The Jewish world suffered a grievous loss with the passing on Monday after a long bout with illness of Rabbi Prof. Dov Fischer, beloved husband and father, Rav of the Young Israel of Orange County (Irvine, CA), attorney and law professor, author, and frequent much-read columnist for Israel National News as well as contributing editor at the American Spectator.
Rav Dov was an individual of great passion, courageous, intrepid, outspoken, keenly intelligent, and with a sublime gift of expression, sometimes profound and serious, sometimes subtly sarcastic and sometimes simply funny.
He was a graduate of Columbia University, a musmach of Yeshiva University’s Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary, and earned his law degree at UCLA. For a time, he practiced high stakes litigation with two prominent law firms. He taught Torah in several venues - as a Rav in Jersey City and a Rebbe at Rogosin Yeshiva High School in his youth, and then in California, with a plethora of his shiurim on YouTube.
As a Rav, he was noted for his pastoral sensitivity, his kindness, his enthusiastic commitment to kiruv, and his desire to bring love and observance of Torah to every Jew. A multi-dimensional personality whose days were filled with service to the Jewish people, he at one time also served as National Director of the JDL, as the head of Likud USA, as Vice-President of the Zionist Organization of America, and on the Executive Committee of the Rabbinical Council of America.
In addition to his numerous articles, he wrote two books in the 1980s - “Jews for Nothing,” about the assimilation crisis, and “General Sharon’s War Against Time Magazine.” At the time of his death, he was in the final stages of publishing a commentary on the Chumash.
What was Rav Dov like? He was a born contrarian, as evidenced by his being a Yankee fan in the heart of his native Brooklyn, then the home of the Brooklyn Dodgers, and maintaining his allegiances even on the West Coast. His passion for truth led him to publicly challenge any deviation from Orthodoxy, including Open Orthodoxy, meticulously highlighting every errant innovation and routinely calling on the rabbinic world to speak out and defend the truth of Torah.
His frustration with the tendency of established rabbinic organizations to avoid controversy even to the detriment of Torah, Israel, and the Jewish people led him a decade ago to become one of the founders of the Coalition for Jewish Values, an public policy organization of over 2000 Orthodox rabbis. At his passing, Rav Dov was Vice President of the organization.
His truth was served on a platter of no compromise, although he took great pains to keep his relationships with those with whom he disagreed professional and never personal. As professor at two California law schools, he was voted several times the “most popular professor” by his law students and became a mentor to a generation of aspiring attorneys. Unbeknownst to the general public, Rav Dov was also a mentor and legal advisor to numerous rabbis, helping them negotiate their contracts and navigate issues with synagogue boards, and all pro bono.
Visitors to Israel National News were avid readers of his columns, which combined fierce advocacy for Israel with a remarkable range of sources, anecdotes and allusions. A typical article could contain Torah insights, political analysis, and arcane references to Seinfeld, movies, books, and legal theories. He was quite open about his personal life and medical issues in recent years, which provided his readers with a close personal connection. When his beloved wife Ellen died of a brain tumor, he shared his grief with readers, and when the lung transplant he underwent necessitated constant medical care, he joked with them about how little time he has to write and lecture. His marriage to Denise, to whom we send sincere condolences, brought him solace.
As columnist for the American Spectator, he brought to the American public Jewish ideas and values to which most had theretofore never been exposed. Most assumed that all Jews were liberals because that is how the general media monolithically portrayed Jews. Rav Dov opened them to a new and more accurate understanding of Torah and Judaism and, in the eyes of many, redeeming the Torah from the prevalent misconceptions.
As readers of Arutz Sheva (and the Spectator) knew, Israel was a special passion. Notwithstanding an unsuccessful attempt at Aliyah in the 1980’s (a contractor took his money, and that of his fellow residents in their new Yishuv in the Shomron, and declared bankruptcy, leaving them all impoverished and necessitating his move to California), he retained a lifelong love of Israel and always dreamt of returning.
Rav Dov was a classic Religious Zionist - believing with all his heart and soul in the State of Israel as the fulfillment of the prophetic vision of our return to the land after a long exile. He called out specific Israeli politicians for their poltroonery, their fecklessness, and often their lack of Jewish pride as evinced by the policies they implemented and the dangerous concessions they made - such as the Oslo Accords and the Expulsion of Jews from Gaza.
This candor was atypical of most rabbis of his generation, who preferred to take positions within a broad consensus so as not to antagonize anyone who disagreed - but who also then abdicated even the pretense of leadership. Rav Dov was not afraid of detractors. He confronted them and was always willing to debate them (some of his debates dating back decades can be found on YouTube). In debate he was polite but firm, and his arguments often left his interlocutors grasping for answers, and longing for a commercial break. He was a master orator and teacher, and until just last month, despite his ill health, he was still giving Zoom shiurim to his congregants in Irvine and elsewhere.
Rabbis are not always emotional - but many of our rabbinic colleagues are crushed by this loss. They speak of him as the heart of Klal Yisrael, a Rav of tremendous dedication, mesirut nefesh, possessed of an unmatched generosity of spirit, an intellectual giant, a gift of articulation, with a very sharp, incisive, and infectious sense of humor. He had a soft spot for the underdog, the oppressed, the mistreated, and the disadvantaged. His fervent love of Torah morality did not at all limit his ability to relate to people of all backgrounds, faiths, and disparate belief systems.
It is often an overused cliché to assert that someone is irreplaceable, but Rav Dov is truly irreplaceable. The influence he had on countless Jews, the joy he brought to his teaching of Torah, the shaping of hearts and minds about Israel, Judaism, and the Jewish people, can not be replaced. It can only be emulated - by rabbis of courage, vision, and resolve. His voice has been stilled but Rav Dov left a legacy of lessons, learning, and leadership that will continue to inspire generations to come.
Yehi Zichro Baruch.
Rabbi Steven Pruzansky is a rabbi and attorney who lives in Israel and serves as Senior Research Associate at the Jerusalem Center for Applied Policy and as Israel Region Vice President of the Coalition for Jewish Values. He is the author of six books, including “Repentance for Life” (Kodesh Press), and is a longtime friend of Rav Dov Fischer.
No comments:
Post a Comment