Had you told Dovid Charnowitz back when he was in high school thar he would one day finish Shas and become a Daf Yomi maggid shiur, he probably would have laughed. Yet, despite being the busy founder and owner of a successful dental supply business, Dovid builds his day around his learning, and, after completing Shas once, is already well into his next siyum. How has he managed to accomplish all this? Through a determination to push himself to his maximum – what he describes as the “ToMo way.”
Born in Brooklyn and raised in Cedarhurst, Dovid’s schooling took him on a circuitous path around the country, from New York to South Bend, Indiana, to Providence, Rhode Island. In his first year of Beis Midrash in Providence, Dovid was already taking college courses and working, and his plan was to continue on that path, until his parents, feeling he should be taking his learning more seriously, encouraged him to go to yeshiva in Eretz Yisrael.
Despite having already mapped out his life at that point, with plans to study finance and then get a job in the field, he agreed – – but on condition that he go to Toras Moshe. If he was going to uproot himself and upend his plans, he would only do it to go to a very serious place of learning.
Over the following two years at Toras Moshe – from 2000-2002 – he channeled his innate qualities of dedication, determination and responsibility into a lifelong drive to learn and accomplish in Torah. He developed a warm relationship with Rabbi Klein while learning in his shiur his first year (“I felt like he truly cared, that he was invested in me”), while his second year in Rabbi Shurkin’s shiur gave him new levels of understanding in his learning (“He taught me that you’re never really done learning a Rashi, that there’s always a new angle to uncover”).
Following his years in Toras Moshe, he attended Ner Yisroel, while enrolling in night college to finish his finance degree. Yet the degree was never completed, as the dental supply business he had started during this time, DC Dental, began to take off. With his characteristic drive, he went on to build his business into the extremely successful enterprise that it is today.
At the same time, he harnessed his innate determination towards a different goal – success in his learning.
After marrying Tamar Gordon of Toronto – the sister of one of his Toras Moshe chavrusas, the couple settled in Baltimore, where they still reside today, raising their four children. Active community members, Dovid is co-president of Rabbi Yissocher Dov Eichenstein’s shul, Mercaz Torah U’Tefillah, where he also gives his daily Daf Yomi shiur – a challenge he took on at Rabbi Eichenstein’s urging. One of the side benefits of giving a shiur, he says, is that his entire day is built around the daf, with learning sedarim morning, afternoon and night.
What drives him to not just continue growing in his learning but to center everything else in his life around it? Dovid attributes it to the values he received in Toras Moshe — that learning shouldn’t just be a task that you check off, but part of your DNA, your very essence.
He credits much of his learning accomplishments to his long-time chavrusa with R’ Yaakov Frand (son of Rabbi Yissachar). They started learning together twenty years ago, and through that Dovid was zocheh to complete Shas. Since then, he has set himself a new learning goal, thanks to his daily shiur: to complete Shas again, but this time more in depth, as he learns each daf b’iyun to prepare for his shiur.
It is a goal to which he has applied his characteristic determination, not allowing himself to skip a day. “Even when I’m on vacation, I’ll record a shiur because I want to make sure I learn every daf at the same level of depth.”
How did it feel to make his first siyum haShas? “It was an amazing feeling,” he says, but adds what could well be a statement of his own life hashkafah. “The thing about Daf Yomi is that you aren’t given much time to sit back and reflect on your accomplishments. There’s always the next daf to learn.”
It could well be a statement of hashkafa that has and continues to guide his own life.