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JANUARY 21, 2021 | The Jewish Home OCTOBER 29, 2015 | The Jewish Home
I N
M E M O R Y
Remembering
Moreinu Harav Yehuda Kelemer, z”l By Dr. Rabin Rahmani
The author with HaRav Kelemer
W
ords are not adequate. Many words have been said and much ink has been spilled since the untimely passing of Moreinu HaRav Yehuda Kelemer. Hespedim, speeches, tributes, and newspaper and magazine articles have depicted his greatness in Torah and unparalleled righteousness. Myriad stories have been told and retold of the generosity of his spirit, gentleness of his soul, strength of leadership and hidden wisdom; and yet, hard as we try, we know deep down that it’s not enough. We recognize that words and tears simply cannot suffice to capture, even in a minuscule way, the sense of loss that we feel and the void that has been left with his passing. Thus, far it be from me to attempt and encapsulate in any meaningful way the essence of Rav Kelemer and
what he meant to the world. My aim in the next few paragraphs is only to offer a somewhat unique perspective on the loss of our “roeh ne’eman,” trusted shepherd, who carried us Al Kanfei Nesharim for so many years. My family migrated en masse from Iran in the 1980s, part of a common thread in Jewish history: prominent citizens driven from their homeland of thousands of years dating back to the times of Mordechai and Esther by anti-Semitism and persecution. With no place to call home and few contacts, the first member to flee and seek asylum in United States settled in West Hempstead to be near a young rav he had met as a college student in Brookline, Massachusetts. In the ensuing years, many more family members with similar circumstances followed. As millions before
us, we came with nothing. No place to call home, scarce resources, no knowledge of the American culture or English language. But those facts notwithstanding, we knew that we would persevere. We had each other, and we had our new Rock, our leader, Rav Kelemer. From the very first day, he welcomed us and made us feel like we belonged. He was a fixture at every family simcha and was there to console us in times of sadness. One of his first public appearances after his horrific accident was at one of our family simchas, and I can still feel the sense of relief and jubilation among all hundreds present when he was called up for a bracha. The mere mention of his name to this day evokes a sense of awe, and I’ll never forget the palpable reverence we all felt when he walked
into any room. I was zocheh to hear him speak hundreds of times over the years at those events and was always mesmerized by the way he was able to instantly weave together gematrias, new chiddushim and unbelievably deep ideas individually tailored toward the baal simcha to enhance the occasion while being mekadesh Shem Shamayim. He had a unique talent of focusing on the individual, while never forgetting the sanctity of being a member of the greater whole – your family and the Jewish nation. He was particularly fond of repeating a story of my elderly grandmother, who a few months after arriving in New York, with no knowledge of the English language or sense of the area’s geography, had ran after her adult son onto the LIRR to bring him the lunch he had forgotten. To
