We all have our eye-opening mundane favorites in the earthly garden of ocular delights that we inhabit (two of my eyeful trifles — since you asked — are, from the Canadian Rockies and South Africa, respectively, a lake and an actress:  the lovely Louise and the charming Charlize).

Yet if you lend your ears to the spiritual side of things (audition being the forerunner of cognition), no less stunningly stimulating pleasure is yours to favor — and savor.  I stress Aears because of the subject of my weekly byline in this flyer for the coming year (beginning with the beginning of the Torah), with the help of God and the Blums:  Oznaim LaTorah (literally, Aears to the Torah, the magnum opus of Rabbi Zalman Zorotzkin (1881-1966).

My column will focus on one (or more) of Rabbi Sorotzkin’s incisive insights on that Shabbat morning’s parsha reading and will be called (reflecting my genuinely joyful immersion in his magisterial commentary on the Torah for most of my adult life) AUp to My Ears in Oznaim LaTorah. (On the major subject of the necessary nexus between the just-mentioned happiness and spirituality, I heartily — and soulfully — recommend Rabbi Dr. Abraham Twerski’s Happiness and the Human Spirit.)

By way of a bare-bones bio, I’ll note that Rabbi Sorotzkin was also known as the ALutzker Rav, since he served as the rabbi of Lutsk, Poland (in addition to serving in Lithuania, where he was born, and — having fled World War II to Israel — as vice chairman of the Agudath Israel and, in 1953, as head of the Chinuch Atzmai).

What I hope to flesh out and body forth in the forthcoming months is the spark that drew me (like a moth), with breathless avidity, to the flame of Sorotzkin’s sui generis genius (I think here of Voltaire’s ALanguage is very difficult to put into words, but I shall try): an irresistible style that boasts the elegance of supple and resonant prose, leavened with wit, while flourishing (in every sense) a captivating lesson for us with thrilling, tonic simplicity (and often brevity — which makes the top-drawer message all the more persuasively powerful!).

To encapsulate, in a word, Sorotzkin’s knockout hallmark (earmark?), it would have to be, for me, originality.  Bernard Baruch once observed: AMillions saw the apple fall, but Newton was the one who asked why. Likewise, the legion of commentators, discerning and wise, otherwise fall somewhat short (in my avowedly shortsighted view) when it comes to the core whys and becauses from the apple-of-my-eye, my Newton, whose approach is new and whose gravity of inspiration weighs a ton.  Rabbi Sorotzkin’s appealing and revealing golden apple — and crisp commentary — so often fall far from the other trees of knowledge in the heavenly garden we also inhabit.

 My lofty goal: to attempt to transmit to you, translationally (Sorotzkin’s Hebrew is sublime), a whiff of his incomparable innovativeness.  My toughest task:  to choose among favorites.

For eighteen years of his life, Rav Sorotzkin served as rabbi in a shtetl called Zhetel, the birthplace of the Chofetz Chaim, who would affectionately refer to him as Amy rav.

Mine and (possibly after he has your ear) yours, as well.

Rabbi Lyle Kamlet