Memory Lane: Rabbi Moshe Aaron Reguer

A high school diploma issued in 1941 by Yeshiva Etz Chaim of Boro Park has a number of important signatories—including the head of the division, Rabbi M.A. Reguer. He was the son of the legendary Dayan of Brisk, Rav Simcha Zelig Reguer, and he taught Torah in New York for decades. 

Brisk

Moshe Aaron—named for his father’s nephew, a dayan in Brisk, who was niftar childless in Eretz Yisroel— was born in the town of Brest-Litovsk (Brisk) on 25 Cheshvan of the year 1903. He was the youngest son of Rav Simcha Zelig and Rebbetzin Sara (Sorke) Reguer. Sorke was the daughter of Rav Avrohom Yaakov and Rotke Rudensky of Volozyn. Rotke was well-known in Volozyn, because she sold whiskey to the gentiles of the town, enabling her husband to sit and learn from morning till night, and, through her force of personality was the only one who could keep the patrons under control even after they had had a few drinks. 

“My father, the Ga’on Rav Simcha Zelig of Brisk, is very respected in the entire world of a yeshivah scholarship and specifically in my city and its surroundings,” he would later write. “His twenty-four-hour day was divided into one third for study and teaching others for free, one third for legal decisions, and one third for himself—for his needs and for the public. 

“And I was his beloved son; he chose me to educate me in the ways of Hashem. When I was six years old, and already knew how to read, he turned me over to one of the best teachers in our city to teach me Torah with the proper translations and meforshim. The teacher was Reb Nochum Slonimer, who worked meticulously, twelve hours a day. After three years, I knew almost the entire Tanach by heart, and Hashem’s Torah was indelibly inscribed in me,” he recalled. 

In the Yeshivos of the Lita 

When he was ten years old, Moshe Aaron entered the Volozyner Yeshiva, where he learned with older bachurim, spending time at the home of his grandparents as well. 

From Volozyn, he went to Minsk, where Rav Chaim Brisker was then living. “After hearing that there was an outstanding young talmid chochom in the city of Baruisk, in the Minsk province, my parents traveled there with me with the idea of putting me under his wing… I was accepted by the young man, Rav Shloime [Heiman] of Poritz… now, at the age of twelve, I studied with him one to two hours per day.” He wrote. “Each erev Pesach, I traveled with my father to Minsk at the request of Rav Chaim to participate in the baking of matzos.” 

His bar mitzvah took place in Babruisk, after he had completed the entirety of Bava Metziah together with Rav Shloime Heiman. “I said a little Torah of his, and also some Torah of my father’s,” he later wrote. 

“I came to Slutzk, escorted by Rav Isser Zalman, at the beginning of the winter of 1916. I lived at first in his house, but when he realized that I had to be supervised, he gave me to the care of his students. On Shabbos, I ate with the rav d’masa (Rav Isser Zalman) and that was when I was tested on all that I had learned the previous week. The examiners included not only the rav, but also his son-in-law, the rosh yeshiva, the iluy Rav Aharon (Kotler) of Svitzloz. 

After a number of years in Slutzk, Moshe Aaron moved to the Slabodka yeshiva, then located in Kremenchug. There he found his old rebbi, Rav Shloime Heiman, who had by then married his cousin. He later moved along with the yeshiva to its home in Slabodka.

He eventually moved to Boro Park, and began teaching at Yeshiva Etz Chaim, as well as at other institutions in New York. He taught at Yeshiva University until 1974, when retired and fulfilled his promise of moving back to eretz hakodesh, until his passing there in the year 1985, following a lifetime of learning and teaching.