"I was trying to run a school, but I knew nothing about it”

Took over: Bais Yaakov D’Rav Meir, a girls elementary school now located in the Kensington section of Brooklyn, New York

Position: Principal

Succeeded: Father, Rabbi Meir Levi

Year: 1968

Before I took over

I was a newlywed — we were married under 11 months — and learning in Telshe yeshivah kollel in Cleveland when we got the news that my father was in a terrible car accident. It was December 1967, and my father, who had been the principal of Bais Yaakov of Crown Heights, was seriously injured; he was in a coma. A few months later, the school directors drafted me to take on my father’s role while he recovered. We all believed this would be a stop-gap measure, but after 11 months in a coma, my father succumbed to his injuries. I was just 24 years old, a very “green” yeshivah boy, younger than most of the school’s staff, but they asked me to remain. I guess they really couldn’t find anyone else.

The biggest challenge I faced right away

I was trying to run a school, but I knew nothing about it — the teachers knew far more about chinuch than I did. I also had to fundraise, and I wasn’t much of a fundraiser.

My first big decision

To move the school from Crown Heights to Flatbush. My father, an educational pioneer, had started the school in Brownsville 24 years earlier and then moved it to Crown Heights. But people were moving away, and primarily only the Lubavitch community remained. Our numbers were dwindling — we lost about 600 students in a little over a year when Bobov moved to Boro Park. We moved and, baruch Hashem, we rebuilt — and in 1991, we started a high school division. Another big decision was what to do with a teacher who had been there for many years and had been granted certain privileges by my father, such as not working on Fridays. As a new head, I felt I needed everyone following the same set of rules. I actually had to let her go — it was a sticky situation, but baruch Hashem, she remained a good friend of t he school.

What I wish I’d known from the start

In the beginning, I often wondered if I would have agreed to leave kollel had I known the job would become permanent. I’m at this position now for 53 years.