R’ Shlomo Zalman Auerbach’s Trial Shiur at Kol Torah
At the very beginning of his trial shiur in Kol Torah, R’ Shlomo Zalman Auerbach was asked a kashya. He thought for a moment and said, “טעיתי” — “I was mistaken.” That moment, R’ Yonah Merzbach later said, showed that he was fit to lead the yeshiva.
When R’ Shlomo Zalman Auerbach was appointed to stand at the head of Yeshivas Kol Torah, after the petirah of R’ Yechiel Michel Schlesinger, the hanhala of the yeshiva invited him to deliver a shiur hikarus — an introductory shiur.
At the very beginning of the shiur, R’ Yonah Merzbach asked a kashya on what R’ Shlomo Zalman had said.
R’ Shlomo Zalman thought for a moment. Then, in front of everyone, he said simply: “טעיתי” — “I was mistaken.”
He then continued the shiur in a different direction.
When R’ Shlomo Zalman returned home, the Rebbetzin asked him how the shiur had gone.
“I presumably failed,” he answered. “Right at the beginning of the shiur, I made a mistake.”
But that was not how R’ Yonah Merzbach saw it. He later related that precisely when R’ Shlomo Zalman said “I was mistaken,” he decided in his heart that R’ Shlomo Zalman was worthy of standing at the head of the yeshiva. A person who could admit the truth so readily, even during a trial shiur, was fit to be a Rosh Yeshiva.
Years later, R’ Shlomo Zalman told the story to his talmid, R’ Yehuda Ades, and added: “I had three ways to answer R’ Yonah’s kashya, but at that moment I felt that he was truly right.”
For R’ Shlomo Zalman, the point was not to win the exchange. The point was the truth.