yaakov Emden’s innovative belief, based on Chaggai 2:18, that the holiday of Chanukah’s true origins lay not with the Hasmonean victory, but rather hundreds of years earlier when second Beit Hamikdash’s foundation was initially laid on the 24th of Kislev. He explained, based on one view in Yoma 21b, that even when the physical structure of the Beit Hamikdash was completed, God’s presence did not rest in it because it was constructed under foreign rule. It was only once the Jews broke off their allegiance to both foreign rulers and foreign Hellenistic culture that God’s presence resided in the second Beit Hamikdash. So, the celebration of the Hasmonean victory is really a broader celebration of the return of God’s presence to the Beit Hamikdash.
The message of Chanukah, Rabbi Ber concluded, is to follow in the Hashmoneans’ example and bring God’s presence into our own houses by de-emphasizing the influence of Western culture and focusing on our Judaism. He added that especially since the beginning of the war in Israel, interest in Judaism, even among secular Israelis, has risen. Because students of YU have experience with secular culture, they have a unique opportunity to spread connections to Judaism.
“It’s not the job of the Chief Rabbinate. You, the students of Yeshiva University, know how to speak the language of everyone. We have to save this momentum, to ignite the lights,” Rabbi Ber said in Hebrew.
Photo Credit: JJ Grayson