Monsey. He had a little basement where he said his Chumash shiur. Rav Yankev Kaminetzky talking on Chumash! Who shouldn’t come?! It should be packed! It wasn’t packed. There was plenty of room left over.
And even in our generation if you’ll find tzaddikim – there are plenty of tzaddikim in this day too – and you get close to them, you must realize that the merit of coming close to the Shechina is being achieved and it’s one of the big successes in life.
That’s why it says – Pesach is coming and among all of the other obligations י≈נ¿ּפ ילƒ ב¿ ַ̃ה¿ל םָ„ָ‡ בָיַח ל∆‚∆רָּב ֹוּבַר – it’s a chiyuv to visit your rebbi on yom tov (Rosh Hashanah 16b).
Now, it’s true that the mitzvah of physical proximity to the Shechina requires that רּו„ָי םָלֹעו¿ל ֹוּבַר םֹו ̃¿מƒּב םָ„ָ‡ – a man should always live in the same place where his rebbe is (Brachos 8a); but on yom tov you’re obligated to pick up your feet and go even closer, to go and visit him. Don’t come here by the way. You have to find yourself a real rebbe and visit him.
Substituting for Aliyas Regel
Why on yom tov? The answer is you should visit him all the time, but during the year you’re busy working. On yom tov, you’re off from work. So if you’re not working, what should you be doing? Go to the amusement parks? Visit the zoo? You can do that too, but that’s not what yom tov is for. Those days off are intended to be an opportunity to bring yourself close to Hashem! And if we don’t have the Beis Hamikdash to go to, to be physically close to the Shechina that way, we can go to chachomim.
Certainly you might hear good things from him too, but even if you don’t, even if you come and you fall asleep at his table, but if you went to your rebbe on yom tov, you already came close to the one who has the Shechina resting on him, to the one about whom you can say “Hashem Elokecha – it’s your Hashem”. And so for the nation that wants kirvas Elokim, physical proximity to the chachomim is in itself a very big achievement because it’s considered getting closer to Hakadosh Baruch Hu.
