Levaya will be held Sunday 2:00 pm at Mesivta Tiferes Yerushalayim MTJ in New York City
Matzav- It is with great sadness that Matzav.com reports the petirah of Rav Nota Greenblatt zt”l, av bais din of Memphis, TN and noted rov and posek. He was 96 years old.
Rav Greenblatt was born in 1925 in Washington, DC. In 1928, his parents moved to Ellenville, NY, where his father, Rav Yitzchok, a native of Brisk, became the rov of the shul. Rav Yitzchok then became a shul rov in Newark, which had a large Jewish community. Rav Yitzchok was not only a talmid chochom who wrote seforim, but was also a maggid, traveling around and speaking. In 1943, Rav Yitzchok started the first day school in Newark, which was the second religious day school to open in New Jersey.
Rav Nota Greenblatt was born in Washington, but spent the years age 8 to age 12 in Israel. He returned to the US by himself at the age of 12 in 1937 to study under Rav Dovid Leibowitz at Yeshiva Chofetz Chaim on South 9th Street in Williamsburg. The mashgiach of the yeshiva was Rav Chaim Pinchos Scheinberg. Rav Greenblatt learned with bochurim who were much older than him and was able to hold his own due to his in-depth, Yerushalmi chinuch. He spoke a fluent Yiddish, which helped him become close to Rav Dovid. Rav Dovid told him, “If you’re sincere and you know where you want to go in life and have a plan, you’ll never fail. You will always succeed.”
Rav Dovid passed away in 1941 and Rav Greenblatt decided to join a private kibbutz organized by Rav Yoshe Ber Soloveitchik and his cousin, Rav Michel Feinstein, in Boston. Rav Greenblatt was the youngest in the kibbutz, only 16 years old.
After a year, the kibbutz broke up. Rav Michel Feinstein went back to New York and became a rosh yeshiva at his uncle Rav Moshe Feinstein’s yeshiva. In 1942-3, Rav Greenblatt joined Rav Moshe Feinstein’s yeshiva, Mesivta Tiferes Yerushalayim, and became one of a small group of his prized talmidim. Rav Greenblatt was close throughout his life with Rav Michel and Rav Moshe.
In those years, when a phone call came for Rav Moshe, a yeshiva bochur would answer it. If the question was simple, the bochur would answer it, and if it was difficult, he would pass the phone to Rav Moshe. Rav Greenblatt fielded the phone for the three years he was there.
In 1946, Rav Greenblatt took the first boat allowed by the US government to travel to Palestine after the war. It was packed with hundreds of meshulachim who had been stranded in the US during the war. The boat stopped at the Azor islands, 1,500 miles west of Portugal. Rav Greenblatt got off and decided to take a look around and see if there were any Jews there. He asked around and a priest took him to a forest, where he saw a store with a sign “Goldberg’s Jewelry.” He went in, met a native girl, and asked her where Goldberg is. She pointed to the back. Rav Greenblatt went to the back, opened the door, and saw a Yid with a black Litvishe-style yarmulka sitting and learning Mishnayos while his wife stood nearby. Rav Greenblatt told him, “Shalom aleichem!”
Goldberg became excited. “You speak Yiddish?”
“Yes.”
Goldberg hugged and kissed Rav Greenblatt. He was the first Yid he had seen in 5-6 years. Goldberg had come from Kovno on one of the last boats to Palestine. When the war broke out and it was too dangerous to continue traveling, the Azor islands took in the travelers and he was stuck there for five years. Now he was waiting to get approval to go to Palestine, but a whole year had passed without the longed-for certificate arriving.
He told Rav Greenblatt that he hadn’t eaten a piece of kosher meat in five years. Rav Greenblatt offered him a kosher salami sandwich and the man’s eyes lit up. When Rav Greenblatt asked him what he had eaten all these years, the man told him, “Seeds and grass, like the birds.” A year or two later, the Goldbergs finally made it to Eretz Yisroel.
In Eretz Yisroel, in 1946, Rav Greenblatt studied with Rav Michel Feinstein. Rav Greenblatt studied for two years in Chevron and was a chavrusah of Rav Aharon Cohen, later rosh yeshiva of Chevron. Once, during the seder, Rav Greenblatt heard something while learning that aggravated him and he stamped his foot and made a hole in the floor. The yeshiva decided not to repair it, because, they said, “This is how you should learn Torah — that you get so excited that you even make a hole in the floor.”
Rav Greenblatt came back to the US in 1948 because his father was sick. In 1949, when his father felt better, Rav Greenblatt saw an ad in a Jewish paper looking for an assistant rabbi and a Talmud Torah rebbi in Memphis, Tennessee. His father encouraged him to take it. Rav Greenblatt spent the next few years until his father’s petirah going back and forth between Memphis and New York.
When Rav Greenblatt visited Rav Moshe to ask his advice about the position, Rav Moshe encouraged him to take it and wrote him a semicha as he walked out the door. Rav Binyomin Kamenetzky, who went on to open Yeshiva of South Shore, drove him to the train in February 1949. It took a day and a half to reach Memphis by train.
The shul was called Anshe Sfard and members of the congregation were Jews who were born in Memphis. The only Jewish education in town was the Talmud Torah run by Rav Stampfer.
While Rav Greenblatt started out teaching in the Talmud Torah, his long-term goal was to replace the Talmud Torah with a serious Torah day school. Six months later, he started the Memphis Hebrew Academy with the help of others. It was the largest opening at the time that a day school ever had – 34 students. Rav Nachum Lansky, a rosh yeshiva in Ner Yisroel, was in that first class. Read full report on MATZAV
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