The biblical verse “Ani L’dodi V’dodi Li” was fulfilled last month on August 28 – Elul 13, erev Shabbos Parshas Ki Teitzei. My old friend and chaver from my yeshiva days in Yeshivas Chaim Berlin, Rabbi Sholom Morrow, z”l, returned his pure soul to his maker and was reunited with his dear eishes chayil, Ethel, a”h.
Rabbi Morrow was the kind of person we all strive to be. He was a perennial student of life, and the world was his beis medrash.
My friendship with him dated back to the Chaim Berlin beis medrash in the early 1950s when it was on Stone Avenue in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn. To me, having grown up in Brownsville during the 1930s and ‘40s and having never really left my immediate environs (how could we – who owned a car back then?), Sholom was someone who might as well have come from a distant planet.
Born in Ohio in the early 1930s and then moving to Scranton, Pennsylvania, in the 1940s, Sholom showed a thirst for learning even as a youngster. When he showed up in the beis medrash in 1951 we all knew we had someone special in our midst.
Truth be told, the first time we heard about the new bachur from Scranton we thought him a bit “unusual.” We did not yet understand that he was way ahead of us, even as a teenager, in his very mature outlook on life.
For example, I remember being told he kept a large clock near his bed in the dorm (not that prevalent in the yeshiva dorms of that day). I assumed he had the clock so that he’d wake up on time (though he actually came early to davening, something he did all his life). But most of my friends and I did not understand that to Sholom the clock was much more than a tool for punctuality; rather, it was a constant reminder and daily mussar schmooze for himself that time was precious and not to be wasted, even for a moment. Those who knew Rabbi Morrow can attest that he dedicated his very being to that most valuable lesson.
Sholom became very close to the rosh yeshiva, Rav Hutner, zt”l. In fact, in 2012 we had the privilege of hearing Rabbi Morrow recall some of his encounters with – and lessons learned from – the rosh yeshiva. On that occasion he was the featured guest speaker at the annual melaveh malkah in my son’s shul, Khal Shaare Shalom. We all smiled and marveled together with Rabbi Morrow, glad we had merited to hear some of his first-hand experiences with such a gadol b’Yisrael.
After receiving semicha from Rav Hutner, Rabbi Morrow, following in his rebbi’s footsteps, ventured out to spread Torah in rural America, first as a rabbi in Mount Carmel, Pennsylvania, and then in Liberty, New York. Rural America in the 1960s was not an easy place to tame but Rabbi Morrow, with his sweet sense of humor and the Torah outlook he received from Rav Hutner, was able to make his mark.
Though eventually he would move back to Brooklyn in 1970 and join the business world, he never lost sight of his status and responsibility as a talmid of Rav Hutner. While he never flaunting his Talmudic prowess, anyone who spoke with him quickly realized that besides being a talmid chacham, he was well read and intellectually inclined. And he would always prove true to his reputation for being a rodef shalom and a true mensch.
After leaving Chaim Berlin in the late 1950s I had all but lost touch with Sholom for nearly 20 years. But when in 1976 we moved to an area in Flatbush (Kings Highway and East 28th) that at the time had few Jews and only two or three shuls, the first people to welcome us to the neighborhood were none other than Sholom and Ethel. The friendship from my Chaim Berlin days was rekindled and would remain strong over the following 39 years.
