‘None of Us Show Up Late’: Heichal Hatefillah Celebrates Siyum of Early Morning Shiur

Weeks after Pesach of 2020, as the danger of Covid-19 began receding, one of Boro Park’s largest daily shiurim began getting together again for their early morning shiur iyun. The group of approximately a hundred baalei batim — a description they carry with pride — from Boro Park’s Heichal Hatefillah kehillah had already completed a dozen or so masechtos. For the new “zman,” they decided to begin learning Maseches Moed Katan.

Now, 18 months later, they completed it — in the slow and methodical process of talmidei chachamim — marking it with a gala siyum at a private mansion in Colts Neck, New Jersey. The Rav, Rav Binyomin Eisenberger, was clearly emotional as he expressed his appreciation to shiur participants, some of whom have been coming since its inception 24 years ago.

“I went back today and listened to the shiur on Maseches Sotah,” the Rav told the crowd of over a hundred people, referring to the first masechta learned by the chaburah. “I listened to it because I wanted to see how much you grew since then. And I saw that it is a different world. And what changed? You.”

The 7:15 a.m. shiur began shortly after the kehillah had its beginnings a quarter century ago. The shiur is lively and wide-ranging, learned with rishonim and a heaping pile of lomdus. An average day can see the kashya of the Rashba or a chakirah from the Brisker Rav. Several speakers made a big deal of the fact that questions are not only permitted but encouraged.

“The Rav is there every morning, even after a late chasunah and even though he has kabalas kahal until late at night,” marveled one participant. “And it’s a lively shiur, people ask in and there is a real rischa d’oraisa. He put the baalei batim back into yeshiva.”

The shiur runs for 45 minutes on four days a week, with Sunday reserved for a shiur in Navi and Friday for Nesivas Shalom. The only break during the year is for two weeks after Tishah B’Av.

Since Rav Eisenberger began his kehillah, it has grown by leaps and bounds. Hundreds of people crowd the shul, Heichal Hatefillah, each week, and it is evident that their lives have been changed by their connection to him. The Rav’s influence was evident when one of the speakers interrupted his speech to announce, “by the way, everything I say is what I heard from the Rav.”

One fascinating aspect was the timing of the siyum — they finished Moed Katan together with the Daf Yomi program, although they began about 17 months before. But the facet that all the speakers focused on was the consistency the shiur demanded of them. It was in the grammen sung by Reb Itche Tuvia Kurtz and in the prose of Reb Isaac Lefkowitz hailing the mesiras nefesh of the Rav, how he is fresh and crisp no matter what time he went to sleep.

“You know,” Reb Isaac began with a joke, in a nod to it being Putim Katan, “some Rishonim call Moed Katan ‘Maseches Mashkin,’ after the first word of the masechta. So, l’chaim.”

“They call us ‘Baalei batim,’” Rev Lefkowitz continued. “Why are we baalei batim, because we wake up at six in the morning to catch a shiur before davening? The answer is that yes, we are baalei batim because we take ownership of what we learn.”

He spoke about the discipline required to attend a daily shiur in the morning, how it transforms their day.

“This extra hour that we get up has become part of our biological clock,” he said. “You know how I know? Because you can tell who comes to the shiur: the ones who are on time to Shacharis on Shabbos. We can’t sleep after 6:30. None of us show up late, because we do it on a daily basis, consistently, 365 days a year.”

Rav Lefkowitz extolled the patience of Rav Eisenberger, who leads a kehillah of several hundred families, has a large young family of his own and is consulted with by countless others. Yet, he said, the Rav “marches in like a king and gives a shiur as if it’s the only shiur he gives in the week.” He added that Rav Eisenberger once told him that the only one who has priority during kabalas kahal is “not the gvirim, not the meyuchasim, but the one who comes to the shiur every morning.”

Reb Chesky Kain, another shiur participant, said he most admired its consistency and the achdus it has brought among participants. He noted that the korbanos brought by the Nesiim when the Mishkan was first built were sacrificed with great celebration and pomp. Yet, the avodah of kindling the Menorah was deemed greater to Hashem, as Rashi says in the beginning of Parshas Behaloscha.

“At the end of the day, after the Mishkan was built and the celebrations ended, there was a small ner tamid that burned on the Menorah,” Rabbi Kain said. “At our Heichal, there are so many surges of ruchnius that a yungerman can have throughout the year — he experiences a Rosh Hashanah in the Heichal, a Yom Kippur, a Lag Baomer, a Simchas Beis Hashoeiva — there’s an ocean of things going on throughout the year. But everyone who comes to the shiur in the morning knows that after all these big things, there is a tremendous chavivus to the shiur. This is because it is consistent.”

In his keynote address, Rav Eisenberger recalled the first siyum more than two decades ago, when they completed Sotah. He recalled how many of the women in the kehillah pitched in to prepare.

“I believe that we should make a new magazine, and whoever does it will not become a millionaire but he will have a zechus,” Rav Eisenberger declared. “It should be a magazine that celebrates the things that are consistent, not the loud one-time events. It should celebrate the Yiddishe father and mother who perform their avodas Hashem on a daily basis, with consistency.”

The unique shiur has already begun Brachos, and Rav Eisenberger announced that he plans on continuing in order of the masechtos, omitting the dozen or so masechtos that they completed already. He added that they will from now on enhance the shiur with an unspecified something new.

“You must always add to your learning,” the Rav declared. “If not, then you slide backwards.”