The Pain of Causing Pain

by Dovid Zaklikowski for Hasidic Archives

Rabbi Moshe Feinstein didn’t have an office. The great authority on Jewish law would sit at his desk in the study hall of his yeshivah, Mesivtha Tifereth Jerusalem. He had no secretary to shield him from nudniks. Anyone could walk into the yeshivah and ask him a question. Although he had a telephone at his desk, if someone called the yeshivah payphone, he did not mind walking across the entire study hall to answer someone in need.

Even at home, he set aside designated times to receive visitors. Once, a rabbi arrived at the appointed time, and Rabbi Feinstein’s wife told him that she was sorry, but her husband was too ill. “It is impossible for him to speak to you.”

As the rabbi began to leave, he heard a weak voice from the other room asking who it was. When he identified himself, Rabbi Feinstein invited him in.

To the rabbi’s horror, Rabbi Feinstein, always formal and impeccably put together, was lying stretched out on the sofa, unable even to lift his head.

“I am terribly ill,” Rabbi Feinstein said. “I just had an experience that left me without strength. I just went through a terrible episode. It has been years since I experienced such anguish.”

Expecting to hear that he had fallen, suffered a tremor, or felt faint, the rabbi asked what had happened.

The great legal scholar explained that there was a rabbi whom he believed had acted with personal bias in a case he had adjudicated. There could be no greater insult to a rabbinic figure, but Rabbi Feinstein had to make his opinion clear: the rabbi should withdraw his ruling because of his personal interest in the case and direct the parties to seek the judgment of another rabbinic authority. 

“I had to insult a Jew,” Rabbi Feinstein said. “I had to. I couldn’t help it. I had to.”

He felt that he had no choice, but insulting another person, regardless of the reason, left him physically incapacitated.

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