בס"ד

Hesped at the Levaya of

Rabbi Emanuel Gettinger

17 Adar 5775

March 8th 2015

Young Israel of the West Side

Given by his son-in-law

Dr. Yehuda ( Julian) Ungar

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Just being here in this beautiful בית הכנסת with these wonderful faces; we thank

you all for coming and sharing with us this precious moment. Those who came from

near and far: my nephew Reb Aharon Gettinger came in from LA; Dr. Lipton, you

took care of him with such grace and dignity and sensitivity to his wishes. Asher, my

colleague Dr. Rabinowitz who introduced me to Abba as a פוסק when I was at

Columbia Presbyterian, struggling with the respirator issues back in the seventies.

Reggie… Reggie, you had such a special relationship with Abba. Auntie Rozy, I

promise you Uncle Mackie is waiting for Abba with a joke at the other side.

Thank you all for coming and sharing in our grief and in our celebration of this

life, a life greater than life, a person larger than most, a personality rich in its

complexity, a fortitude in strength that carried us all and a humility and self-

deprecation that was inspiring.

Abba came close to death three times in the last 18 months. Reb Dovid and I

struggled over the phone with sheilos that Abba and I had struggled with for twenty-

thirty years, three times. And it was after hearing the megila so eloquently by our

friend Ira Wiznitzer and waiting till after bein hashmashot that he finally relinquished

his final breath with a מיתת נשיקה on the 65th

anniversary of the day I took my first

breath, the day before spring. Which brought me this morning, as I woke, to a line

from Yeats: "Through winter-time we call on spring, and through the spring on

summer call, and when abounding hedges ring, declare that winter's best of all".

Thank you so much for caring, thank you for coming, for grieving with us. It

helps us. It relieves us of this great burden, a little.

Where does one begin? Where does one have the nerve to summarize, to review,

to analyze, to depict the full facets and the complexity that went into the personality

of my שווער?

His life was spent, as you have heard this afternoon, with the written word. His

life was teaching and articulating the Sacred Text. But his last year, ironically, was

spent in silence, בשתיקה, and the dignity with which he suffered and died betrayed

the nobility of his spirit. His written words, his legacy, they took years, torturous

years to birthing and publication, and yet they also betrayed the unspoken, the silence,

the שתיקה, the space between the words, the unanswered questions, the "black fire on

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white fire", to quote the Zohar. His life's work, beyond his teaching, his ministry, his

Rabbanut, his נסיעות, his patriarchy of his family, was his struggle with and in

שבעל פה תורה , his unique contribution and approach and his search for his truth, his

understanding of the אמת לאמיתה, the truth unto its utmost. Despite controversy,

despite the weight of tradition, the truth had to be told. This courage, this audacity that

came from his mastery of the entire corpus of Talmud and Poskim and his

photographic memory and his active intellect. For me, an over-towering figure in my

life, an inspiration in so many ways, so difficult to highlight, so hard to share in

public.

But sitting with him through the nights in the ICU, in the horror of the ICU, in the

indignity of the ICU and in the quiet times in our home, sitting in his שתיקה, in his

silence, throughout all, his lips are moving in תפילה constantly. אני תפילה"ו" now has

new meaning to me. He had become the very incarnation of תפילה לעני, תפילה לדוד .

There was so much time to reflect on the irony of Abba, of a man of words, his

unique articulation, his precision, his grammar, his insistence on the פשוטו של דבר,

the פשוטו של מקרא, his life in its simplicity, not naiveté, its clarity, its halachic

precision; now silent, בשתיקה. The irony that the notion of בין השמשות should have

exercised him in the first place. That gray time, the midrashic imaginative time,

שבת בין השמשות ערב , when all sorts of weird creature and things that made no sense

in the order of creation like Bilaam's Ass are now created just before Shobbos. That

in-between time, that which is לא יום ולא לילה, should have so exercised a man

dedicated to precision, black and white, night and day.

Other ironies: his deep connection with students at secular universities, his

support of women's learning, his appreciation of the Arts and especially music, his

love of astronomy and nature, the day before spring. His openness to critical study

methods and yet absolute commitment to Halacha, his ability to talk to all people in

all situations, men and women, and communicate with them; his charm, his unique

sense of humor – that was usually tied to a semantic joke; his impish laugh.

But beyond this, his mentoring of men and women over the years, who stayed

connected to him as a role model, as a sage with a profound ability to listen, intently.

His council, his הוראה, always sensitive to the humanity of the situation in a delicate

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balance of what in secular legal circles might be called the balance between law and

equity which is so lacking it today. Never will you meet a person who more faithfully

lived his values, and as a central teacher he gave his students the tools to study

independently, to think independently, to think critically, never trampling their own

values. He was too humble a man.

He understood the mysteries, despite his claiming on many occasions, אין לי עסק

He would not tolerate my often soft Carlebachian interpretations, chastising .בנסתרות

me with the comment "סתם דרוש" . Boy, did he have my number. Yet he often

supported my fascination in study of the זוהר הקדוש by stating: "my father did

likewise!" and my love of the midrashic mindset, with the claim that "Rav Riff knew

midrash by heart!" He understood that each person had a particular נטייה in Torah

that must be respected and nurtured.

More than anything, his methodology was to invite you, the listener, into his

conversation, into his struggle with the פשט, and his sense of a solution; inviting you

to critique, welcoming commentary. His שיעור was work in progress, an invitation to

participate in his reverence for the text and his excitement for the process in its

playfulness yet holding it accountable to his intellectual rigor. And most of all, his

insistence in the layered and textual strata that laid beneath the text. The sharper his

scalpel the deeper the treasures he uncovered. He taught me to see the ים של חכמה,

the תלמוד לים ש , as an even surface, yet beneath lay layers upon layers of geological

constructions and he was going to unpack these layers and lay them before all to see

the very architecture and the phylogeny of the text. And yet, ironically again, all the

while maintaining a reverence for it, without disturbing its sacred integrity. Where did

he learn to balance these complex worlds, the classical Talmudic study sugiah

analysis and modern techniques of literary critical analysis?

In the last year or so, in his silence, in his שתיקה, I find myself asking questions

more and more. What would Abba think? What would Abba say? What would Abba

do? His character is the foundation of my conscience. His precision is the foundation

of my self-criticism. His commitment is the foundation of my devotion. I hear his

voice reverberating inside when confronting an ethical issue, a comatose patient, a

halachic decision. It is of comfort. His word was his bond. He never uttered a lie. His

ethics put us to shame. He fulfilled every obligation he undertook. He was self-made

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and self-reliant. His moral conscience saw no disparity between Torah and ethics. His

tears on תשעה באב were genuine. His poetry in קינות broke one's heart. His ability to

be משמח a חתן וכלה was famous. His dancing was dignified, his hands wafting in the

air, gesticulating his warmth and love. Yet simultaneously he would provide a unique

and dazzling דבר תורה in the process. 'How could the children of בית שמאי marry the

children of בית הלל if their attributions of the כלה were so different?' You've heard it.

He was stern at times. Don't expect praise if you're his child or grandchild. You're

not going to get it. That was not his educational style. He demanded only Excellent,

and suffered fools not gladly when it came to כבוד התורה and כבוד for this

הכנסת בית . Whether it be פורים or שמחת תורה, there was no let up when it came to

.קדושה

His continuing interest in science, computers, mathematics and astronomy, his

ongoing subscriptions to specialty magazines in medicine and biology, his amazing

all-absorbing mind saw no conflict between these and Torah learning. It was

seamless.

His love of Zion and his fierce belief in ארץ ישראל, his suspicions as to the

motives behind religious extremism, and his embracing of the charedi and

non-charedi world and his respect for the holy young men defending the state of

Israel – the soldiers of צה"ל, were legendary. All this made for his truly being called a

Mentch Yisrael in the Hirschian sense.

A philosopher he was not, nor claimed to be. He was an interpreter who stuck

close to the פשוטו של מקרא, refusing fanciful, pilpulistic or Chasidic interpretations,

yet at times his reflection was so deep he understood the mystery and paradox of life

and the divine. In truth his insistence on פשט was mirrored in the rational cool calm

personality he was in life. It was as if his life mirrored his hermeneutic. He would

have made a great physicist but was told by Rav Hutner – "physics shmysics", and as

a result we are better off, the Jewish world is better off, for those critical remarks. A

life devoted to others, to people, to yidden, to Klal Yisroel. Always humble before

those who knew less, never lording his knowledge over the poor or the ignorant. His

respect for all life and the other reflected a general and genuine aristocratic soul.

We are now impoverished by his absence in our lives.

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In the last few months, Sarah would wheel him into the dining-room on Shabbos.

Unable to eat, unable to speak, he would lip-sync the Shobbos zmirot as we were

singing it. Sarah went up to him last week and said: "I kiss you all the time, Abba; do

you want to give me a kiss?" and she put her cheek close to his lips. And he kissed

her.

My dearest Abba'le, forgive me. There were decisions to be made about you

without your council and without your consent in the last year… I had to make them.

I hope I fulfilled your wishes. You trained me well. I tried to intuit your real desire,

your sense of integrity of the human body, not to be disturbed, invaded, prodded,

poked… Yet what to do? The horror of that ICU, the total invasion of your privacy…

Please forgive me.

We brought you home. I planted you a fern garden… you sat in the sunlight. I

held your hand. Sarah, I cannot begin to describe your devotion so I won't even begin.

Abba'le, your silent presence in our home was our greatest gift. Your שתיקה was

our הודאות. We were honored by the gift of your life. It will never be the same again.

You left us a day before spring.

The winter time we call on spring,

and through the spring on summer call.

And when abounding hedges ring

declare that winter's best of all.