Community Magazine March 2003

34 COMMUNITY MAGAZINE s ” xc In 1919, R’Ades married Esther, the daughter of Hacham Ezra Harary-Raful. His poverty was so extreme in those years that, although his father-in-law gave him fabric in order to make a suit for his wed- ding day, he could not afford to hire a tailor to sew it. Instead, he borrowed a friend’s suit to wear. When the couple was married, a wealthy man let them live in his base- ment apartment. The man had planned to move his furniture out of the apartment so he could use it in another one of his resi- dences but he felt bad to leave the bride and groom to celebrate their Sheva Berachot in empty rooms. So, he left the furniture there for them to use for the first week of their marriage. When the newly- wed Esther Ades came home on the eighth day after their wedding, everything was gone. She did not complain and even made no mention of the fact that their home was completely devoid of any furniture. R’Ades’s poverty at one time even pre- vented him from purchasing paper. He would write his hidushim (revelations of Torah) on the backs and fronts of wedding invitations, scribbling in between the names of the bride and groom. In 1923, when he was only 25 years old, he began teaching in Porat Yosef. He was adept at developing each student’s poten- tial and creativity. After learning a topic in Gemarah, instead of giving a test, R. Ades would ask the boys complicated halachic questions and have them write their own opinion on the topic. He told them, “Learning Gemerah is like baking bread. Each lady may have the same dough and the same oven, but none of the loaves of bread come out the same.” In this way, each boy was made to feel special, as each student was truly writing something unique and worthy. Rabbi Aharon Harari-Raful once asked R’ Ades, “What did you do to merit such special children?” (among them Rabbi Yehuda Ades, Rabbi Yosef Ades, and Rabbi David Ades, all exceptional and important scholars). He answered, “I fasted many days, like the hair on my head.” When his wife heard about this, after her husband had passed away, she told her children, “I never knew that!” Rabbi Ades would come home at 10pm, sleep for only a few hours and then leave at 2am, to teach a class for working men until it was time for the Netz (sunrise) Minyan in the morn- ing. Throughout the rest of the day R’Ades was so busy that his wife had no way of knowing if or when he was eating. His son Rabbi Yehuda explained that it wasn’t merely the fasting that caused him to merit great children. Fasting was a con- duit to achieve better tefilot (prayers). The prayers during his fasts, and the tears he was able to shed, produced the great men his sons became. Today, although we are not on the level to use fasting to achieve our desired result, we can still use the power of sincere tefilot to merit having special children. One of the working men that attended B Y : R A B B I D A V I D S U T T O N Giants of The Glory Days In loving memory of our mother Emma Sutton k ” z by her children T he son of Rabbi Avraham Ades, Rabbi Yaakov Ades began his learning in Yeshivat Ohel Moed, a Syrian institution which evolved into the Yeshivat Porat Yosef we know today. He learned there under the Rosh Yeshivah Rabbi Rephael Shmuel Laniado until the outbreak of World War I. Rabbi Yaakov Ades, Rosh Yeshivat Porat Yosef Jerusalem 1898 - 1963