The late Rabbi Kanievsky was probably the most unexpected figure to head the large Lithuanian community, to lead and make decisions.
Long before he became a man with everything in mind, he was a genius that everyone was enthusiastic about his intellect and knowledge.
In my childhood and adolescence, a kind of sport was created among the young: running a postcard to Rabbi Chaim with a particularly challenging question on it, and he would write his answers, to each applicant, small and large, on a repeated postcard.
The answers were always short and succinct, sometimes one-word, "yes" or "controversial," but were always clever and betrayed immense knowledge.
The most popular story about him was that he was once asked by someone how many times the name of Moses was mentioned in the Torah.
Rabbi Chaim calculated quickly and pointed out the number, and even before the questioner had time to make it difficult, he added: "You must have reached a different result on the computer, because the computer also took into account the verses' Every man has his hand 'and' The sequence of letters "Moshe" is mentioned when they have a different meaning. "
Was actually a "total student"
His perseverance was immense.
He simply studied Torah in concentration and in a continuous sequence from his childhood until two days ago.
Unlike previous leaders, he has never held any office, nor has he served in any official tenure.
All his days he was basically a "kollel student", who sits and studies in regular study arrangements and earns a modest living from the kollel scholarship.
The aura of popular righteousness that had clung to him in his last years was also surprising, and his discomfort with it was obvious.
He really had nothing in his world but a delta of Torah and Halacha.
And perhaps precisely because of this his unnatural and unexpected leadership was ultimately accepted.
Thousands of his believers felt that his long-standing teaching was itself the one that spoke from his throat and it was he who led them.
Therefore he was adored in his life without limit, and therefore their loss is very, very great today.
A minister and a great man fell in Israel.
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