Closeness To Hashem - How To Be Close to God

Rabbi Jacob Ades - a great scholar who is well versed in all parts of the Torah. His special personality crosses sectors in the Israeli public and he is admired and appreciated by everyone. This is how he can be seen teaching lessons to Lithuanian scholars at the Chazon Ish Kollel in Bnei Brak, or to the Sephardim at the Musayouf Synagogue in Jerusalem, or at the rabbinic center yeshiva for the national religious public, or in a pep talk for a secular public and another priest... with Rabbi Adas always adapting himself to the type of audience present.

Rabbi Yaakov was born in the Beit Vagan neighborhood in Jerusalem. A member of an important and respected family of rabbis. His father is the Gaon Rabbi Yehuda Adas Shalita Rosh Yeshiva "Kol Ya'akov". His grandfather, who is named after him, is Rabbi Yaakov Adas ztzel, the judge of the Great Rabbinical Court and a member of the Chief Rabbinate Council, one of the leaders of Yeshiva Port Yosef. His great-grandfather is Rabbi Avraham Haim Adas, a Kabbalist of God, holy and a master of miracles, the rabbi of Rabbi Ezra Atiya, the head of the Porat Yosef Yeshiva, who established the Sephardic Torah greats and from there the Torah went out to the whole world. His mother's father is Rabbi Dov Cohen who was the first military rabbi of the Air Force. His mother's great-grandfather is Simcha Mandelboim. And from there his lineage goes all the way back to Rabbi Nachman of Breslav, the grandson of the Baal Shem Tov and above in the Holy of Holies to David the King PBUH.

From his childhood he was revealed as a child prodigy. When he was about two years old, he already knew how to read. He simply skipped the stage of learning the letters of the 5th - 1st 2nd, and started reading with the teacher word for word from "Bereshith" to "and he could" and then the boy said that from then on he would read alone, and so it was. On the advice of Rabbi Gershaz Auerbach, he was 'jumped' in the yeshiva from class to class due to his rare talent, and all this right after his Bar Mitzvah. The Rabbi who recognized their tremendous potential arranged for him special study programs suitable for his high level and accompanied him throughout his life thus at a young age he already completed the entire school in depth several times. Scholars who studied at the Kol Ya'akov yeshiva at the time say that they would see him studying persistently for hours upon hours in a loud voice and with great concentration, with most of the time he studied standing. There were also those who followed him and noticed that he only slept two to two and a half hours a day. When guys would approach him to ask him questions in the study, they would be amazed at the extent of his vast knowledge of oral Torah almost everywhere they talked to him. Indeed a great scholar who lives among us.

"For they are our life and the length of our days, and in them she used day and night" This sentence (the client from the blessings of an Arabic recitation of the Shema), is often spoken by Rabbi Adas. Naa demands and Naa fulfills. He is devoted to his Talmud day and night, and he has little more than any other occupation that is not Torah study, he despises a life of luxury and comfort and lives modestly and simply.