Gabrielle (Hiller) Berger: Tribute to Rav Kahn

Gabrielle (Hiller) Berger

Over winter break, Am Yisrael experienced an enormous loss. Rabbi Moshe Kahn, longtime Talmud and Halacha teacher at Stern College for Women, passed away on Wednesday morning, January 18th after a long battle with cancer. I stand here with trepidation because I know I can't do justice to the tremendous impact he had on me and the world of women's advanced Torah learning. Out of all the amazing teachers I have been blessed to learn from, Rabbi Kahn had the single largest impact on my Torah learning. Not just because of my own 5 years learning directly from him, but also because of the number of my teachers to whom he taught Gemara on an advanced level. I remember in college there was moment when my friends and I realized that every woman Gemara and Halacha teacher we had had in high school, and Baruch Hashem that was quite a few, had been taught by Rabbi Kahn at some point. So although I didn't learn directly from Rabbi Kahn until college, my learning was already impacted by him in high school. Because of Rabbi Kahn, I was exposed early on to female role models who learned Torah on a high level and that undoubtedly set me on my path to where I am today.

Rabbi Kahn earned semicha from RIETS in 1975 and Yadin Yadin in 1979, where he was a longtime student of Rav Soloveitchik. Rabbi Kahn first began teaching at JSS, Yeshiva College’s Torah studies program for students with less familiarity with textual study. He could have become a rosh yeshiva at YU and earned all the prestige that came along with that, but in 1983, 6 years after Rav Soloveitchik famously taught the first Gemara shiur to women in Stern College, Rabbi Kahn was asked to teach that Gemara class at Stern College, which he fatefully accepted. As a result, Rabbi Kahn has never been as well known as he might have been as a rosh yeshiva, but his impact has been tremendous. In the 40 years since he began teaching at Stern, he has taught thousands of women Talmud and Halacha with the highest of expectations. And Rabbi Kahn’s impact was not limited to Stern College. In the 80’s, Rabbi Kahn taught at Drisha’s Scholars Circle, an advanced Gemara learning program for post-college women. In 2000, when YU opened GPATS, their Graduate Program for Women in Advanced Talmudic Studies, Rabbi Kahn began teaching there in addition to his undergraduate courses at Stern. Virtually every single woman in America who learns Gemara, including those who have made aliyah and are now teaching in or even heading midrashot in Israel, has been taught by Rabbi Kahn at some point. And if not by him, then by one of his students. 

I was privileged to learn from Rabbi Kahn both while I was an undergraduate in Stern College and when I was in GPATS. There are 3 things that I will always remember about Rabbi Kahn. The first is that I was terrified of his class. Rabbi Kahn would only learn with us the most challenging masechtot. He would say that we would always learn whatever masechet YU was learning that year, as long as it was from seder Nashim or Nezikin. He knew that, as women, most of us unfortunately would not have as many opportunities to learn as men. He, therefore, wanted to make sure that we spent our more limited time learning the masechtot that would challenge us the most, which he believed were in seder Nashim and Nezikin. We were expected to put in a number of hours outside of class time preparing the sources for shiur. Sometimes, I would sit in class, knowing that I had not fully understood a source, wishing I was invisible. I would sit there praying that Rabbi Kahn wouldn’t cold call me. Because, if he did, there was no hiding behind a vague, imprecise answer. “Say it better,” he would say. Many days, I would leave his class feeling stupid- a good stupid, because I knew I was being pushed in a good way- but stupid, nonetheless. Rabbi Kahn pushed me way harder than I’ve ever before been pushed in my learning. He had the highest of expectations for the women that he taught. But just as he pushed us, so he was proud of us. When one of us would succeed in accurately explaining a tough Gemara or a rishon, he would look up and, with a gleam in his eye, would say, “That’s right. She got it.” 

Which leads me to the second thing I will always remember- his emphasis on precision and thoroughness. Rabbi Kahn pushed us to carefully read every single word of every Gemara and rishon that we learned. I think in high school, I built up solid skills in learning the actual Gemara, but I credit Rabbi Kahn for pushing me to learn rishonim thoroughly and accurately, as well. Rabbi Kahn would give us word quizzes and would take off points if we failed to translate a prefix or a suffix- for all my students who know that I now do the same in my own grading, you should know that I think of Rabbi Kahn every time I do, that I do that to push you to be precise and thorough in your own learning, just as Rabbi Kahn pushed me. We not only had to be precise, but we also had to be thorough. Rabbi Kahn would always warn us “don’t learn Tosafot with emunah”- if Tosafot quoted another Gemara, we better look up that Gemara, understand what’s going on there and make sure we understood how Tosafot is using that Gemara as an answer, challenge, or proof. If we had not done that, we were going right back to chavruta to work on that Tosafot again- Rabbi Kahn would not just hand us any answers. 

The third thing that I will always remember about Rabbi Kahn, is something that came a little later, only after I stopped being terrified every day in class- which is that Rabbi Kahn cared tremendously about each of his students. In the beit midrash, he was always happy to pause in his own learning to help us when we got stuck. Rabbanit Sally Mayer, Rosh Midrasha at Midreshet Lindenbaum and a student of Rabbi Kahn, spoke at his levaya and said it perfectly- Rabbi Kahn had high expectations but endless patience. While I was his student, Rabbi Kahn decided to pursue a second career and, when I was in GPATS, he earned a license in psychoanalysis, again showing his desire to understand and help others. Rabbi Kahn seemed tough, but really he cared so much about all of his students, he believed in us, and was just pushing us to be the most precise learners we could be. Before I got married, my now husband and I were deciding who to give various kibbudim to at our wedding. My husband had a number of rebbeim that he wished to include, and I felt privileged to have my own rebbe, Rabbi Kahn, who was honored as one of our eidei kiddushin. 

Since last Wednesday when Rabbi Kahn passed, I’ve spent hours reading countless tributes and hespedim from his talmidot, sharing their individual stories of Rabbi Kahn, but all with the overall same messages that I’ve shared with you today. There is one dvar Torah which came up a few times that I would like to end with. Rabbi Kahn would recount the midrash of the angel who comes to all babies before they are born and teaches them the whole Torah. But right before they are born, they forget it all. Rabbi Kahn asked, how can this be? How could Hashem create such a cruel system? Rabbi Kahn shared that the reason this needs to happen is because Talmud Torah requires hard work and time. It is not something that can just be given to us. And yet, at the same time, Hashem wanted to give every single one of us the confidence that we have the ability to learn all of Torah- we’ve done it once, so we can do it again. Rabbi Kahn believed tremendously in Talmud Torah on a high level for women, he was not well known outside of Stern College, he did not receive honor or prestige, he just came into Stern to teach everyday for 40 years because this was something he believed in. He pushed us and, in so doing, he has changed the face of women’s Torah learning forever. It is heartbreaking to me that the young women in this room will not have the opportunity to learn directly from him, and I hope and pray to ה"הקב that we, his talmidot, are able to pass on his legacy to the next generation. But I hope that all of us in this room can take Rabbi Kahn’s message from this midrash to heart- every single one of us, no matter how much we struggle, has the ability to unlock the beauty of the Torah, but to do that, we need to work hard, strive for precision, and be committed to our learning. תהא נשמתו צרורה בצרור החיים

(Gabrielle teaches Gemara and Halacha and am the Judaics Instructional Coach at Fuchs Mizrachi School's Stark High School in Beachwood, OH.)