Review
The subject of Judaism and ethics receives further examination in...Eyes to See.... --
Marcia Ford, Publishers WeeklyDo I have to tell you how moved I was--and still am--by (Eyes to See)? In his commentaries and halakhic considerations there is fire--the fire of Sinai.... I will certainly try my best to bring it to the attention of as many readers as possible. --Elie Wiesel
The Shoah has orphaned us of our greatest gedolei Torah. True though that may be, to our great sorrow, one must remain ever alert for the exceptional case -- the rare sage of intense piety, genuine humility and passionate ahavat Yisrael who combines expansive erudition, penetrating insight, inspired wisdom and exquisite sensitivity with uncompromising honesty, fierce independence and indomitable courage.
Such a sage emerges by G-d`s grace once in a very great while -- sometimes almost unnoticed, to correct, enrich and elevate us, if we would but heed them.
The voice of such a sage, Hagaon Rav Yom Tov Schwarz, shlita, of Brooklyn, New York, has gradually made itself heard over the last three decades -- initially, in the field of Talmudic discourse and Halachic decision, with his remarkable Ma'aneh L'igrot and Shu't Adnei Nechoshet; and lately, in the field of Torah ethics, with his more generally accessible Einayim Lirot, originally published in Hebrew and recently issued in a fine English translation as 'Eyes to See: Recovering Ethical Torah Principles Lost in the Holocaust' (Urim Publications, 2004). In Eyes to See, R. Schwarz, a Holocaust survivor who was ordained before the war at the famed Yeshivat Chachmei Lublin, offers an unaccustomed breadth of Torah authenticity and clarity in his view of various aspects of conventional Orthodox culture, attitudes and practice.
R. Schwarz measures many prevailing trends and institutions of contemporary Orthodoxy and compares them to Jewish societal norms of prior eras, especially pre-Shoah Europe. R. Schwarz presents an analytical tour de force, at once measured in its incisive analysis of modern Torah life. Although few remain among us who experienced the horrors of the Shoah, we are a generation still reeling from its direct and indirect consequences. An aspect of this phenomenon that is perhaps least recognized is the continuing deleterious impact on the Orthodox world of the abrupt transformations attendant upon the Shoah and our adjustments or failures to adjust to them. In R. Schwarz, we have a faithful witness to the Shoah, to the Jewish world obliterated thereby, and to the subsequent reconstitution of Torah Judaism on these shores. --David Nadoff, The Jewish Press, reprinted from the Chaburat Eim Habanim Semeichah newsletter
About the Author
Rabbi Yom Tov Schwarz was born in Oswencim (Auschwitz), Poland in 1921. Recognized at a young age as a scholar and child prodigy, he entered the famed Yeshiva Chachmei Lublin at the age of fifteen. After miraculously surviving over two years in ghettos and two years in concentration camps, Rabbi Schwarz became the Chief Rabbi of Luneburg, Germany in 1947. He settled in the US in 1951 and has served as the Rav of K'hal Nachlas Yaakov in Brooklyn, NY (previously of Queens, NY) for the past forty years.
Rabbi Schwarz is the author of a number of published scholarly works in Hebrew, the latest of which is the multi-volume collection of responsa Adnei Nechoshes, comprising his halachic decisions on a broad range of the most serious legal issues of our time. Its originality, creativity and clarity, coupled with far-reaching erudition in Talmudic and rabbinic literature, has resulted in the establishment of Rabbi Schwarz as an authority of wide repute, though he is not as well-known outside of scholarly circles.
