Rabbi Ezra Labaton Z"L: Torahim Derech Eres

“…[I]n 1982 the Man of the Year in the community of West Deal, New Jersey was Rabbi Ezra Labaton.  In August of that year, Rabbi Labaton was invited to become the full-time spiritual leader of Congregation Magen David of West Deal.   Thirty years later, Rabbi Labaton remains a beacon not only to his congregants, but to the entire Syrian-Sephardic community.

Born and raised in Brooklyn, Rabbi Labaton attended elementary school at Magen David Yeshiva and high school at Flatbush Yeshiva.  He studied under Hakham Baruch Ben Haim, z”l, as a young man before going on to get his semiha from Yeshiva University.  It was there that he studied under the renown Rabbi Joseph Ber Soloveitchik, z”l, (the “Rav”), whose teachings have guided Rabbi Labaton throughout his tenure.

His experience, rooted in our Halabi traditions yet steeped in the rigorous method of one of the greatest Torah scholars of the past century, has enabled Rabbi Labaton to relate to his students the essential values of the Torah in his own singular way. Not only does he reveal to us the warmth and beauty of the misvot, but at the same time he makes obvious the Torah’s relevancy and practicality in dealing with the challenges of our daily life.    In so doing he marshals the tools of history, science and philosophy as no other scholar in our community can.

Yet neither his vast knowledge nor his skill at communication are his greatest asset.   Rather his greatest strengths are his humility, his sincerity, his compassion, his courage and his determination to do the right thing.   Though able to quote chapter and verse about the Divine imperative to perform sedaka u’mishpat–justice and righteousness—Rabbi Labaton’s most compelling argument for living a life true to these ideals is the way in which he conducts his own.

From the outset, Rabbi Labaton has demonstrated a care and concern for others and has encouraged his students to bring their Torah to others in a way that will positively impact their lives.  Through healthy times and through an illness that would have devastated those with less faith and self-discipline, he has persisted; leading minyan every morning and afternoon when he is not in treatment, giving numerous classes each week both day and night and focusing our energies every Shabbat with his sermons and derashot.  All of this energy, all of this commitment is delivered with a smile and a kind word, as if he had not a personal care in the world.        If that is not enough, in another month or so he will be defending his doctoral thesis on his way, b’ezrat Hashem, to a PhD.

He is truly a marvel and for over thirty years has been an inspiration to thousands of people, who have incorporated into their own lives lessons learned not only by attending his lectures and classes, but simply by observing him.”

Fewer than eighteen months ago I wrote those words on behalf of Congregation Magen David of West Deal for an Image article announcing the then upcoming dedication of a Sefer Torah in Rabbi Labaton’s memory.   That dedication, which took place last summer, was the culmination not only of an incredible career, but of an incredible life.  Less than six months later, on the eighth day of Hanukkah, we lost our Rabbi, our teacher, our confidante and our friend.

I have so many memories of Rabbi Labaton.  He presided at my wedding, the brisses of my three boys, a pidyon, two bar misvahs, the shivah of my father and numerous Torah classes in our home.   We met countless times during my service as an Executive Committee member and later President of the synagogue.  However, the memories that stand out most for me were the conversations that we had upon his arrival to the shul in 1982.

At that time I had just finished my freshman year at Rutgers University.   As a young man then dorming at university, I was meeting new people, learning new things and encountering new ideas.  I was getting ready to take on the world.

Yet at that time it was not at all clear how these new experiences, or my ability to navigate them, would or could correlate with my prior religious instruction or social life.    As there was no community yeshivah high school in Deal at that time, my parents engaged one of my elementary school rabbis to tutor me a couple of times a week, while I attended public high school in Ocean Township.

While certainly I had been through the humash, and parts of the ne’biim, as well as a fair bit of Talmud, my religious studies to this point had been taken in a realm separate and apart from the literature, mathematics and science I was learning.

Socially, I had managed to maintain my identity as a Syrian Jew in a non-Jewish and sometimes hostile high school environment.  College, though, was a whole new ballgame. To succeed in college seemed to require me to question, to consider, to be open to different perspectives and points of view.  How could one learn otherwise?

My questions, then, came fast and furious.  Not only did he have answers, he showed me where they came from—from our Torah and from our tradition.   Furthermore, not only did he show me where the answers came from, unlike any rabbi I had previously encountered, he encouraged me to ask more questions.

In fact, I remember the day when I told him I wanted to learn more.  He asked me to hold out my hands and he loaded me up with a half-dozen books on Jewish history and philosophy.  In giving me these books, the Rabbi was at once showing me that there was a whole lot more to limud torah than I had been shown and also that it was there for me to acquire if I could just make the effort.

The first great lesson that I learned from Rabbi Labaton, then, was to be proud of my Jewish inheritance, to be proud of my Torah.  It could stand up to any intellectual challenge and I should not cede any ground to those intellectuals—or rabbis– who argued to the contrary.   Rather, the Almighty had given us Torat Emet—and the search for Torah was the search for truth—they were one and the same.

So it was that as an ambitious and enthusiastic college student living on campus, the highlight of my week was always Shabbat.  And not just for my mother’s delicious rub’at and potatoes—though that certainly didn’t hurt—but for Rabbi Labaton’s weekly class on the Parasha.   Learning with the Rabbi was what sustained me and gave me the courage to pursue my career and to pursue my dreams.   After learning with the Rabbi I understood that those pursuits need not put my heritage at risk, but that the study of Torah, integrated with those pursuits, would enable my success.  Now as my eldest son Albert approaches college, I impart to him the same lesson.

As so many of Rabbi Labaton’s students do the same, his teachings will no doubt continue into the next generation and beyond.   May this be a great comfort to his family and to all of those whom he has so greatly inspired.

By Michael A. Mishaan