Rav Chaim Kanievsky רבי חיים קניבסקי
the Sar haTorah: a man whose calendar was the whole written law
His biography has almost no events—and that is its event. A room in Bnei Brak, a table, the books; the yearly round: both Talmuds, the midrashim, the Shulchan Arukh—by the festival of the Torah he finished it all and began again. Sixty years so.
He wrote on what others avoid: Derech Emunah on the commandments of the Land, tracts on kinnim and mezuzah, commentaries on the minor tractates. He answered in two-word notes, and the notes were carried across continents.
In old age he became the people's address: the line at the door, thousands a day—blessings, questions, a look. The funeral in Adar 5782 gathered hundreds of thousands—Israel had long seen nothing like it.
Places
Related
Sources
Acharonim and later rabbinic literature
- Derech Emunah and his other books — his teaching; the yearly cycle of completion
Scholarship
- The standard reference works and encyclopedias — Bnei Brak; 1928–2022
Basis: Talmud and midrash.