Rabbi Aryeh Lebowitz

Even in the 1950s or 40s, whenever Moshe wrote this Shuvah, I think it was the 50s, there were millions of people living in Manhattan.

And he said the raya that they don't have to be walking through the street is, we learn the number 600,000 from the Midbar.

In the Midbar, that was how many people it was.

Now, it's true, that's how many men between the age of 20 and 60 it was.

But we learn the halacha based on what is explicit in the Chumash, not based on our models of how many people there must have been using that population as a starting point.

So anyway, this became a major issue.

A lot of people disagreed with Rav Moshe and even published responses to Rav Moshe's

It's Rav Moshe's tshuva.

Rav Moshe wrote a long tshuva.

It's fascinating.

The tshuva is dated Erev Shavuos, and he closes the tshuva by wishing everyone a Chag Sameach, which, like, you know, I don't know what you do in Erev Shavuos, but, like, Rav Moshe is dealing with one of the most complicated suggers in Halacha and writing this long, long tshuva on Erev Shavuos.

I don't know if he composed the entire tshuva on Erev Shavuos or not, but either way, it's fairly impressive work.

that, you know, that Rav Moshe did that.

Meaning, you know, I was just talking to the Talmudim the other day and they said, you know, some of the stories about Gadolim in their biographies are a little off-putting, you know, like they say, you know, this Gadol was so busy learning that he forgot to get his wife a tea when she was sick or something like that.

You know, things that like, come on, you know, take care.

And my response was that...

Gadolim of a particular stature live in a different way, and the understanding of what their life is going to be like is entirely different.

Meaning, when a person gets married to someone like that, they know exactly the kind of life that they're signing up for, and it is what they want.

It's what they actually desire.

I was once talking to a grandchild of Rav Moshe,