No, there is no Topper Rov. This title was however an affectionate appellation and a play on words based on phonetic similarity with the surname Toperoff.
Rabbis come and rabbis go. Some make a name that resounds
through the ages, while others are little noticed and soon forgotten. I doubt
that many readers of this post will have heard of Rabbi Shlomo Pesach Toperoff,
but I hope that they will not object if I write a few words about him.
R’ Toperoff was a pulpit rabbi in North East England. While Gateshead is famously known as a leading contemporary powerhouse of Torah scholarship, numerous other communities existed during the past century. These included Sunderland, where R’ Toperoff served as the minister of the Ryhope Road shul from 1934 to 1951, and Newcastle upon Tyne, where he held various positions before he made Aliyah in 1973. A son-in-law of the saintly scholar Rabbi Tzvi Ferber (author of Higionei Avot), he wrote in his retirement an English-language commentary on Avot which he entitled Lev Avot: A comprehensive commentary on the Ethics of the Fathers.
In the Foreword to Lev Avot, the then Chief Rabbi Sir
Immanuel Jakobovits welcomed it with the comment that “The literary output of
Anglo-Jewish Rabbis is none too prolific” [this book was published in 1984, six
years before Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks was to rectify this situation virtually
single-handed with the first of his remarkably popular series of books and
writings].
The style of the book may strike the modern reader as being often somewhat stilted, formal and non-colloquial, as if to echo the solemnity of the Soncino Chumash and the Authorised Prayer Book that were popular in the United Kingdom in the pre-ArtScroll era. Given its slightly archaic flavour, I was surprised to discover that it was reprinted in the United States as late as 1997 under the same title but with the word Lev omitted. I do not know whether anyone apart from me has ever read it; nor have I ever seen any mention made of it in either popular or scholarly writings. If any reader has information to the contrary, I am eager to receive it.
Lev Avot is a strange book. Explaining each mishnah
and baraita, R’ Toperoff draws on sources as varied as the Babylonian Talmud,
the works of the Me’iri, the Rashba, Rabbenu Yonah, Rav Kook and occasionally
Graetz, as well as numerous authors unknown to me, who are referenced solely by
their surnames (Lev Avot lacks both footnotes and a bibliography). In
each instance the commentary is rounded off with text described as ‘Hasidic
Lore’. This feature is quite perplexing, since it is often difficult or even
impossible to relate the relevant Chasidic tale to the mishnah or baraita in
question. My feeling is that the book would have read better and been far more
useful to its readership if the ‘Hasidic Lore’ component was either enlarged
and made more relevant to Avot or simply omitted.
The commentary section is interesting as an historical
perspective on Jewish life in post-War Britain. The author deprecates the
downward trend in public morality and the decline in quality of Jewish
education in the absence of Jewish schools. He also offers some highly personal
and occasionally original insights into the mishnayot and baraitot of Avot
which I hope to mention in future posts.
By the way, when I found my copy of Lev Avot in a small
store dedicated to the sale of second-hand and unwanted books and articles to
raise money for the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, it
was in perfect condition—but for the fact that someone had brutally ripped out from
it a leaf upon which were printed pages 27 and 28. I should love to know what
this gentle and mildly-spoken rabbi might have written that would have
attracted the ire of the book’s original owner. Once again, if any reader can
enlighten me, I shall be most grateful.
***** ***** *****
***** ***** *****
Like rabbis, commentaries on Pirkei Avot come and go. Some
are remembered, others sink without trace. But if R’ Toperoff is to be remembered
for only one thing in his life, it should be for this.
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