Tribute to Rav Kahn z'tl

We sometimes wonder – actually, we often wonder – what difference can just one person make. One person? I understand a school, an institution, a group, a chaburah, but one person?

When we contemplate the life of Rav Moshe Kahn the answer is obvious. Here we have one person – one person - who made a massive difference. He leaves behind a legacy of extraordinary achievement.

ממשה למשה לא קם כמשה

There was no one like Rav Moshe Kahn. 

He dedicated his life to connecting women to Torah on the highest of levels. And that's all he ever wanted. 

I watched my Rebbe be buried next to a Sefer Torah. How incredibly fitting for a walking Sefer Torah to be buried beside one.

I was a student of Rav Moshe Kahn for five years, both in Stern College and GPATS, and a colleague for nearly two decades. Much has been written and said about his style of learning and method of teaching, so I want to focus on two additional aspects of Rav Kahn. Rav Kahn taught two types of women: those who had experience and background in learning Gemara as well as those who had very little. Many of his talmidot, including myself, were told that Gemara was not for women. As so many of my friends can attest, in many schools women were never encouraged nor taught how to open a Gemara or master a text of Torah Shebal Peh on our own. Rabbi Kahn changed our world.

It is with great awe and admiration that I reflect upon the career and achievement of my mentor and colleague, Rabbi Moshe Kahn.  And it is with great pain that I try to assimilate the void generated by his passing.  Throughout the generations, our nation has and continues to be blessed with many teachers of Torah who enlighten the lives of individual students and communities.  Few, however, have built and nurtured an entire world of Torah.  Rabbi Moshe Kahn created a world of Torah.  

Rav Moshe Kahn, leading teacher of Gemara to women, passed away on January 18, 2023.

Following many years of study at RIETS as a student of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, receiving Semicha in 1975 and Yadin Yadin in 1979, Rav Moshe Kahn began teaching, first at JSS. Fatefully, he joined the Judaic Studies faculty at Stern College for Women in 1983. While Rabbi Soloveitchik famously gave the first Gemara Shiur there in 1977, the true force on the ground in actually teaching Gemara over the past four decades has been Rav Kahn. He consistently taught Gemara at multiple levels – Intermediate and Advanced – and gave Shiurim in Halacha as well.

What difficult news to swallow: the death of a precious teacher, Rabbi Moshe Kahn, zt'"l. Every semester we sat, a small group of women, with our gemarot open, working hard to understand the text and the rishonim and achronim.

I wrote this to share with my Midreshet Lindenbaum students after hearing of Rabbi Kahn’s passing. I have now been teaching Gemara for over 20 years, first at Ma’ayanot Yeshiva High School in Teaneck, and then after making Aliya in 2010, at Midreshet Lindenbaum in Yerushalayim. Gemara is absolutely central to my Judaism and my life. As you will see below, I owe that to Rabbi Kahn.

Many of Rabbi Kahn’s talmidot were first introduced to gemara by Rabbi Kahn. This was not the case with me. I was 22 the first time I sat in a shiur (at GPATS) with Rabbi Kahn and I had been learning gemara for 10 years (although never intensely). 

Please allow me to join the other tributes, I don’t have any new facet or element of Rabbi Kahn to share, just my own personal experience of him, from having been his student for about 6 years, including his intermediate and advanced Gemara shiurim, two years in GPATs (2001-2003), and halacha shiurim at Stern College.

 Once when Rabbi Kahn called on me to read the Gemara in class, I started to read and he said to me, I’m sorry to interrupt you, but you are reminding me of something that happened in the Rav’s shiur, where he said to a student, "Just because you can read in a sing-songy voice doesn’t mean you understand what’s going on." And we all had a good laugh. And of course, he was right, tapping into something very deep: that as someone with imposter syndrome, I was trying to conceal the fact that I didn’t really know what was going on.

The Jewish people lost a gadol. Many of us lost our rebbi . It is hard to write these words, that our rebbi, Rav Moshe Kahn z’’l passed away. His passing is heartbreaking. A terrible loss for his family, his many students, and the Jewish people. I have so much to say, so much to share, though I can’t do justice to Rav Moshe Kahn and all that he gave.

There has been much written  - by women - about Rabbi Kahn, who passionately supported and facilitated the Torah learning of so many of us.

Baruch Dayan HaEmet. It was in R’ Kahn’s shiur in Stern/GPATS where I truly learned how to learn Gemara. His soft spoken nature combined with his high expectations demanded excellence and that you be able to translate every word of the Gemara and Rishonim once you got to shiur. He inspired a generation of female Talmud teachers who now pass his methods on to their own students.

I recently studied the sugya about tearing kriah for your rebbe, and there’s a discussion about whether one tears kriah for anyone they learned Torah from, or just someone they learned the majority of their Torah from. But there’s another category that isn’t discussed there, and that’s your rebbe who taught you how to learn, so that anything you learn afterwards will essentially be a continuation of their teaching you.

Rabbi Moshe Kahn was my rebbe before I ever met him. He taught my very first Gemara and Halacha teachers, the ones who opened my eyes to the beauty of Torah shebe’al peh. They were his students at a time when women studying Gemara was a rare occurrence on the edges of Modern Orthodoxy. But from the very beginning, Rabbi Kahn set high standards for his female students and assumed that they were capable of studying the most challenging texts our tradition has to offer.

I studied with Rabbi Kahn for four years and find myself devastated - at a total loss for words to describe what he and his Torah meant to me. Since my words have failed me today, I will instead share the speech I delivered about Rabbi Kahn at my GPATS graduation in 2014:

"When I started in Stern 6 years ago, and I sat down in Rabbi Kahn’s undergraduate Talmud shi’ur, I was completely terrified and didn’t open my mouth for about two months. I am now graduating GPATS and am also completing my tenure as Rabbi Kahn’s TA for that very same undergraduate gemara class. Through my years in Rabbi Kahn’s shi’ur, I learned how to learn. I learned how to carefully take apart a sugya, how to analyze rishonim, (we all know Rabbi Kahn doesn’t do acharonim so I can’t speak to that). I learned what it meant to immerse myself in Torah and to commit myself to learning.

נפלה עטרת ראשנו

I believe that after Rav Soloveitchik, Rav Kahn z”l was the most influential figure in empowering women’s Gemara learning in the United States. Rav Kahn taught generations of students at Stern College for Women, and was the primary Gemara teacher for 40 years after Rav Soloveitchik instituted the class in the 1970s. Rav Kahn was battling cancer for the past few years and taught up until this past semester.

Rav Soloveitchik gave the first Gemara shiur to women in Stern College in 1977. But, what happened on day two?

Rav Willig completed the rest of the year’s Gemara teaching. But when he wanted to spend more time at uptown, the Rav asked Rav Moshe Kahn if he could continue teaching the shiur. 

At the time, Rav Kahn was teaching at ’s men’s campus. Rav Kahn thought, and I’m paraphrasing, “My rebbe [Rav Soloveitchik] asked me to teach here, and I should honor my rebbe’s wish.”

Over winter break, Am Yisrael experienced an enormous loss. Rabbi Moshe Kahn, longtime Talmud and Halacha teacher at Stern College for Women, passed away on Wednesday morning, January 18th after a long battle with cancer. I stand here with trepidation because I know I can't do justice to the tremendous impact he had on me and the world of women's advanced Torah learning. Out of all the amazing teachers I have been blessed to learn from, Rabbi Kahn had the single largest impact on my Torah learning. Not just because of my own 5 years learning directly from him, but also because of the number of my teachers to whom he taught Gemara on an advanced level. I remember in college there was moment when my friends and I realized that every woman Gemara and Halacha teacher we had had in high school, and Baruch Hashem that was quite a few, had been taught by Rabbi Kahn at some point. So although I didn't learn directly from Rabbi Kahn until college, my learning was already impacted by him in high school. Because of Rabbi Kahn, I was exposed early on to female role models who learned Torah on a high level and that undoubtedly set me on my path to where I am today.

What a privilege to have been Rav Kahn’s student for 5 years. What a loss to the Jewish community that his neshama is no longer in this world.

Rav Kahn insisted on teaching in Stern so that women’s learning would be rigorous and demanding, and Rav Kahn always taught the women the same masechet as was being taught in . His search for truth and understanding kept us on our toes- always pushing us to learn, relearn, and dig deeper.

Today, I have written and re-written reflections on the beloved Rabbi Moshe Kahn, ztz”l, the foremost influential Talmud teacher of countless women, myself included. Much of what I want to say has already been said by many– how Rav Kahn held us to the highest standards, how he quietly, but powerfully educated not just one, but several, generations of female Torah scholars. How he took the job to teach the women’s Gemara shiur at Stern when very few people were willing to do so– how he did this not, as we say, bedieved (ex post facto) but entirely lechatchila (from the outset, ideally), believing in the importance of advanced women’s Torah study wholeheartedly. How he was utterly humble in this immeasurably impactful endeavor, not in a disingenuous way, but in a way that still leaves me baffled as to how to actually achieve true humility in one’s life as he did.

I’m overwhelmed with the need to join the multitudes of women who are students of Rabbi Moshe Kahn. I told a colleague today that since I can’t attend the shiva, zooming into the funeral felt like the least I could do to show up- and writing here feels the same- the least I can do to show respect and honor and to do something with my sadness and grief.

It doesn’t feel like there is space to say more about my Rebbe, Rav Kahn zt”l. Truly, though, I feel a prerogative, as one of the students lucky enough to have learned from him and been privy to the glory of his connection to our mesorah, to share a bit about what made Rav Kahn a gadol, at least from my personal experience. And while there’s been a chorus of beautiful eulogies, I thought it was worthwhile for me to post my reflections here to both add to the chorus in appreciation of my Rebbe and to post on social media in the event I’m reaching people in my circles who haven’t yet been introduced to Rav Kahn. 

I learned with Rav Kahn in GPATS from 2015-2018. I sent this remembrance to my colleagues and friends.

Today, the world lost a gadol. A man who affected unbelievable torah learning, religious growth and influenced countless Talmidot. My rebbe, Rabbi Moshe Kahn went to the olam haemet today, and I'm sure there will be many, many hespedim about his greatness and anava but I thought I'd share how he personally changed my life. 

There is so much to say about Rav Kahn, Zecher Tzadik L’Veracha. Like countless other women today, I am still processing this huge loss and the profound ways Rav Kahn impacted my life.

For now, I will say simply as a wholly incomplete but partial tribute to his greatness:

There is nothing quite so powerful as having someone, especially a teacher, totally and completely believe in your ability.

Today, I had the devastating displeasure of burying my rebbe. He was buried along with a passul Sefer Torah from Rinat, a fitting accompaniment for a man who shared last year that teaching Torah was keeping him going. It is comforting to know that he’s learning Torah once again in the Olam shel Emes, learning a Milchamos along with the Ramban himself.

Rav Kahn was a legendary melamed (teacher) with unparalleled dedication towards his students. Since the 1970s, he believed in furthering women’s Talmud Torah, and did not stop until he physically couldn’t this semester due to his waning health. I’ll never forget Rav Kahn’s speech at my GPATS graduation last year, when he expressed that belief so eloquently and fervently, despite the fact that he was ill and it had been two years since he had stepped foot in the Stern Beit Midrash due to COVID.

Today in daf yomi, we are finishing masechet Nedarim. When I opened my gemara to start the masechet, I saw that I already had notes on the first daf-- circles and little underlines all over the page, with a few words in pencil, squeezed between the small lines of the Ran. I looked at it and wondered, what are all these circles and underlines? Then I looked at the words and realized it was all the words that I didn't know yet, and R' Kahn said we should learn every word on the daf that we didn't know. I looked back now and smiled, seeing  all the words that had been so daunting to learn then, but of course after learning in R' Kahn's shiur, how could I not know them?
 

Dear Rav Kahn,

I always put a lot of pressure on myself to write the perfect thing when expressing my gratitude to people, which is why I unfortunately haven’t sent you such an email other than a short thank you at the end of each of the last six semesters. Especially for you, such an influential person in my life, there are so many things I want to say which makes me that much more scared to limit my thoughts to one email. I decided, though, that many disbanded thoughts are better than nothing. On that note, please forgive me for my lack of organization and clarity, and for anything important that I missed. 

Today we mourn the passing of Rabbi Moshe Kahn, a gadol and a tzadik. Many can and have spoken about Rabbi Kahn’s derech halimud, and his impact on am yisrael and on Torah learning. If your feed hasn’t yet been graced with these posts, I will link them below. But what I want to contribute to this conversation is something more personal, the influence that Rabbi Kahn had on me. I want to try to somehow express, knowing full well I cannot do the topic justice, the loss I feel now that Rabbi Kahn is no longer with me. Rabbi Kahn changed my life. I say without any exaggeration, that I would not be the person I am today without him.

I had the zchut of learning with Rav Kahn for only a short time. I started learning in this year, and he taught us this semester with every ounce of strength he had until he was unable to continue. And that was the most painful decision for him. Because Torah energized him. Because teaching energized him. And it also was physically exhausting for him because he put his all into it. But I see that that is what it means to לעסוק בדברי תורה, to engage in the words of Torah. It’s an experience that allows one to transcend their bodily limitations and allow their heart and soul, their emotion and spirit, to take over and overcome for as long as the body can sustain. You could see it on his face — his physical exhaustion, but his eyes wide and curious to see what we had learned and his smile so large to express his joy in his Talmidot’s learning. It was an immense blessing to watch someone push through in order to pursue the passion that was so true to their heart. I learned immensely from that.