By Reuvain Borchardt

 

Rabbi Avrohom Zelasko discusses building the Library of Chayei Yisrael, the largest shul otzar in Lakewood

 

It’s 6:30 a.m., and a maggid shiur at one of the top local yeshivos is at the sefarim shrank of the heintege roshei yeshivah. His shiur has been handling a shverer Meiri for two days, and a colleague told him last night about a recently published sefer that resolves the difficulty. The rebbe has awoken early this morning to look in the sefer before going to yeshivah.

 

It’s 9 p.m., and a yungerman is at the Halachah shelves. His chaburah is learning Bava Metzia, and he’s been chosen to give a shiur on hilchos hashavas aveidah. He doesn’t know much about the subject, but he knows this otzar has a Halachah section categorized by subject. With 13 titles on hashavas aveidah, he’s bound to find something interesting for the shiur.

 

It’s not yet 3 a.m., but a middle-aged talmid chacham is already beginning his day with learning. He is in the Kabbalah room, delving into the mysticism of the upcoming Yom Tov of Shavuos. He’s a regular here, in this unmarked chamber that’s under lock and key, where entry is carefully restricted.

 

 

These are just three of the hundreds of bnei Torah of all ages and affiliations who spend time each day in Bais Medrash Chayei Yisrael. The edifice on Gudz Road is less than three years old, but it already has the largest otzar hasefarim of any shul in the premier Torah town in America. (Only BMG has more.)

 

From the day Chayei Yisrael was established, its founders’ goal was that this would not just be another shul in a town with hundreds of them, but the place where anyone who wants virtually any sefer under the sun can find it. It has over 10,000 unique titles, and (since many titles are multivolume sets and many titles have multiple copies) more than 25,000 volumes. The main beis medrash has 7,000 volumes of the more commonly used sefarim, while the remaining 18,000 are upstairs in a library that has already become world-renowned.

 

“I’ve always been a kind of a sefarim meshugene,” Rabbi Avrohom Zelasko says with a laugh. The architect of this otzar is sitting in an upstairs room that serves as his de facto office, cluttered with rolls of light brown tape and scissors and sefarim yet to be shelved. Some volumes are hot off the press; others are newly acquired from secondhand stores or dusty personal collections after years of searching. Avrohom is sharing with The Voice how he built this remarkable collection and how behind each carefully catalogued volume stand effort and passion and dogged perseverance.

 

 

 

 

Avrohom grew up in a home full of sefarim. His father was a balabos who was a ben Torah and had a large otzar, and the son took that enthusiasm to the next level. From a young age, he became a sefarim expert (he’s often called a “sefarim guru” but hates the term), and he ran the otzar in Mir-Flatbush. Although he describes it merely as “a hobby I really enjoyed,” the young talmid chacham actually got to know the names of thousands of sefarim not merely as titles, but because he learned them.

 

While still in his 20s, Avrohom was asked by Rav Yaakov Bender to build Darchei Torah’s otzar. (“Darchei has more volumes than here,” Avrohom says, “but a lot of them are doubles. It’s a yeshivah, so you can have 25 sets of Ritva. Chayei Yisrael has more titles.”)

 

It wasn’t long before he became known as the man to talk to if you wanted to build an otzar, whether in a shul or a private collection. Numerous shuls in Lakewood came calling, including Elmwood and his own in Hearthstone.

 

But then, three years ago, he embarked on what has become the magnum opus of his first 48 years: the Chayei Yisrael otzar.

 

The shul’s founders spared no expense in constructing the otzar, which is named Otzar Chaim after Rav Chaim Kanievsky, who had encouraged the shul’s establishment.

 

 

But to build a truly great collection takes not just money. Equally essential are the knowledge and dedication of its architect to finding rare volumes that are long out of print.

 

There are sefarim that, for example, had one printing in Eretz Yisrael 50 years ago of just a few hundred copies and never again saw a printing press. There might be just a handful of copies left in the world. People like Avrohom experience no greater joy than when tracking these down.

 

He spends endless hours haunting secondhand stores like Mizrahi Books in Flatbush.

 

“I just tracked down at Mizrahi three sefarim that were the missing piece to a set,” he excitedly recounts. “One was a volume of Bad Kodesh; there was also a volume of Rav Shlomo Kluger on Megillas Rus and another sefer on Shavuos.”

 

Places like Mizrahi have Avrohom Zelakso’s number on speed dial for when something rare comes in. “There was a tekufah when Mizrahi had a whole sefarim shrank marked ‘Zelasko,’” he says.

 

There isn’t a huge market for rare secondhand sefarim, so no one sefer costs too much; in fact, secondhand sefarim cost less than new ones. The most Chayei Yisrael has ever paid for a sefer was $75, for a copy of Agan Hasahar by Rav Chaim Zimmerman, on the international dateline. Chayei Yisrael has no antiques; its oldest volume is from 1923 — a copy of Milei D’brachos by Rav Zvi Hersh Grodzinski of Omaha, Nebraska.

 

So the issue with getting rare sefarim is not cost — it’s knowing where to look and whom to call, spending hours searching through shuls’ sheimos piles, and always keeping your eyes open.

 

 

Like any sefarim collector, Avrohom has some good stories. And when he talks about rare, out-of-print sefarim, he has the expression and demeanor of a child describing the most magical candy or a jeweler envisioning precious gems.

 

“There’s a four-volume teshuvah sefer called Harei Besamim,” he says. “Two volumes were printed before World War II, another volume was printed after the war by Machon Yerushalayim, and another volume was printed by Mosad Harav Kook. You cannot get the four volumes as a set. And we could not find the Machon Yerushalayim one.

 

“We’re cleaning up here one day and a guy comes in and he’s looking around. I asked what he was looking for, and he said, ‘My grandfather’s sefer, but you’re not going to have it.’ I asked what it was, and he said ‘Tshuvos Harei Besamim.’ I told him we have three of the four volumes, and we actually have a double of the Mosad Harav Kook volume because I didn’t realize that we had that already and I accidentally bought it twice. That can happen sometimes when you’re buying thousands of sefarim.

 

“Well, the guy says to me, ‘I actually have an extra copy of the Machon Yerushalayim one, but I don’t have the Mossad Harav Kook one. Can we trade?”

 

There was another sefer that had a printing run 20 years ago, and Avrohom had been after it for years but could not find it anywhere. He recently was in an out-of-town sefarim store that had few volumes and didn’t seem to do much business — and there he found the long-sought-after title, which had apparently been on the shelf for two decades.

 

The first thing any sefarim expert does when he walks into a Torah’dige home is look at the sefarim shrank. Avrohom was once at a friend’s house and saw a volume by Rav Moshe Shapiro called Shuvi V’nechzi, which Chayei Yisrael did not yet have.

 

“I said to him, ‘This is not your style. Why do you have this?’

 

“He said he had gotten it as a gift. I offered to buy it, but he was happy to just give it to us.”

 

 

 

 

He also saw in a friend’s home a copy of the Ran on the Rif in Bava Basra that’s not printed in the back of the Gemara. One printing was done of it recently, but you can’t get it anymore, and the friend, who has an extra copy, gave one to the shul.

 

“The siyata d’Shmaya to pull off something like this is ein leshaer,” Avrohom says. “If you give me a million dollars now, I could not pull this off again.”

 

He estimates that 25 percent of the volumes in the otzar are literally irreplaceable, as they are the last copies of the title available for sale anywhere in the world.

 

While Avrohom has become well-known as a go-to sefarim expert and the builder of the Chayei Yisrael otzar, he is careful to share the credit.

 

“Sometimes I’m like the president,” he says. “I’m not necessarily qualified for everything, but there are people who help me along. I couldn’t have done anything without the shul’s board being willing to spend the funds and be as dedicated to the otzar as I am. And R’ Elya Meir Cohen of Judaica Plaza advises me, and he’s volunteered lots of his time for the otzar, l’to’eles harabim.”

 

Even an expert always has some titles he’s still looking for (or in some cases, he’s found it for one otzar but another one is looking for it now). Among the sefarim he says he’d “give my right arm for” is a four-volume set of Nemukei Yosef on Shas.

 

Just about all these sefarim are available in the Otzar HaHochma database (and the shul has three computers with Otzar HaHochma and free printing accessible to anyone). But thus far, even for sefarim he has not yet been able to obtain, he has not resorted to printing any out, but will just keep at the search, no matter where it takes him. Such is the life of a “sefarim meshugene.”

 

 

 

One of the challenges of any otzar is categorization and the ease of finding volumes, and each otzar has a different method of categorizing and cataloging its titles. One unique aspect of Chayei Yisrael’s is that the Halachah section is set up by topic, not in alphabetical order.

 

This means that a four-volume set of Halachah sefarim could wind up on four different shelves, based on topics. But it also means that the yungerman looking for sefarim on hashavas aveidah, though he doesn’t know the titles of any sefarim on the topic, can easily find 13 volumes on the subject. And it also means that when a sefer comes out on brachos called V’zos Habrachah, and the same mechaber puts out a second volume with hosafos under the name Liban Habrachah, they’ll be on the same shelf.

 

An immediately noticeable aspect of this otzar is that rather than using the black, dark brown, or navy binding tape that is ubiquitous in shuls and yeshivos around the world, Chayei Yisrael uses an ugly light brown one. It’s meant to stick out, so that if a sefer should somehow find its way out of the building, it’ll be immediately recognizable as a Chayei Yisrael volume.

 

The most mystique-filled aspect of the otzar is also the mystical: its room of Kabbalah sefarim. Avrohom had felt this was something lacking in Lakewood. He asked Rav Moshe Sternbuch (by this time, Rav Chaim Kanievsky had passed away), and the response was: Yes, Lakewood is ready for a Kabbalah room, but it must be under lock and key.

 

There is a supervisor who has the key and whose identity Avrohom declines to reveal, out of fear of the man being bombarded. Those who need to know and for whom it is appropriate manage to find out.

 

The room has over 1,000 Kabbalah sefarim—40 percent of which Avrohom says are irreplaceable. (As it’s most secure room in the building, he also keeps a few of the most ultra-rare non-Kabbalah sefarim there.)

 

 

 

While Avrohom has learned from most of the sefarim in the otzar, he doesn’t learn much Kabbalah. But that doesn’t mean he’s not excited to share the stories behind some of these mystical books.

 

He points to one set called Kesem Paz by Hacham Shimon Labi (1486–1585), which has a deep connection to the just-concluded festival of Lag BaOmer.

 

“Hacham Shimon wanted to immigrate from Morocco to Eretz Yisrael but wound up in Libya,” Avraham relates. “Seeing how bad the ruchniyus in Libya was, he decided to stay there instead and help the community to grow in Yiddishkeit. He lived in Libya for over 30 years and never went to Eretz Yisrael. Most people today have never heard his name — but he’s actually the one who wrote the words to the song ‘Bar Yochai Nimshachta Ashrecha.’ It’s in the hakdamah to Kesem Paz. Maybe he was zocheh to the song becoming so famous because of his mesiras nefesh for Klal Yisrael.”

 

Our interview has come to a close as Avrohom’s gotta go; the piles of newly acquired sefarim are not going to categorize and shelve themselves.

 

It’s 3 p.m. as I walk back out through the otzar, past the separate shelves for Rishonim and Acharonim and mefarshei haMishnah and Yerushalmi and Pirkei Avos and Mo’adim and inyanei Shabbos and drashos and historiah and every category of Halachah from alef through taf. One bachur is doing research and has eight sefarim open on a table in front of him. Another is perusing the Otzar HaHochma. A rav is looking up a sugya in Shabbos in an out-of-print sefer Avrohom just obtained by looking through a shul’s pre-Pesach sheimos pile.

 

It’s a typical afternoon at the otzar.

***

 

 

 

The Shul

 

Chayei Yisrael has more than just an otzar; the kol Torah echoes from its walls almost 24 hours a day.

 

It hosts a kollel mashkimim that begins at 4 a.m., but by 2:40 you can already find a minyan of men up and learning. There’s another kollel there for first seder and a senior kollel from 10:30 a.m. to 1 p.m.

 

The shul recently hired Rav Yitzchok Horowitz as its first rav. Rav Horowitz learned in Rabbi Slomovits’s yeshivah in Lakewood and then went to the Mir; he remained in Eretz Yisrael for years. He is a young, outstanding talmid chacham and posek who only returned to America now to take this position. (The rav is not yet 40 years old, but Avrohom confirms that yes, he will be allowed into the Kabbalah room.)

 

 

 

Zalesko’s Tips for Building an Otzar

 

It’s important to know what not to buy as well as what to buy. Some shuls have just thrown money at sefarim that hardly anyone will use.

 

When starting an otzar, don’t fill up your shelves right away. Leave a quarter or a third open. You’ll need time to figure out what sort of clientele you are attracting and which sefarim they’ll want. You have to cater to your olam, and if you don’t leave space, you won’t be able to have the sefarim people want or have room for new sefarim that are published.

 

When buying sets of sefarim for a beis medrash, get the best edition, not the cheapest. Not everybody can afford their own set of Ritva or Rashba from Mosad Harav Kook, so when they go to the beis medrash, they’re looking to find that, not the cheapest version.

 

Every once in a while, you’ll have to upgrade. Even if you bought something a few years ago, if a new and better edition comes out, people will want that.

 

Don’t spend too much on “fad” sefarim, like on the topic of Erev Pesach sh’chal b’Shabbos, which two years from now nobody will care about.

Don’t take sefarim that every guy drops off—“Oh, you’re building a shul, can I give my grandfather’s sefer for your otzar?” You’re going to kick yourself later when you have to pay to send it to sheimos.

When building an otzar at home, buy the sefarim you are learning now, not the ones you will learn down the road. By the time you get to it, a newer edition may have come out.

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