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wanted to be the star of any show. So why do the popular educational videos produced by his company, Torah Live, often feature Rabbi Roth going to the ends of the earth, literally, to bring Torah concepts to life for todays generation? The answer, he says, can be found in a commentary on Pirkei Avos that few people have read
by Yonoson Rosenblum photos Ouria Tadmor, Yitz Russek, Torah Live Archives

Rabbi Dan Roth insists that he never

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Were you very involved in theatricals in high school? I ask Rabbi Dan Roth, founder of Torah Live, as we sit late at night in his underground lair just outside Jerusalems Ramat Eshkol neighborhood. The room has the look of a fairly luxurious bunker, in which Rabbi Roth could hold out for several days, while completing one of his Torah Live videos. In addition to a shower, fridge, and treadmill (along with a pair of gym shoes indicating that it gets used), there is a long desk, with two computers, which serve as the command center from which the Torah Live production team is coordinated. Earlier in the week, I spent a couple of hours watching Rabbi Roth give a presentation on hilchos brachos, employing his full array of computer-generated visual aids, at Machon Yaakov, a yeshivah for mature baalei teshuvah. His enthusiasm was infectious and the energy level at top gauge throughout so much so that I considered my deduction about his thespian past to fall into the category of Elementary, my dear Watson. But Rabbi Roth looks puzzled by my question about his acting experience. The image I have of him as a student in Londons Hasmonean School is very far from his own memories of his youth. Actually, I was a painfully shy youngster, he tells me. My mother was a single parent after my parents divorce, and we were frequently invited out for Shabbos. I can remember being terrified to enter peoples homes, and often stayed outside for the entire meal.

out of the Box

TORAH ON LOCATION Rabbi Dan Roth will go anywhere for an authentic photo shoot. (L to R) To the Judean Desert for the filming of Sukkot: The Ultimate Shelter; lining up for kashrus questions; with Dr. Ari Greenspan at the Jerusalem Zoo

At 12, Roths mother bought him a first-generation home computer, and he quickly found solace for his loneliness in spending hours on the computer teaching himself computer languages from magazines. Eventually, I was spending so much time on the computer that my mother had to declare it off-limits. But the interest in computers did not abate. After completing A-levels, Roth won a place at Londons Imperial College, the rough British equivalent of MIT, to study computer science. He deferred admission, however, to learn at Yeshivat Kerem bYavneh in Israel. He was initially miserable, missing the creature comforts of his posh London home and his car. But by the end of the first year, he had caught the learning bug, and gave up his place in Imperial College. For the next 12 years, he learned in the Mirrer Yeshivah and in several kollels, with a primary focus on halachah. Until the age of 30, Dan was a fairly conventional yungerman, who had as yet given no indication of the dynamo he would become. He had still not found his calling in life, and felt himself drying up in his learning. Meanwhile, he faced continual familial pressure to get on with earning a living. He had always felt a particular attraction to Pirkei Avos, and began studying Avos intensively on Erev Shabbos and Motzaei Shabbos. He wanted to make Pirkei Avos the focus of his iyun (in-depth) learning, but hesitated to take such a radical step.

He assumed that he could make them His first class ended all such illusions
As he wavered about whether to remove himself from the familiar learning track, Roths then-neighbor Rabbi David Orlofsky gave him a piece of advice that would change his life. It says ben shloshim lkoach, Rabbi Orlofsky told him. That means that by the age of 30 a person should have gained enough knowledge of himself to know where he should focus his efforts. Only by doing so can he bring out his koach [strength]. Rabbi Orlofsky gave his younger friend a mashal based on one of his seminary students. That particular student held a black belt in karate, and she could break bricks with her bare hands. That power derived not from any superhuman strength, but from her ability to concentrate all her strength on one point. You need to do the same, was Rabbi Orlofskys final advice. a commentary in English. A hundred-page manuscript on the first two chapters was presented to his grandmother on the occasion of her 80th birthday at a gala family birthday party at Kibbutz Lavi. He had poured all his energy into the work, and felt that he had a concrete achievement to show for his efforts. That satisfaction, however, was short-lived. The pain is still evident as he relates the story to me. I had become close to Rabbi Reuven Leuchter, spending many hours together driving him to the center of the country, where he served as a mashgiach in a yeshivah. I offered him my manuscript, and eagerly awaited his response. When it came, I was devastated. You can do better, Rabbi Leuchter told me. You need to put yourself, your thoughts, into the work, not just translate and organize the commentaries of others. The verdict could not have been more painful given all the hopes and energies invested.

as enthusiastic about Avos as he was.

But, in retrospect, Roth sees it as the key to everything that came after. A constant theme that arises when one talks to Roth is that out of adversity often comes our greatest salvation indeed, that setbacks are often Hashems way of pointing us toward our mission in life. I became close to Rabbi Leuchter only because my daughters kindergarten put her on a tender they werent supposed to, and as a consequence I was both late and far from my intended route when I drove past a bus stop at which he was standing and offered him a ride. And Torah Live exists today only because of his scathing criticism of my manuscript. As painful as Rabbi Leuchters critique was, Dan accepted it. He spent the next two years writing his own commentary on Avos, with the goal of demonstrating the timeless relevance of Chazals wisdom. The result was appropriately named: Relevance: Pirkei Avos for the Twenty-First Century.

Avos and Adversity Dan spent the next year learning Pirkei Avos and writing
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When you share your plans with others and they brush them aside,

On the contrary, realize thats the best sign that you have found your

dont lose heart.

unique mission in life

MINDSET FOR THE 21ST CENTURY Rabbi Roth taught himself six sophisticated computer programs, scriptwriting, photography, and acting to make his videos relevant

He sums up the key lesson learned from throwing out his original manuscript and beginning anew: The commentaries are there to guide us and protect us from misreadings and uninformed interpretations. But the words of our Sages only become part of us when we have pondered and grappled with them ourselves, and applied their insights in the context of our own lives. The publication of Relevance did not silence his familys demands for him to take up a profession. And as can happen with any major project, Dan experienced a letdown after its completion and a nagging question about what to do for an encore. Rabbi Leuchter provided the crucial clue: Analyze what you learned about yourself while writing your sefer. Take time to think about what character traits you discovered. Dan thought about that question a lot. I discovered that I had a gift for presenting deep Torah ideas in a way that was accessible to a wider public, without dumbing them down. I also discovered that I had a capacity for teaching myself new skills, and that I enjoyed doing so. Though I had gotten top marks on all my Alevels, they were all in mathematically oriented subjects. I had never concentrated on writing. To write Relevance, I studied the classic works on style, such as Strunk and White and The Chicago Manual of Style. And finally, I found out that I enjoyed researching a topic from every possible point of view. He began teaching a class for at-risk teenagers at Ohr Somayach. He assumed that he could make them as enthusiastic about Avos as he was. His first class ended all such illusions. He could not get the students to pay attention, much less show enthusiasm for the material. To reach his students, Dan decided that he had to find subjects that were of interest to them, not just to him. And more important, that he had to find a way to do so in the idiom of 21st-century teenagers, with attention spans of about five seconds, and whose preferred method of absorbing information is visual. He confided to the head of the Ohr Somayach program that he was going to use his longdormant computer skills and modern technology to create a contemporary multimedia

presentation. The initial reception was skeptical, even dismissive. But buoyed by his ability to recover from Rabbi Leuchters initial criticism, Dan was not discouraged this time. Indeed, the negative reaction gave him a deep insight into the process of self-discovery: Have you ever had an exciting new idea you felt passionately about, only to have it knocked down by a friend who said it will never work? Naturally, the friend is not going to feel as strongly as you do its not his life calling. When you share your plans with others and they brush them aside, dont lose heart. On the contrary, realize thats the best sign that you have found your unique mission in life. The very fact that you feel so strongly and others are unmoved is an indicator that this task belongs davka to you. The need for each person to discover what is special about him, and thereby what is his unique mission in life, is central to Roths worldview. He provided me with pages of citations from contemporary Torah thinkers Rav Shlomo Wolbe, Rav Shimshon Pincus, Rav Nosson Wachtfogel (quoting advice he personally received from the Chofetz Chaim) discussing this topic. Among the quotations he shared was one from my biography of Reb Shraga Feivel Mendlowitz. Every person in the world, Reb Shraga Feivel taught, senses an obligation to fulfill the special task for which he was created. That sense of calling may have no logical explanation and be incapable of verbal expression, but it gives a person no rest. Just as animals instinctively do that for which they were created, so too, man is instinctively driven to fulfill his task.

Money Talks Shortly after his nightmarish first class at Ohr Somayach, Rabbi Roth decided to produce a video entitled Wealth, which focused on the mitzvah of maaser kesafim. Money and how to get it, he reasoned, was one topic that interested all his students. And maaser kesafim, which Chazal describe as a key to gaining wealth, provided the link to Torah. (In truth, the video dealt much more with how to live without the constant desire for more, and

without resentment and jealousy of those with greater material possessions.) Dan started with no budget and no production team other than himself. As a consequence, he had to learn either through books or online seminars six sophisticated computer programs and such skills as scriptwriting, photography, and public speaking/acting to put together a polished video. Though a debut production, viewers didnt notice. Rabbi Roths students paid attention, just as he hoped they would, and eagerly participated in a game he had invented for the video, in which viewers had to decide whether different forms of income were subject to maaser kesafim or not. Comments like cool how you put the visuals and the talking together (from a student at Neve Yerushalayim) convinced Roth that he had hit pay dirt. Over the past five years, 13 more Torah Live videos have appeared, and the production team has expanded to its current ten. Some of the videos dealt with middos, like Anger; some with little-studied areas of halachah, like Tevilas Keilim, Yichud, Mezuza, Charity (including Rav Yitzchak Berkovits answering 30 commonly asked sheilos); some with highly complex areas of halachah, in which visual aids can do a great deal to clarify: Brachos, Kashrus, the Four Species; and others with the cycle of the Jewish year from both a halachic and hashkafic point of view Shabbos, Chanuka, Sukkos. The latest Torah Live production, Megillas Esther, was produced at breakneck speed prior to Purim, after a rabbi in kiruv approached Rabbi Roth with the suggestion that he produce an illustrated Megillah to be shown on a screen during the leining. Rabbi Roth turned to his posek, Rav Berkovits, for his opinion. The latter noted that keeping the congregation attentive for the entire reading has been an age-old concern, as reflected in the custom of producing beautifully illustrated megillos, and the problem has only become greater today, when many beginners cannot either read or understand the Hebrew text. In a haskamah, seconded by Rav Yisroel Reisman in similar language, Rav Berkovits writes that the Stunning Megillah, comprised of 167 slides, each with a verse in both Hebrew and English, and

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to go to any length for an arresting visual. The

An inside lane with Rav Yitzchak Berkovits. Im giving you the time because I think what youre doing is so important
42 accompanying illustrations, would succeed in helping so many who would otherwise find it difficult if not impossible to fulfill the mitzvah of Kriyas Megillah. Three more videos are currently in various stages of production on jealousy, social responsibility, and the Jewish contribution to employer and employee relationships. The latter is of special meaning to Dan, as it has been dedicated by his family to his zeideh, Chaim Schreiber. Schreiber at one time owned the largest furniture manufacturing company in Great Britain, with 8,500 employees, and was an iconoclast in the field of labor relations. He abolished all time clocks in his factories, decreed that workers should receive extra pay for holidays, when they would need more cash, and canceled a stock issue when the government refused to allow him to give shares to all his workers, on the grounds that it constituted a prohibited pay increase during a governmentimposed wage freeze. The BBC devoted a half hour to a documentary on his unique approach to labor relations. The ability to hearken to a different drummer is one that Dan appears to have inherited from his grandfather. The Torah Live videos have proven to be a dvar shaveh lkol nefesh. Talmidim in Mirrer Yeshivah and yeshivahleit in training courses for future mechanchim have been as excited by them perhaps more so because they have some sense of what is involved in the selection and presentation of material as those with little or no background. Rabbi Roths ability to always find an exciting manner to present complex material works for Jews at all levels. So far Roth has presented the videos to audiences in over 50 cities worldwide, and various Torah Live presentations have already been translated into French, Spanish, Hebrew, and Russian. One of the keys to the success of the Torah Live presentations is the insistence on stateof-the-art production values. As one of those at the Brachos presentation at Machon Yaakov put it, It was refreshing to see a presentation using contemporary images and video, rather than the usual heimish photography and artwork, which most baalei teshuvah cant relate to or see as poorly produced, which causes them to quickly question the authenticity of the content as well.

Roth is ready and willing

A New Toolbox for the Classroom Roth is ready and willing to go to

any length for an arresting visual. The Torah Live website, for instance, contains an amusing clip of him sinking underwater, astride a camel, for the video on tevilas keilim (immersion of utensils). In response to a question as to the most difficult visual he has ever filmed, Dan whips out his ever-present laptop and shows me a video clip of himself and his production team schlepping a prefabricated succah into the Judean desert to gain a sense of the barren and howling wilderness in which Klal Yisrael were sheltered by the Clouds of Glory. But the content is not subverted to the visuals: the latter are meant to enhance and clarify the content, and to hold the

Torah Live website, for instance, contains an amusing clip of him sinking underwater, astride a camel, for the video on tevilas keilim

Roth must battle with everyone else for precious minutes with Rav Berkovits, he at least has an inside lane. But he always tells me, Dont think Im giving you extra time as a personal favor to you. Im giving you the time because I think what youre doing is so important. In a written haskamah, Rav Berkovits adds, Hashem created technology and gave us the talent to use it for the sake of getting Klal Yisrael to be motivated to learn, understand, and get clarity. Baruch Hashem, the medium has been used correctly, properly, and very, very effectively. Only after the preparatory notebooks are filled Roth shows me several running to hundreds of pages and he has decided what aspects of a topic he wants to tackle in the upcoming video, does Dan involve the rest of the production team. Because he had to learn every step of the production process in Torah Lives early days, he is able to communicate to each member of the team in the language of his specialty. Rarely do the team

members have any face-to-face contact. The whole process is overseen from the computer in Roths underground bunker. A great mechanech might come into contact with a few thousand students over a 40-year career. The beauty of the Torah Live videos is that each one can be used in thousands of classrooms around the world year after year. And each presentation can be individually adjusted to the needs of the particular audience. Far from displacing the classroom teacher, the Torah Live video provides the classroom teacher with a powerful new tool. Of course, many mechanchim, especially those of the pre-computer generation, will hesitate before attempting an interactive computergenerated presentation. If they wish, they can simply use the video with Rabbi Roth doing the presentation. But each video licensed to a school comes not only with a full-sized book with sources for the content of the video, but with a separate operators manual to teach mechanchim

how to individualize the presentation to suit their needs and classroom. (Technical writing is just another one of the skills Roth had to acquire.) Rabbi Roths dream is to see the Torah Live videos being used by every Orthodox school and kiruv organization in the world. To that end, Roth has had to don two new hats: salesman and fundraiser. He has accepted both with the same relish that he puts into making the videos, and travels frequently to the United States, Britain, and soon to South Africa to give presentations and demonstrate the potential of Torah Live to an ever-widening circle of users across the entire Orthodox spectrum. Rabbi Dan Roth is clearly one of those people who has discovered his mission in life. And while it gives him no rest, it has filled his life with a sense of purpose. That was the enthusiasm that I sensed so strongly watching him deliver a shiur the first time: a Jew doing what he feels he was created to do.

attention of the audience. I tried learning hilchos brachos from Shulchan Aruch. I tried learning from Mishnah Berurah. But neither gave me the clarity for practical application that the Torah Live lecture did, commented one Mirrer Yeshivah student. Long before the first visual effect has been conceived, Dan has accumulated hundreds of pages of material touching on a topic. Dozens of halachic questions have been brought to Rav Yitzchak Berkovits for resolution. Though

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