Herman Wolk: A Legacy of Faith, Learning, and Resilience

This morning I went to the shiva for our oldest congregant, Herman Wolk, who died at 103 years old this past week.  The shiva was held in New York at one of the many orthodox Shuls that he attended over his 103 years.  In an act of amazing hakarat hatov, gratitude, his nephew told me that he kept his membership current at every shul he had ever belonged to.

Herman was influenced religiously by his grandfather Rabbi Mendel Leib Levine who was a European educated Rabbi of a shul in the Bronx in the early part of the last century.  One of our older congregants told me that Herman always had a gemara with him and studied it in shul and out.  I discussed this with one of his nephews who confirmed it and commented that, “I once asked my uncle why he was constantly studying Talmud.  He replied, (putting his hands together into an arrow shape pointing forward), it keeps the compass straight.”

Another time when his nephew asked uncle Herman if he believed in God, his response, (one of the best I have heard), was, “that is an impossible question to answer.”  Of course, to even speak about God, according to Rambam, might be a misnomer, for we can not really say anything about what God is.   Yet, this clearly did not detract from Herman’s constant dedication to prayer and Torah.  It is an important lesson for us, -as Jews our understanding of God is wholly transcendent and other, yet paradoxically this does not take away from our deeply personal relationship with God at all.

During the decades Herman  lived in Georgetown with his family on the 3200 block of N St. and attended Kesher, he had a significant influence on on our community.  Some of his family members told me of coming to visit him in the 60’s and 70’s in Georgetown and going with Herman to Kesher Israel.  In those days, they said, the population on a shabbat morning was in the 10’s not the 100’s, and the average age was significantly higher.  Though he was one of the most well known American writers, and a Pulitzer prize winner, he daily devoted his attention to davening and learning Torah in Shul.  A good lesson for us when we feel we have more important worldly things to do.

The lives of the famous often seem gilded to us from the outside, but they are human like all of us.  Herman experienced his fill of loss, the loss of his oldest child at 5 years old in a drowning accident in Mexico from which he jumped into the murky water and pulled the boy out, but to no avail.  It seems this pain did not stop him.  On a visit to the west coast last year I spoke with him on the phone and introduced myself as the new rabbi of Kesher Israel.  Though he was not up to a visit that day, he did say to me, despite being 102 at the time, “I am very busy!”  Indeed this was so, for he had just written a book and was working on another.   This apparently was true throughout his life.

I did not know him nearly as well as many of our older congregants did, but from my short trip to Shiva and hearing some of the stories from people in our shul, I think I take away several important lessons.  To stay connected, to be grateful and give back; to not let anything, -age, mobility, or tragedy, stand in the way of bringing to the world the gifts we have been given; to value every minute we are alive; and to see Torah not as a burden to be borne but as a signpost for life and a gift.

Many of the older Kesher congregants knew him and davened with him day in and out and have many anecdotes to tell.  This shabbat ask one of them about Herman.

May his name abe a beracha to all of us at Kesher Israel, the shul that Herman Wouk considered his own and called, “The best little shul in america.”  Tihey nishmato tzirurah bitzrurat hachayim.