I would come in to see how he was doing, and usually to ask him for something. Zaidie never turned me away empty handed. He would smile and give me a kiss on my head and ask me, “So, Michali what did you learn today?” And then he would ask me if I want him to tell me a story of the great scholars from the Gemara. Of course I wanted him to! He would go over to his bookcase and look over his sefarim as if he were looking at gold. Finally he would take out a sefer and say, “Sit down. You’re not planning on standing the whole time, are you?”
And then time stood still. Zaidie would start telling me stories from the Torah with so much joy and emotion. I was sure Zaidie knew all the stories by heart and didn’t really need the book to tell them over, but I guess he just loved to hold the sefarim in his hands as if they were his most prized possessions.
His generosity reached far beyond his family and loved ones. Zaidie loved every Jew as if he or she was part of his own family. People all over the world knew where to turn if ever they needed a helping hand.
Although Zaidie never came to live in the holy land of Israel, he loved Israel with all his heart and he did everything in his power to make sure that Jews everywhere would be able to go to Israel. He fought with all his strength for Torah Judaism in Israel through the pages of The Jewish Press at a time when most people didn’t do so publicly.
I owe so much of the person I am today to my beloved Zaidie who lives on in my heart every single day.
Zaidie passed away on Yud Shevat, which is also the yahrzeit of two other holy rabbis, Rabbi Shalom Sharabi (a kabbalistic rabbi and scholar) and Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak of Lubavitch (one of the leaders of the Lubavitch dynasty). All three were tzaddikim.
Rest in peace, my beloved Zaidie.
Shlomo Greenwald
There was the public Rabbi Klass and the private Zaidie Sholom. To most people, Zaidie was the publisher and founder of The Jewish Press, and someone who spread Torah to hundreds of thousands.
Despite this public persona, and the demands that came with it, Zaidie was always Zaidie to me, my siblings and our cousins – a loving and warm grandfather who would rub his beard into your face for laughs.
The common thread between both the public person and the private one was Torah. This was how Zaidie most readily related to others – as a teacher and as a link in the mesorah.
I remember learning Gemara with Zaidie on Yom Kippur afternoons in the Homowack Hotel (Zaidie never left the shul during the break on Yom Kippur) and he would get such joy in simply being able to share his knowledge with me.
Whatever our topic, the discussions would invariably return to the three or four dozen of Zaidie’s favorite Gemaras – Gemaras Zaidie used to teach the masses in his lectures and in the pages of his newspaper; Gemaras upon which Zaidie had left his own personal imprint, at least in my mind.
The following are memories from some of Zaidie’s great-grandchildren
Raphael Fuchs
I have several memories of Zaidie that exemplify who he was to me. When I was growing up, Zaidie was the head of our family. He loved to learn and he was always citing Gemaras. The Torah guided his life and it was clear that it was of the utmost importance to him.