Baruch Dayan Ha'emet. My Rosh Yeshiva and former MK Rabbi Chaim Drukman passed away a short time ago due to complications from his second bout of Covid.
I prayed hard these last few weeks. I knew chances were not high, given his age and the various complications. I'm very sad.
I studied in the hesder Yeshivat Or Etzion under Rabbi Drukman for a little over seven years. I can't say I ever felt like I was one of the inner circle of students, but I was proud to be a student of his nonetheless. I learned a lot from him, and the other rabbis in the yeshiva also passed on to us things they learned from him.
Many of his students will talk about his Torah, his emphasis on ideas pertaining to our time - the days of the redemption. And I don't deny, there's a lot to be learned there, and I learned a lot. But one of the most important things I learned from him was in terms of study technique, and it's something I still implement to this day: Always open up your sources and read from the original. Don't trust quoting by heart or reading someone else's work quoting that source. Rav Drukman would come to every class and lecture with a large stack of books. When possible, he read the sources from the books themselves. He had a huge private library, so it was only rarely that he borrowed books from the yeshiva's library.
One of the unique things about the Rav as a Rosh Yeshiva was that he gave up to 7 classes to students of the yeshiva every week. And if classes were canceled, he did everything in his power to reschedule them. Most rashei yeshiva in Israel give 1-2 weekly classes. But even though Rav Drukman was always very busy and very active, we the students always heard from the other rabbis that the yeshiva was his most important achievement, and so he put in so much effort in teaching the students.
One class, during my first year of yeshiva, I made a small pencil and pen drawing of him. It's not the greatest, but here it is (רה"י stands for ראש הישיבה, the Rosh Yeshiva):
May his memory be a blessing and may Hashem comfort his family.
תנצב"ה
I prayed hard these last few weeks. I knew chances were not high, given his age and the various complications. I'm very sad.
I studied in the hesder Yeshivat Or Etzion under Rabbi Drukman for a little over seven years. I can't say I ever felt like I was one of the inner circle of students, but I was proud to be a student of his nonetheless. I learned a lot from him, and the other rabbis in the yeshiva also passed on to us things they learned from him.
Many of his students will talk about his Torah, his emphasis on ideas pertaining to our time - the days of the redemption. And I don't deny, there's a lot to be learned there, and I learned a lot. But one of the most important things I learned from him was in terms of study technique, and it's something I still implement to this day: Always open up your sources and read from the original. Don't trust quoting by heart or reading someone else's work quoting that source. Rav Drukman would come to every class and lecture with a large stack of books. When possible, he read the sources from the books themselves. He had a huge private library, so it was only rarely that he borrowed books from the yeshiva's library.
One of the unique things about the Rav as a Rosh Yeshiva was that he gave up to 7 classes to students of the yeshiva every week. And if classes were canceled, he did everything in his power to reschedule them. Most rashei yeshiva in Israel give 1-2 weekly classes. But even though Rav Drukman was always very busy and very active, we the students always heard from the other rabbis that the yeshiva was his most important achievement, and so he put in so much effort in teaching the students.
One class, during my first year of yeshiva, I made a small pencil and pen drawing of him. It's not the greatest, but here it is (רה"י stands for ראש הישיבה, the Rosh Yeshiva):
May his memory be a blessing and may Hashem comfort his family.
תנצב"ה
