For over 50 years Rabbi Brovender has taught thousands of students from all around the world. This week we introduce you to Rabbi Gideon Sylvester. After making aliyah from London where he was a rabbi for seven years, Rabbi Sylvester lives in Jerusalem and serves as the British United Synagogue’s rabbi in Israel.
How did you meet Rabbi Brovender?
I came to Yeshivat Hamivtar from high school. Not many English people knew of the yeshiva in those days, but it had a strong reputation as a yeshiva which taught learning skills in an intelligent way, without imposing any philosophical outlook on its students.
Within a short space of time, Yeshivat Hamivtar became the go-to yeshiva for intelligent young British men seeking a place to develop their learning skills. Many of my friends stayed on at the yeshiva and learned for semicha there. The result was that the yeshiva had an immense impact on the British community and beyond.
Rabbi Brovender has not only huge numbers of students, but generations of people taught by his students and students of his students.
When it comes to Torah learning, what were you most drawn to after learning with Rabbi Brovender?
When it comes to the texts that Rabbi Brovender inspired me to learn, it seems an impossible question to answer because the beauty of Rabbi Brovender’s approach is the diversity of texts that he learns and teaches. This mastery of so many types of Torah makes Rabbi Brovender a fascinating Torah scholar.
He introduced me to the thought of the Lubavitcher Rebbe which I learn each week with one Hamivtar graduate, the ideas of Rebbe Nachman which I learn with another. He taught us Gemara which I learn with a third Hamivtar graduate and the thought of the Ramban which I learn each week with Rabbi Walk.
But if I had to choose one text that I learned to love because of Rabbi Brovender, it would have to be the Rambam’s Hilchot Teshuvah. Rabbi Brovender showed us how the Rambam links so many philosophical topics elegantly connecting one to another.
What do you find most important or striking about the ‘Brovender Method’, about his way of teaching?
Perhaps the most striking thing for me is Rabbi Brovender’s combination of extreme intellectual rigor with infinite kindness. Rabbi Brovender’s shiurim were always robust, there was little time for side issues, those were deferred to lunch time. This taught me powerful lessons about the intensity of Talmud Torah.
Yet, alongside the no-nonsense approach to learning was great tolerance of all the students regardless of how weak their learning backgrounds. And in times of need, Rabbi and Mrs. Brovender remain an immense source of humanity, strength and kindness.
Time and time again, they have been at my family’s side to support us through semachot and more difficult times. We are immensely grateful.
What lesson or specific Torah that you learned from Rabbi Brovender, do you keep coming back to or carry with you wherever you go?
There are several lessons from Rabbi Brovender which I think about a lot of the time. The first is simply the thrill of being able to read and understand a text.
Often, when I am learning with a chavruta, and particularly with one from my Brovender’s’ days, I pause and marvel at the fact that we are sitting reading and analyzing a piece of text in ways that would have been impossible without the Yeshiva that Rabbi Brovender founded. He opened the world of Torah learning to us and for that I am eternally grateful.
The second thing I carry around with me is the fact that Rabbi Brovender was unafraid to surround himself with brilliant and immensely talented scholars with a wide range of approaches and perspectives. Rabbis Brovender, Riskin, Schrader, Jablinowitz, Felix, Walk and Ebner brought such a diverse array of approaches. It created a vibrant intellectual atmosphere, a rich source of spirituality and an inspirational example of coexistence. What was true of Rabbi Brovender’s faculty holds true of his students.
There is no typical Hamivtar graduate. Yet, if an alumnus has picked a serious way of life, Rabbi Brovender embraces their path.
The third thing I carry with me is Rabbi Brovender’s willingness to say “I know what the words mean, but I do not know what this means”. We all were aware of Rabbi Brovender’s encyclopedic knowledge of Torah. Yet when confronted with the words, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth”, he had no fear of stating that he did not really know what that meant. In so doing, he fulfilled the words of the Gemara, that a person should always teach his tongue to say I don’t know (Berachot 4a). Each time Rabbi Brovender fulfills this, I am filled with love and admiration for his modesty and his intellectual honesty.
The fourth thing I carry with me are two statements that Rabbi Brovender once made. In the first, he reminded us that if we really believed in God, we would never, ever be remiss in performing even the smallest mitzvot, -we would certainly never be late for shul. The second which carried a similar meaning, is that he told us that “there are no Sundays in divine justice.” This meant that in this world we had to be constantly attentive to our religious duties. In other words, when it came to God, there were no days off. It was a powerful and demanding message which expressed his deep faith and his exacting standards.
Yet alongside this passion, there is always a rye sense of humor which meant that Rabbi Brovender’s yeshiva and his shiurim are always warm, happy, uplifting places to be.
——————
To share your personal story about learning with Rabbi Brovender please contact us