SmallTalk: The Life of Rabbi Aryeh Leibush Gottesman (with Rabbi Amrom Gottesman)

In 1944, sixteen-year-old Aryeh Leibush Gottesman watched his entire family—his mother, father, and siblings—walk to the left at Auschwitz. He was sent to the right only because he was tall and looked eighteen. That single physical detail, a few inches of height, was the difference between life and death. It was the first of many miracles that would define a life devoted entirely to Torah learning, a life that his son, Rabbi Amrom Gottesman, has now documented in a 650-page biography originally written in Yiddish and recently translated into English.

The Making of a Learner

After the war, Aryeh Leibush Gottesman was alone except for one surviving brother. He was sixteen years old with barely two years of formal yeshiva education. Rather than despair, he made a radical decision: he would make up for lost time by learning Torah for eighteen hours a day, leaving only six hours for davening, eating, and sleeping. He maintained this schedule for twenty years, even after taking a job as a diamond cutter to support his family. His son recalls that his mother would say he went "from Shabbos to Shabbos" without going to bed.