Tribute to Rabbi Dr. Avraham Yehoshua Twerski

this is a tribute to yeshua tvorsky oliver sholem rabbi dr abraham twersky who i personally knew and am indebted to there's much to say about him he was a man that was larger than life but i'll just share some things that i believe are a little different than the other interviews and published accounts of his life in 1994 i published my first book your better self and this was after the rebbe that i was established that i've passed away already i asked uh doctor rabbi dr nissen mendel for haskamma for approbation for the for the book and he told me he wrote to me that in basarav they don't give huskamus so he considered himself part of basarav and that's a discussion for another time so i asked rabbi dr abram torski and he immediately gave me a beautiful letter the books about the uh the self-improvement based on dalton sheet of merchandise of tanya we cover such issues of loneliness and friendliness and guilt and things like that and dr torski wrote me a beautiful letter endorsing and saying that he wishes his his audience would appreciate those thoughts so um i'm personally very indebted to rabbi twersky for doing this but it's not about me it's not about the letter it's not about the book it's about rep about him he was born head of sukkos i believe tough foreign and he passed away this past sunday so he was 19 years old and this week his 90th book is coming out so it's a very interesting protest was in a sense an iconoclast he did not accept the the standard established attitudes and approaches to yiddish kite and xi but at the same time he was a very great hosted and a very from jew and a big town with hochum and a great torah scholar his parents came to america in 1927 and in 1929 they moved to milwaukee and he was born in milwaukee his mother was the sister of rabbi halberstam the bubba vareba so the baba rebel was his uncle his foreigner his father was known as the hardness typhoid or they used to call them from milwaukee but he was a son grandson of the harness typo dynasty within the chernobyl greater dynasty and that particular avenue in chernobyl comes from the chakasa and the chakasa was a son-in-law by the middle areba so rabbi dr twersky comes from the middle areba the twerskis are chernobler children grandchildren great grandchildren and there's probably thousands of them a very very prestigious family amongst the jewish nation and dr rabbi dr twersky did something that was a trailblazing thing i want to talk about several things that he did in his life that were trailblazing revolutionary and iconoclastic and one thing is the first thing maybe is that after he learned in yeshiva and was and was the son of a rebel and wore the longer the frock where the with the with the striable and everything else he goes to university he goes to university after telling me in an interview that's printed in my book conversations with the rebbe that he got permission from the stipler going kanyevsky to go to university for parnosa purposes and he was already married i just came back from shiva here in borough park the whole family was sitting here and i heard that when he was sitting in university a woman comes over to him and she says it's been three and a half weeks you haven't spoken a word to me you're so unsocial and rabbi dr twersky looked up at her and he said and so it shall remain the idea of mixing the genders in college is in there from the way the twirsky's and the above see it the worst thing and it is the issue of the philosophy you know optic courses heresy i just heard another relative rabbi yakov josef halperstam say at the shiva that wasn't the big concern and the concern was tarubas right mixing the genders and rabbi dr torres geek was strict about it he remained a husset a fruit from jew in college university in the 50s in america psychology psychotherapy psychiatry became very big the famous brooklyn psychiatrist psychologist william mayslow became very popular with his philosophies and cheetahs and ideologies and it was an up and coming thing and people were gravitating to that field rabbi twersky was the first as far as i know the first from hasidic psychiatrist of prominence and this is a trailblazing thing because the fact is we need such people who are so religious so from so hasidish so rubbish and for them to do that field to help people he had yeshidas in my in the interview that i had with him he talks about the said to him maybe you you move here to new york and open your practice here and he said to that because so many people need you here that ever said i know there are said i know but i'll be overwhelmed i won't have any day and night and the rebels said you're right you won't have any day and night but he wasn't a hustler he was a great admirer and he knew what kind of person that ebba was but he wasn't his husset so at the end he did not listen and he settled in a much quieter community pittsburgh and he made a great impact there and world over and i know myself people here in baro park from people hasidim who he saved their marriages and he saved their lives from addictions drug addictions alcohol addictions and all kinds of issues he was the address and they trusted him because of who he was and where he came from and everything else so that's one trailblazing issue that he brought he was the first to navigate that field and he did a very good job at it the second thing that he did was he brought the negan to the jewish people a negan that is sung today at any and all hasanahs at any events it doesn't have a party it belongs to it was composed by him while he was davening chakras one morning him and he and he has said the words and it's interesting they used to call him shia although his name is sure so when he says this tune fell into his head and he composed it and then in time was of 1960 at his younger youngest brother's wedding aaron who became later a professor of law at hofstra university he sang the song and everyone sang together and it took off and he heard reports back that it's an israeli song it's about so long it's this it's that however took such liking and love to it it's incredible and my friend rabbi michael zeliksen has put out about four whatsapp messages with the whole history of the rebel regimes america that's worth listening to but to put it succinctly that every used hashish mecca to help russian jews leave russia to help situations in energy throw so the nikken hashing of samehold became a staple of our rebbe and the barbecue see them the one who composed it and didn't take credit for it and didn't say you can't sing it and his copyright was rabbi twersky so much so that i just saw the copy of estava his son took it out and he left over the instructions there should be no has paid them no eulogies at his way at his funeral and they should sing the because he it brought so much simcha to you and that's what they did and that's another point no has paid him in in the chernobyl culture and in the culture of the city there's a spade and there's eulogies there was no eulogy by his wedding and not because of corona the police might come and shut down the wedding at the funeral etc because he realized and is teaching us that has paid them our loaded gun sometimes it's necessary and a good thing and sometimes it's bad has paid them eulogies bring a lot of narrow strike many times above my says baloney and for the neshama especially at the time before it's buried while it's buried it's very very important to say the ms the truth and he instructed no has paid them and rather he wants to go back to agresbo he wants to return to god with the negan that brought joy to you something so powerful another trailblazing thing that rabbi twersky did over his years was he was able to bring together in a way that the jewish and non-jewish worlds of psychotherapy and psychiatry for example he you he he partnered with charles schultz of peanuts and he put out some books and it it was really another way for therapy but the way it was done it opened it up for everyone not just for jewish people and that's another thing about it his 90 books some of the early ones i remember using them one book is generation to generation in los angeles when i was there and giving lectures i used this book heavily to prepare because it had stories anecdotes and self-improvement lessons and it's a classic there's no other book like that in that field generation to generation so his work extended way beyond you know uh um the traditional publishing houses and all of that and talking about his books of late probably about the last 20 years he published a book on abuse and the ordinary regular publishers didn't want to publish it because it would you know bring to the attention that there's abuse in the froome community he published it anyway he got it done he was a trailblazer he wasn't scared he wasn't scared whether they'll stop publishing his books he had to make a statement because abuse was getting out of control marital abuse parental abuse and of late internet abuse addictions he spoke out against it and that's a trailblazing thing a third thing that he was innovative in is that he wore tachylis he wore the sensors with the blue thread believing that it they've identified today the trailers that the torah says you should wear now for him to do that was pretty pretty innovative pretty risky because did you know see them don't do that we know that that's me there in in poland came but there was a lot of flack and a lot of uh disputes and most people said he was wrong well rabbi twersky based on new evidence of the last 20 30 years was convinced it is the correct color and he wore it and i think that's also so um trailblazing not to be afraid of what his own family the bullivers and the and the squares and the chernobylers what are they all going to say about rabbi avraham yeshua the son of a rebbe the grandson great grandson of the the shakasa and the mithler rabbit what are they going to say about him he didn't care why because this is what he can't do right or wrong this is what he came to a fourth area is where he stood out is in his love fire to stroll making aliyah when his family didn't go along they didn't come there just roll and i'm mentioning it because he says it on an interview that it bothers him that you know kind of none of his kids grandkids whatever but he felt compelled he felt that he needs to be now in urges role and he got up and he moved territory and that's an outstanding feature of a person who shows that what he believes and he does you want to come along you come home you don't want to come along don't come along and i think we need to um relate to that and understand again i'm not proposing everyone should move there to throw or not that's not the point here the point is what he did in face of kind of opposition non-compliance non-interest no interest he did it anyway the the warmth of the person the intelligence of the of this person he left for claudius ro so many works that will continue for years and years to come and when it when a person it's still the shiva and we think about a person like rabbi avram yeshua twersky and the legacy that he leaves and the family comes from and i met a shiva children his brother grandchildren relatives it's so wonderful to see the hasidic tradition in full force it wasn't an iota of a compromise okay and over the years living in pittsburgh he became very close to rabbi sheldon posner and rabbi haskell darren and others but those two in particular i mean posner you know took over the yeshiva in the 40s and ah pittsburgh is ashamed of it as a beautiful yeshiva rabbi twersky became the president of the shul as part of the shul in pittsburgh of the laboratory yeshiva he gave a tanya shir every morning and he told me this and i want to really you know listen to this listen to this i told them when i interviewed him in 1996 and the interviews online at chromites.info or in my book conversations with the rebbe i interviewed him and he and i said i heard that you don't allow someone who didn't go to the mikvah to come to yashir and he looked me straight down he says a hundred percent absolutely tanya on mikveh tanya without going to the mikvah zoi slowly no way now i don't think that's the la babbage approach but rabbit swarovski is not alibaba sure and let's focus on um the positive aspect tanya without going to the mikveh you know what safer tanya kadesha is the holy tanya to him this was the paradigm of godliness the epitome of divinity another thing he told me that he was translating at the time missiles shot him and it eventually came out and i said to him rabbi twersky after discussing it's in the interview some concepts in tanya which was fascinating about that that's a two levels of sodium levels of russia and the bananee and he put into psychological terms a very very uh different than i ever heard it before and i believe unique unique for its uh for for his explanation so i said to rabbi twersky you have to write a book a safer on tanya translate tanya your own words he said i have to get to that i don't believe you ever get to that so he got to that so my appeal to