Rabbi Mordechai Yosef Scher, ztz”l

Rabbi Mordechai Yosef Scher, ztz”l, a Beyond BT contributor, was niftar on the second day of Marcheshvan, October 22, 2017.

Mordechai Yosef Scher was born and raised in Stamford, CT. He moved to Israel shortly after finishing high school. He was educated in some of Israel’s best known Religious Zionist institutions, notably Machon Meir, Yeshivat Mercaz Harav Kook, the Shaal program of Yeshivat Shaalvim, and the Midrasha Gevoha.

Rabbi Scher served in the Israel Defense Forces as an infantry soldier and combat medical specialist.

Rabbi Scher was certified as a sofer (scribe) by Rav Shmuel Wozner of B’nei Brak. He was certified to examine and decide on the work of scribes by Rav Mordechai Friedlander. He was certified in the laws of kiddushin and testimony by Dayan Ezra Batzri. He was ordained for the rabbinate by Rav Shear Yeshuv Cohen (Chief Rabbi of Haifa), Rav Uzi Kalcheim of blessed memory, Rav Gershon Binet, and Rav Zalman Nehemia Goldberg of the kollel dayanim at the Midrasha Gevoha. He held Master Teacher certification from Yeshivat Shaalvim.

Rabbi Scher held a BSc in Health Sciences, a BSN in Nursing, and was board certified as a flight paramedic (FP-C). He worked part-time as a flight nurse/flight paramedic at Med Flight Air Ambulance. He also worked as an Emergency Department nurse, a rural paramedic, and a wilderness search team paramedic.

He was among the founding members of Atalaya Search and Rescue team of Santa Fe, and was a search dog handler with Mountain Canine Corps of Los Alamos. Rabbi Scher has taught and served in the rabbinate in the Jewish communities of Jerusalem, Israel; Houston, TX; Vancouver, BC; Worcester and Boston, MA and Sante Fe, NM. (adapted from the RCA website).

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Here is an excerpt from the Eulogies for Rabbi Scher:

Rabbi Scher was not someone who wanted to be in the spotlight. He did not seek to be a leader. His greatest joy was to sit in the Beit Midrash and learn in the traditional ways that Jews have learned for millennium, and to have anyone who wanted to learn HaShem’s Torah to sit with him, and learn. To start at the beginning of something, and work through it as it was meant to be learned, until they got to the end. And then to move on to the next thing.
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Rabbi Scher was fundamentally a teacher. The halacha states that a person should not eat or sleep in a Beit Midrash, except for a Torah scholar and his students, “because the Beit HaMidrash is his home.” (SA O”Ch 151:1, MB 8) Rabbi Scher was definitely someone for whom the Beit Midrash was home. He learned for many years in Merkaz HaRav, the yeshiva of Rav Kook, in Jerusalem. When it came time to take a teaching position he only sat for a smicha exam because his colleagues told him he needed it for getting a job as a teacher. Although he far exceeded the knowledge needed to be a shul Rav, he never wanted to be treated as such. I don’t know that he ever quite forgave me for insisting on calling him “Rabbi,” but I felt obligated to do so out of respect for his Torah.

We all saw how much he loved to teach, how much he loved being in an environment of Torah learning. When we had, for several years, students from YU who came to join the congregation for Rosh HaShanah, he had such joy in just being in the presence of people who cared about Torah, and reminiscing with them about their Rabbis when they learned in Yeshiva.
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Here is a link to the posts that Rabbi Scher contributed to Beyond BT. May his Neshama have an Aliyah.