Meir Kass

The East Flatbush apartment was full of people, but to young Dovid Goldwasser it felt hollow. He was just 24 years old, newly married, and sitting shivah for his beloved mother, the woman who had nurtured him from infancy into a thriving young man.

Then, near the door, he noticed an unexpected presence. Rav Avigdor Miller had arrived. As a bachur in Yeshiva Zichron Melech, Dovid had gone to hear Rav Miller’s shiurim whenever possible, absorbing not only his words, but his entire hashkafas hachaim. Those impressions had shaped his understanding of what it meant to live a life rooted in Torah. Now, Rav Miller was here, coming to be menachem avel him.

 

His heart leapt a bit with joy despite his visceral pain and grief. Rav Miller spoke simply, offering him words of nechama with his characteristic calm and depth. But as he rose to leave, the venerated rav paused and turned back to Dovid.

“You should have a shul,” he said.

Dovid was stunned. He was young, just beginning his life, just beginning to find his footing. How could he have a shul? What did that even mean?

Rav Miller noticed the look of shock on the young man’s face and smiled, with a knowing look that suggested he had anticipated exactly this response.

“What?” he said, with his famous dry wit. “You think you need a Hungarian last name to have a shul?”

 

A seed blossoms

Now, more than 35 years later, the seed planted in that moment has blossomed into a rav whose hanhagah, hadrachah, and expertise has inspired thousands across the world, galvanized entire communities to action, and provided relief and respite to innumerable families and individuals who have found themselves in dire straits.

Today, Rav Dovid Goldwasser stands as one of the most sought-after rabbanim and speakers in the Torah world. He serves as rav of Khal Bnei Yitzchok in Brooklyn and Khal Yismach Moshe in Westgate, and has built a worldwide presence as a lecturer, author, and baal eitzah whose work reaches tens of thousands. To understand how he arrived at this point requires returning to the earlier stages of his life, to the influences that shaped him.

Rav Goldwasser grew up in East Flatbush, attending Yeshiva Zichron Melech on Eastern Parkway. The yeshiva’s proximity to Rav Avigdor Miller’s shul provided a unique opportunity. Together with several other bachurim, he went to hear Rav Miller whenever possible, drawn by the clarity and depth that characterized his legendary drashos and vaadim.

But the young Dovid Goldwasser was not only listening—he was observing. He paid attention to how Rav Miller spoke, how he structured his ideas, how he related to people. There was a consistency there, an alignment of message and messenger.

“You learn what a rav is supposed to be,” Rav Goldwasser reflects, “not only from what you hear, but from what you see. You can speak the right words and darshan about the right ideas, but if there is no consistency between the message and the person, between what you say and who you are, people will sense it. They will feel the distance. With Rav Avigdor, there was no gap. The clarity he taught came from the clarity he lived.”

When Rav Miller made that comment during the shivah, it did not come from nowhere. It was rooted in years of noticing and recognizing that the young man before him had the innate capacity for leadership.

 

 

Not long after, Rav Dovid Goldwasser accepted the position as rav of Khal Bnei Yitzchok. From the outset, he approached the position with a particular philosophy. Rather than limiting himself to a single style or perspective, he sought to present Torah in a way that drew from multiple strands—combining halachah, hashkafah, and chizuk from litvish, chassidish, and Sephardic sources into a cohesive message that could speak to a wide audience.

“I try to approach shiurim in a way that would be meaningful to everyone,” he explains. “Whether they are bnei yeshiva, baalei teshuvah, or something in between, I want it to be a davar hashaveh l’chol nefesh—something that each person can relate to in their own way. You cannot teach only halachah if people need hashkafah. You cannot only give superficial divrei chizuk if some people need teefkeit. The goal is always balance, reaching different people at different levels.”

That approach resonated. The shiurim began to grow, attracting larger and more diverse audiences. Over time, his speeches and drashos would draw dozens, then hundreds, and then more than a thousand who pack into his shul for his annual Shabbos HaGadol drashah.

 

The person to turn to

As Rav Goldwasser’s public presence expanded, another equally significant aspect of his role began to develop: people began coming to him not only for shiurim, but for hadrachah.

At the beginning it was infrequent. It didn’t take long, however, for it to become a regular occurrence. Families dealing with challenges, couples struggling with their shalom bayis, and young people facing addiction, eating disorders, and other taboo issues began arriving at Rav Dovid’s door.

“They were looking for someone they felt comfortable speaking to, and someone who they felt would understand. I don’t know if I really understood or not,” Rav Goldwasser quips, “but at least I was someone who would listen without judging them.”

“Truthfully, I was trying to avoid it,” he adds. “I wanted to focus on learning, on developing myself through the regular work of a rav. That is where my heart was. When people started coming with these other issues, these personal struggles, I recognized the need, but I also recognized what it would cost me in terms of time and energy. I was not looking for that responsibility.”

But the need continued to present itself. One person led to another. A youngster in crisis. A family in pain. A situation that seemed to have no other address. Often, there were few resources to direct people to. More often, there was nowhere else to turn.

 

“I kept thinking,” Rav Goldwasser recalls, “that this was not my role, that I should be focusing on other things. But if I had the ability to help, how could I possibly say no?”

Gradually, what he had tried to resist became a central part of his work. He did not approach these situations with a formula. Instead, he listened first. That, he explains, is often the most important step.

“You have to understand where the person is holding. You cannot start from where you are or where they should be. You have to start from where they are right now, ba’asher hu sham.”

As the scope of these interactions grew, so did awareness within the broader community of the prevalence of these rarely discussed issues, often due to stigma and the resulting shame.

Rav Goldwasser found himself in the middle of that gap. Rather than shying away from the ever-growing responsibility, he leaned in. He maintained direct contact with gedolim—Rav Chaim Kanievsky, Rav Yosef Shalom Elyashiv, Rav Moshe Sternbuch, and others—consulting with them on matters that required the difficult trifecta of sensitivity, clarity of hashkafah, and fidelity to halachah. The discussions he held with them provided the framework within which he could operate with confidence.

One episode captures both the depth of the kesher Rav Goldwasser forged with the gedolei hador and the intense nature of the hadrachah he sought. One day, while walking out of a hospital in New York City after visiting a patient, his phone rang. Rav Moshe Sternbuch was on the other end, introducing himself in his characteristically humble way simply as “Sternbuch.” The ensuing conversation was so intricate and detailed that Rav Goldwasser continued walking without any awareness of his surroundings. Only when the call ended did he realize he was standing in the middle of a busy street, cars honking as they whizzed by him in both directions.

“The understanding of the gedolei hador was exact, even in areas that one would think they would have no knowledge about,” Rav Goldwasser notes. “It was unbelievable how they were able to understand and give hadrachah on a complicated subject or concept in the blink of an eye.”

 

Putting pen to paper

Eventually, Rav Goldwasser began writing books on the issues and subjects on which he had gained expertise, providing practical insight through the prism of Torah hashkafos. The goal was not only to inform, but to make it possible for people to take the first step, reach out, and recognize that help was available.

“Professionals in the field who were not bnei Torah themselves told me, quite directly, that if I could write about these topics from a Torah perspective, then people would be more open to seeking help,” he recounts. “That made sense to me. It was not about me becoming some kind of expert in a clinical sense. It was about making these issues discussable within our hashkafic framework, so that people did not have to choose between suffering and remaining a Torah-true Jew.”

Notably, throughout the evolution of Rav Goldwasser becoming a world-renowned authority on various topics, he did not redefine his role or position himself as something new. He remains, in his view, a rav doing what needs to be done—nothing more, nothing less.

 

“If a person comes to you with a need, and if you have the ability to address it, then you address it,” he says simply. “That is not a special role or a new calling. That is just what a rav does. It does not matter whether it is a question about kashrus or a question about a personal crisis. The obligation is the same. I am a rav, and a rav’s door is open to anyone who needs it.”

Rav Goldwasser shared a story that he takes with him everywhere, and which captures the fundamental challenge American rabbanim must contend with: A young man who had recently become a father came to the Satmar Rav, Rav Yoel Teitelbaum, with a question about naming his newborn son. He explained that he wanted to name the child Shmuel after his grandfather.

The Satmar Rav responded warmly. “That is a good idea,” he said. “Shmuel is a good name, and you would be naming him after a chashuv individual.”

But the man hesitated. “But there is another option,” he said. “My wife has a great-grandfather whose name was Yerachmiel. He does not have anyone named after him yet. We are also thinking of giving that name.”

The Satmar Rav nodded thoughtfully. “That is a very nice idea as well.”

The discussion continued. The man brought up a third name he was considering, and once again the Satmar Rav responded warmly.

When the man finally left the Satmar Rav’s room, the gabbai was visibly upset. He had been standing at the door, trying to manage the long line of people waiting to see the Rebbe about matters far more pressing than which name to choose for a child.

“You have time for this?” the gabbai asked, his frustration evident.

“In der heim,” the Satmar Rav explained to his gabbai, “you had to be a tatte for your family and a Rebbe for the rabbim. But here, in America, it is different. You have to be a rav in your house, but for the rabbim, you have to be a tatte.”

“Something about that resonated deeply with me,” Rav Goldwasser says. “It captured something essential about what it means to serve as a rav today. Every individual who comes to you must know that they can also speak to you with absolute confidence, that they can bring their family to you and invite you to their simchos. A rav must be available to forge a real, human, fatherly kesher that transcends beyond simply answering she’eilos.”

 

Expanding influence in Lakewood

Four years ago, after numerous requests to expand his presence in Lakewood, Rav Goldwasser accepted an additional position as rav of Khal Yismach Moshe in Westgate. He now spends most Shabbosim and Yamim Tovim in Lakewood.

The need for his expansion into Lakewood came from within his own kehillah in Brooklyn.

“When people from various communities who had been affiliated with me started to move to Lakewood, I began to write more recommendation letters and made calls to get talmidim and talmidos into schools. Many would say, ‘They could use you more in Lakewood’ and, eventually, I was made an offer I couldn’t refuse,” he explains.

Obviously, wherever there is a need in Klal Yisrael, that is where hashgachah sends Rabbi Goldwasser. “I am thankful that Hashem guides me with kefitzas haderech,” he says with a smile.

“Wherever Yidden are, you find the best,” he adds. “Lakewood is called ir haTorah—you can feel it on its streets. When I walk on Shabbos, people who I don’t know will come over and ask me for an eitzah, a psak halachah,a dvar Torah, divrei chizuk, or would like to share their own chiddush. Mi k’amcha Yisrael!”

The promise of Zera Shimshon

In more recent years, Rav Goldwasser has turned much of his attention to the Zera Shimshon, who promised great brachos to all who study his words of Torah.

 

 

For the past six years, he has led a daily conference call at 4:00 p.m. with thousands of listeners around the world—including a large number from the Lakewood area—creating an unparalleled daily learning experience with like-minded individuals dedicated to delving into the secrets of the Zera Shimshon.

“Recently,” Rav Goldwasser relates, “as I was walking in the Westgate shopping plaza, someone came running over to me to invite me to the vort of his daughter, which would take place the next night. He begged me to come because, he said, I had been a partner in the shidduch. I asked the man for the names of the chosson and kallah, and then gently informed him that I didn’t know either of them. I suggested that perhaps he had mistaken me for someone else.

“The man then explained that he had undertaken to learn the Zera Shimshon as a zechus that his daughter should find her zivug, and he listened to my shiur on a daily basis. Therefore, he concluded, ‘you have a big part in this shidduch.’”

To date, Rav Goldwasser has written three sefarim on the Zera Shimshon. The third volume of The Promise of the Zera Shimshon, focusing on inyanei achdus and shalom, became available worldwide just a few weeks ago.

Anyone who would like to join Rav Goldwasser’s daily Zera Shimshon limud may call 718-954-4343.

The kedushah that man creates

In closing, Rav Goldwasser shares a profound insight from Rav Aharon Leib Shteinman.

This world, Rav Shteinman said, was given to man. Not only does he control the physical realm—he builds roads and houses, he rules over animals—but the spiritual dimension is also in his hands. The entire cosmos, from the heavens to the earth to the waters, is conducted according to the actions of man. Therefore, it is man who must be mekadesh creation and create places of kedushah in this world.

This idea resolves a perplexing paradox. At Matan Torah, Har Sinai was kodesh kodashim—so holy that anyone who touched it would die. Yet once Kabalas HaTorah ended, no kedushah remained on the mountain. People could freely ascend it again.

 

Why did the kedushah vanish?

The answer lies in understanding the difference between kedushah that comes from heaven, and kedushah is created by man.

Chazal teach (Brachos 6b) that one who establishes a fixed place for davening merits direct assistance from Hashem. This because having a makom kavua for davening makes that place a makom mesugal—a place where tefillos are particularly receptive—because kedushah has taken root there.

The Gemara (Brachos 8a) illustrates this with a story about Abaye. He initially learned at home and davened in shul. But when he heard that Hashem has only one place in His world since the churban—the daled amos shel halachah—he resolved to daven only where he learned.

Kedushah in this world is created only through man’s actions. The Mikdash and Mishkan were not inherently filled with kedushah; their kedushah came from the people who built them and were mekadesh them through what they did within them.

When a person is osek b’Torah, he is mekadesh his place of learning. As the Gemara teaches, even one person who sits and learns Torah has the Shechinah with him. The person himself creates kedushah.

Har Sinai’s kedushah, by contrast, was different. It came from above—from the Torah being given and the Shechinah’s presence. Such kedushah, though transcendent and incredibly powerful, does not endure on earth. It is only temporary. Conversely, the kedushah created by a person’s own actions lasts and becomes embedded in the place itself.

Rav Shmuel Weintraub experienced this directly. He related that when he davened in the shul in Vilkomir, Lithuania, he felt an extraordinary aliyah ruchanis, an elevated state, unlike anything he experienced anywhere else.

Years later, he returned to Vilkomir and had the same experience. When he investigated, he discovered why: The Vilna Gaon had davened and learned in that shul.

Decades after the Gaon’s own tefillos, the kedushah remained. He had been mekadesh the place and had transformed it into a makom mesugal. The kedushah in that shul endures forever.

This is the opportunity we have—to create kedushah through our own investment in davening and learning. How fortunate are we to be able to do that.