The news of the passing of Rabbi Nota Schiller hit me hard.
I really admired the Rosh Yeshiva of Yeshivas Ohr Someach. As one of the founders of the baal teshuva movement in the 1960s, he affected many future generations. I saw many just in the Detroit community. I recall the first time I met him, when he came to Detroit on a fundraising mission.
He came to the kollel shul one morning and I was one of the first people there. He asked where he could sit and mentioned that he didn’t want to take anyone’s seat. I told him that I sit in the very last row of the bleachers near right field. He said that was good enough for him as he spent a lot of time in the bleachers as a youngster.
Rabbi Schiller sat next to me and after davening I mentioned that I assumed he spent a lot of time in Brooklyn’s cozy Ebbets Field on Bedford Avenue watching Jackie Robinson, Pee Wee Reese, Duke Snide, a young Sandy Koufax, and the rest of the Brooklyn Dodgers before the franchise moved to Los Angeles after the 1957 season.
He knew as much as I did, maybe even more. I told him we are probably the only ones in Detroit who know the first name of New York Giants first baseman Whitey Lockman in 1951. “Carroll,” he answered immediately. “Spelled with two ‘r’s and two ‘l’s.” From then on, we had a special connection. I’d like to think we were baseball chavrusas.
A few years later a student from his yeshiva came back with special regards from him and added. “Rabbi Schiller liked to play baseball with us,” the student added. “He was a better hitter than we were.”
