IT was an unfathomable shift — from the pinnacle of joy to incomprehensible tragedy. Twelve-year-old Yehoshua Aharon Tuvia Simcha was sitting beside his sisters on the Jerusalem-bound 291 bus from Beitar, returning home from their older sister’s last sheva brachos, when a terrorist opened fire and killed the boy.

On 11 Kislev we lost a beautiful child — and the promise for so much greatness.

“Just a few months ago, you asked me about the tefillin I would buy you for your bar mitzvah,” wept his father, Rav Dovid Zusha, Rosh Yeshivah of Yeshiva Klal Chassidi in Beitar Illit. “You didn’t care about the hall or the event, only the tefillin. And now, instead of tefillin, I am buying you a burial plot.

“In your merit, I became a better father. I constantly felt that I needed to improve, so I could be worthy of being the father of a son like you.”

The sheva brachos had taken place in the yeshivah in Beitar. Afterward, half the family went home by car, and the others boarded the 291 bus. As it approached the checkpoint, terrorists fired 22 bullets at the bus.

Tuvia, Hashem yikom damo, learned in the Pnei Menachem cheder in Yerushalayim, and the Rosh Yeshivah, Rav Shaul Alter, described him as the “crown of the Talmud Torah.”

Just a few days earlier, the Rosh Yeshivah had spoken to Tuvia about his upcoming bar mitzvah. “We spoke about ‘vayidar Yaakov neder’ — that when a Yid sets out on a journey, he makes a kabbalah. You made a kabbalah, intending to keep it. But Hashem didn’t want the kabbalah you took on for life. He wanted your life itself.”

Tuvia’s commitment to Torah was that of a bochur far older than him. A rebbi from the cheder shared how just a week before he was killed, Tuvia arrived at school and ran to open a Ketzos Hachoshen before eating breakfast.

“I asked him why he didn’t eat first,” the rebbi shared. “He said, ‘On the way to cheder I had a he’arah, (an insight) and I wanted to check if it was emes.’ ”

He was a mevakesh, never ceasing his pursuit for further clarity. “He kept asking me to learn with him,” his rebbi recalled. “When I explained a Tosafos, he insisted on understanding every detail. On his last day, I learned with him for twenty minutes. When we didn’t finish, I told him we would continue the next day. Now, he’ll continue learning in the Yeshivah shel Maalah.”

He was a role model to his classmates but also their best friend. He was constantly complimenting his friends; on his final trip home from Beitar, he borrowed a phone from someone so that he could call a friend and compliment him for something he’d done earlier that day.

Tuvia’s married brother described how whenever he came for Shabbos, Tuvia would help him with his suitcase, take care of whatever was needed, and then ask, “When will you learn with me?”

Perhaps the most heartbreaking hesped was given by his seven-year-old younger brother, Mordechai. “I loved you so much, I loved talking to you so much. And now — who will learn with me? Who will answer all my questions?”

For reasons we cannot understand, Hashem chose to transform joy into tragedy.

But He can also transform tragedy to joy.

May we soon see nechamah — for this tragedy and so many others — as the many tzaros fade away with the coming of Mashiach bimheirah b’yameinu. Amen. 

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1042)

The post Our Tuvia’le      first appeared on Mishpacha Magazine.

Ponevezh Rosh Yeshivah Rav Asher Deutsch didn’t just believe that a yeshivah student or kollel avreich should be occupied with Torah throughout the day, not just during study hours. He actually lived it

W

hile many of the tens of thousands of mourners who accompanied Ponevezh Rosh Yeshivah Rav Asher Deutsch ztz”l to his final resting place last week had known him from his daily shiurim in the yeshivah’s beis medrash, perhaps only a fraction of them were able to truly grasp the depth of his teachings or appreciate the heights he’d achieved in Torah study during his lifetime.

“Rosh Yeshivah had tremendous talent, but he never made things easier for himself,” one talmid explained. “He fully utilized his sharp intellect and, combined with his renowned perseverance, achieved incredible heights in learning. His shiurim were so profound that students who hadn’t thoroughly prepared the sugya struggled to follow his reasoning.

“During his shiurim, he was like a burning flame,” the talmid continues. “He was completely absorbed in the sugya, oblivious to time. We once bought him a large wall clock and hung it in front of him to remind him when to conclude so that we could go and daven, but it didn’t help. We always had to remind him when it was time for the Minchah minyan.”

As part of his rare brilliance, Rav Deutsch was involved in writing and editing the lectures of Rav Shmuel Rozovsky, Ponevezh’s first rosh yeshivah, known for his extensive study of the commentaries and deep analytical approach. Other Torah luminaries, including current Slabodka Rosh Yeshivah Rav Dov Landau, entrusted their manuscripts to Rav Deutsch for his insights and annotations. After the passing of Rav Elazar Menachem Man Shach, Rav Deutsch was asked by Rav Shach’s son-in-law, Rav Meir Tzvi Bergman, to head the institute for the publishing of Rav Shach’s teachings.

R

av Asher HaKohein Deutsch’s light first shone on the first night of Chanukah, 5706 (1945). His father, Rav Binyamin Zev Deutsch, was a devoted confidant and right-hand man of the Ponevezher Rav, Rabbi Yosef Shlomo Kahaneman. Rav Binyamin Zev played a key role in establishing the yeshivah and managing its affiliated institutions, known as Batei Avot, and the Ponevezher Rav attended Asher Deutsch’s bar mitzvah seudah as a tribute to his father’s significant contributions.

Rav Deutsch acquired his early education at the Tashbar Talmud Torah, which at the time operated out of the home of the Chazon Ish. From there he moved on to Ponevezh’s yeshivah ketanah and then to the yeshivah gedolah, where he secured a distinguished place among the elite talmidim. Despite his young age compared to many of his peers, he earned a place of prominence among the yeshivah’s greatest talmidei chachamim. (It is told that after learning around the clock, he once fell into a sudden deep sleep in the middle of working through a sugya, and when his friends, noticing his unusual posture, awakened him, within seconds he resumed learning precisely from where he had left off.)

During these formative years, he developed a close relationship with the rosh yeshivah, Rav Shmuel Rozovsky, becoming one of the few students capable of fully grasping the depth of Rav Shmuel’s shiurim. After Rav Shmuel’s passing in 1979, leadership of the yeshivah passed to Rav Shach, and Rav Deutsch formed a deep and enduring connection with him.

“Rav Asher saw Rav Shach as his primary mentor,” says Rav Eliyahu Cohen, one of Rav Deutsch’s leading talmidim and longtime chavrusa. “He would consult him on every matter, whether personal or communal. He would often share with us stories of Rav Shach’s incredible diligence and the clear path he charted in his public battles, serving as a symbol and role model.”

Rav Asher married Rebbetzin Miriam, the daughter of Rav Raphael Eisenberg a”h. The Rebbetzin worked for many years as a midwife at the Mayanei Hayeshua Medical Center, and she also became a mentor for dozens of young people from dysfunctional or troubled families who made their way to the Deutsch home.

“The Rebbetzin and the Rosh Yeshivah were a team when it came to tzedakah and chesed,” says Rav Cohen. “Once, the Rosh Yeshivah heard about a Torah scholar in Bnei Brak who had broken his arm and was in severe pain. Without asking any questions, he and his wife took a comfortable armchair from their home and brought it right over to the home of this talmid chacham. Rav Asher explained to him that this chair had been particularly comfortable when he himself had been in a similar situation. He didn’t give a second thought to the idea that carrying a chair through the streets of Bnei Brak might seem unfitting for someone of his stature.”

Rav Deutsch’s talmidim relate how the Rosh Yeshivah would often engage in vigorous debates with the students, and the entire hall seemed ablaze with energy. While he would sometimes raise his voice and passionately debate those students whose arguments he found unconvincing, they knew never to take it personally. His fire was for extracting the truth of Torah, but even those talmidim on the receiving end of his arguments sensed his love for them.

“I remember how, after delivering such a shiur, the Rosh Yeshivah exited the beit medrash,” says a talmid. “Outside, it was pouring rain, and Rav Asher stood there without even an umbrella. He seemed to be looking for something. When he saw me, his eyes lit up. He asked me to call over another student — someone he had debated with during the shiur. Rav Asher sought his forgiveness, concerned that he may not have spoken to him with sufficient respect.”

S

hortly after his marriage, Rav Asher Deutsch moved to Jerusalem, where he served as a maggid shiur at Yeshivas Knesses Beis Aharon headed by Rav Ephraim Zureiven ztz”l. He also delivered chaburahs at the Mir, and later, he gave shiurim at Yeshivas Knesset Yitzchak in Hadera.

In late 1988, Rav Deutsch was asked by Rav Shach and by Ponevezh president Rav Avraham Kahaneman to become a maggid shiur in Ponevezh.

“Rav Asher began by giving shiur to first-year students,” recalls Rav Cohen. “In the following years, he delivered regular lectures to higher-level classes and eventually to the advanced kibbutz group. Until Elul, he continued to come to the yeshivah daily to deliver his shiurim.

“In addition to his regular shiur, which involved many hours of preparation,” Rav Cohen adds, “the Rosh Yeshivah had chavrusas practically around the clock. I was fortunate to learn together with him for many years, and I was in good company — one of his most well-known chavrusas was renowned Ezra Lemarpeh founder Rabbi Elimelech Firer.”

When Rav Cohen tries to think of a specific stringency or practice the Rosh Yeshivah was especially particular about, he mentions that, as scrupulous as he was in all mitzvos both bein adam l’chaveiro and bein adam laMakom, he was especially vigilant when it came to the possibility of transgressing any aspect of ribbis — he even wrote a sefer called Shaarei Ribbis.

“He was an expert in these in these matters, and many people sought his guidance regarding how to avoid actions that might be considered as taking interest from another person,” Rav Cohen says. “In addition, he was extremely meticulous regarding the mitzvah of arba minim, adhering to the Chazon Ish’s stringencies. Many students would come to his home before Succos to show him what they’d purchased or were considering buying. Sometimes the line wrapped around the block, but despite the pressure, he never turned anyone away.”

But the most important thing he emphasized, says Rav Cohen, is immersion in Torah. “He believed the mind must always be involved in Torah, and not just during set times for learning,” Rav Cohen relates. “A yeshivah student or kollel fellow, he taught, should be occupied with learning throughout the day. And he practiced what he preached. In his view, someone aspiring to spiritual greatness could not achieve it unless their mind was entirely absorbed in Torah during all their waking hours.”

A tense silence filled the room of the Rosh Yeshivah as family members gathered to bid farewell to their patriarch, whose passing was imminent.

“In the past year and a half, the Rosh Yeshivah battled a severe illness,” says Rav Cohen. “He underwent intense treatments, and somehow, he bounced back, with Hashem’s help. During that interim time, he maintained his schedule of shiurim without interruption, continuing to push himself. And he tried never to cancel his chavrusas – sometimes they’d join him at the hospital if he had the strength.”

About half a year ago, the illness resurfaced, and the Rosh Yeshivah began another series of treatments. Yet in the last two months, repeated hospitalizations due to infections and complications took their toll.

“His suffering was immense,” says Rav Cohen. “Once, one of his sons tried to remove a needle causing him discomfort, but the Rosh Yeshivah reprimanded him, saying it was forbidden for a son to perform such an act for his father. There were entire days when he couldn’t speak due to the pain and weakness. Still, when he returned home from the hospital, utterly exhausted, his first request was always for a sefer.”

And no matter how exhausted he was toward the end, he wouldn’t back out of his unwavering commitment to chinuch. “He’d just returned from a grueling treatment, when some family members of a boy enrolled in one of the institutions under his jurisdiction approached him,” Rav Cohen relates. “They told him that the administration had decided to expel the child due to behavioral issues. The Rosh Yeshivah, though frail and drained of energy, was quite upset. With superhuman strength, he exclaimed that no child should ever be removed from a yeshivah without a proper alternative, no matter the circumstances, contacted the people involved, and made sure the boy remained in the institution. That moment was a powerful message, timeless and universal.”

In his last month, the Rosh Yeshivah’s condition fluctuated, with periods of slight improvement followed by rapid decline. By Friday, 12 Kislev, his condition was deemed critical. His family came to bid him farewell. But then, suddenly, his vital signs stabilized and he awakened, interacting with his family. It seemed as if he’d rally after all.

“On Shabbat morning, he even requested a cup of wine for Kiddush,” Rav Cohen recalls. “He forced himself to drink, fulfilling the mitzvah of sanctifying the day. It was a true miracle — it was almost like techiyas hameisim, as though his soul clung to his body with superhuman tenacity. He used those moments of grace to perform another mitzvah.”

The hours that followed were fraught with tension. By Monday afternoon, 14 Kislev, his condition deteriorated rapidly, as family members and close disciples rushed to his bedside at Maayanei Hayeshua. This time, however, the malachim prevailed.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1042)

The post Like a Burning Flame  first appeared on Mishpacha Magazine.

The report that Rabbi Meyer Fendel had passed away in Eretz Yisrael at the age of 98 on December 7 came as a jolt.

NOdoubt, for tens of thousands of his talmidim, the news made their minds wander back to the time they spent with him, and the impact he had on their lives. I know it did for me.

It was way back in the spring of 1976, and I was teaching English at Yeshiva High School of Queens and acting as assistant principal at Mesivta Tifereth Jerusalem in the afternoon. Marvin Hirschorn, the English chairman at YHSQ, also chaired the board of the Hebrew Academy of Nassau County (HANC). When their general studies principal, Mrs. Sally Reimer, decided to retire to Florida, Mr. Hirschorn suggested I interview for the position. By that time, HANC had already established itself as one of the elite yeshivah day schools in the country, and I approached the upcoming interview with trepidation.

The greenery of HANC’s Mitchel Field campus was stunning, and I felt more at ease after a pleasant talk with Rabbi Fendel, the founding dean. Afterward, we walked out together just as the bell rang, and the diversity of the student population swarming through the hallway immediately caught my eye. There were boys with white shirts, black pants, and velvet yarmulkes walking with boys with longish hair (this was the ’70s) and kippot sitting askew on their heads.

Intrigued, I asked, “What type of school caters to such different levels of religiosity? How does it work?”

Rabbi Fendel’s answer summed up what HANC was all about: “We’re a community school. We accept all those who want to attend a yeshivah to learn about their heritage and to see the beauty of the Torah. We’re not concerned with the way they come in. What’s important is the way they go out.

“That is one aspect of HANC’s eternal motto — ‘Chanoch lanaar al pi darko.’ Teach a child on his own level of background and understanding. This is what HANC is and hopefully will always be.”

With these wise words ringing in my head, I became a colleague of Rabbi Fendel and part of the HANC family.

A Torah Wilderness

Meyer Fendel was born in 1926 in Williamsburg to Rabbi Zalman Hillel and Chaya Raizel Fendel and grew up in a home steeped in Torah and Yiddishkeit. He learned in Yeshivah Torah Vodaath, and after high school learned for a time in the yeshivah started by Rav Dovid Leibowitz. He made a trip to Eretz Yisrael as a young man, before he was married, which imbued him with a love of the land.

In 1952, Rabbi Fendel accepted the position of Torah Umesorah’s director of school development, charged with developing new Jewish day schools throughout the US. That role made him aware of a number of communities across the country in desperate need of chinuch resources. One in particular, Nassau County on Long Island, was not far from his childhood home in Brooklyn — but it was a Torah wilderness. Almost all the synagogues there were affiliated with the Conservative and Reform movements.

Rabbi Fendel decided to take a bold step, and selected West Hempstead as the target town for the kind of school he wanted to establish, despite there being only one or two observant families residing there. A small ad soon appeared in a local West Hempstead newspaper: “Nine Men Wanted for a Minyan.” Rabbi Fendel would later use that as the title of the book he wrote about those years.

The Hebrew Academy of Nassau County opened in a building known as the Oppenheimer Collins Estate (where the present-day elementary school is located). A problem arose almost immediately when an occupant of the building refused to vacate the premises. But the problem was solved when the resident, who worked at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, was suddenly killed by a falling concrete block.

The nascent school would eventually become a four-campus complex with over 1,000 students. Rabbi Fendel served as the new school’s principal as well as the first rabbi of the Young Israel of West Hempstead.

HANC’s educational philosophy is based on the teachings of Rav Avraham Yitzchak HaKohein Kook, whom Rabbi Fendel venerated. Each child in HANC was deemed special and was to be educated accordingly. The bonds between the students and their teachers grew to be as strong as those between them and their parents and grandparents.

Rabbi Fendel adopted a “benevolent dictator” approach to make this happen. He hand-selected his administrators, his staff, and — most importantly — the heads and members of his Board of Education and Board of Directors, so that the entire school became a reflection of his sensitivity, personality, and vision of what Jewish education should be. It was a glorious era.

In 1957 Rabbi Fendel married Goldie Feldman, and together they built a warm home that extolled service for Klal Yisrael. Their children, Rabbi David Fendel, who founded the Hesder yeshivah in Sderot, and longtime Orthodox journalist Hillel Fendel, were inspired by their parents’ example.

New Opportunities

“To say that HANC changed my life is too trite a statement,” says Rabbi Dovid Orlofsky, famed rabbi, teacher, and lecturer. “How about it gave me my very life. I grew up in a home that was not shomer Shabbos. There was no reason that my family should not have quietly assimilated, just like millions of other nominally affiliated Jews of that era. That Rabbi Fendel moved into Long Island in the 1950s to start an Orthodox day school was nothing short of miraculous. Because of his vision, today my parents have over 37 grandchildren and almost as many great-grandchildren — all of them shomrei Torah u’mitzvos.”

Perhaps Rabbi Fendel’s greatest educational achievement was his establishment in 1971 of HANC’s unique New Opportunities Program (NOP), designed to enable students with little or no Torah background to join the school. Students with only rudimentary knowledge of Hebrew literacy would be placed in special morning classes teaching the basics of Chumash, Navi, halachah, and Jewish history, and in mainstream general studies classes in the afternoon. Many teens inspired by their summer’s experience with NCSY or JEP would apply for admission to NOP in late August. It brought hundreds into the world of Torah Judaism.

The stories that emanate from NOP are electrifying. There was the odyssey of Yitzchak P. After the Shah of Iran was deposed, Jewish parents in Iran began smuggling their children out of the country through Pakistan and Vienna to the US to stay with relatives in Great Neck, Long Island, which was morphing into New Tehran and Mashhad.

Yitzchak’s uncle brought him to HANC a few weeks before Pesach, asking the school to accept him. When he was asked if he knew a little Chumash, he looked bewildered.

“The Bible,” we explained.

“Oh, yes. I know the Koran,” he said.

Since he had to know at least some of the basics of Hebrew and Judaism to be able to function in a class that had already been underway for a few months, we suggested he contact a tutor we recommended to bring him up to speed. To our astonishment, when he returned after Pesach, not only did he know how to read Hebrew, but he had already mastered the basics of Chumash and Mishnah.

After graduating from HANC, he went to Yeshivas Ner Yisroel in Baltimore to learn full time. After Succos, Rabbi Fendel received a call from the mashgiach of Ner Yisroel, who shared that Yitzchak was unwilling to leave the beis medrash when they wanted to shut the lights at 2 a.m.

And then there’s the story of Wade. When the Los Angeles branch of NCSY called to ask if our school had a program that could take in an 11th-grader with no yeshivah background named Wade, I pictured a six-foot-eleven basketball player.

“Wade?” I stammered.

“Don’t worry, he’s Jewish,” the L.A. caller reassured me.

Wade flew through NOP on wings of determination, entered mainstream limudei kodesh shiurim midyear, and went on to learn in Eretz Yisrael. Upon returning to America, “Wade” started going by his Hebrew name and is today a well-known askan.

Countless more boys and girls who are today raising Torah families credit Rabbi Fendel’s visionary program with turning their lives around.

Rallying Support

The 1980s was a decade full of protests and demonstrations against the government of the Soviet Union and its treatment of the refuseniks, Jews who wished to emigrate to Israel. They were punished for their “crime” with imprisonment and torture, consigned to gulags in Siberia.

Rabbi Fendel was an active participant in the cause to free them, not sufficing with having his students attend protest rallies or write letters. Every day — rain or shine, warm or cold — Rabbi Fendel sent two cars filled with HANC students to the courthouse in Mineola, where the students and their teachers, sometimes accompanied by local rabbis, would daven Minchah and recite Tehillim under banners calling for Russia to “Let My People Go.”

This went on for years until both Yosef Mendelevitch and Natan Sharansky, two of the most longstanding refuseniks, were able to leave the Soviet Union for Eretz Yisrael. In appreciation for what the HANC students had done for him, Rabbi Mendelevitch stopped off at HANC on the way to JFK to thank Rabbi Fendel and the HANC students in person.

Rabbi Fendel didn’t just muster his students to protest against the Soviet Union; he also assembled them to show support for US troops. The school is adjacent to an army base, and as soon as it was opened, Rabbi Fendel crossed over to the base and introduced himself, telling the commander that the school would be there for them if needed.

Indeed, when the soldiers who trained there were called up for duty in Iraq during the first Gulf War, HANC students geared up for action, as well. On the day before the reserve soldiers packed out, the entire school marched to the base with signs and songs wishing them success and praying that they would all return to base safely. It was a tremendous kiddush Hashem, and the tears in the eyes of both soldiers and students were readily visible.

From a school that began with less than 20 students, HANC grew into an institution with four campuses, housing over a thousand students. The tens of thousands of alumni include many of New York’s Orthodox doctors and public health officials. His approach to chinuch would influence generations of Jewish educators. His dedication to making Torah accessible to all Jews, regardless of background, reshaped the American Jewish landscape. Rabbi Fendel had the zechus of seeing the fruits of his work before he and his wife moved to Eretz Yisrael later in life.

Yehi zichro baruch.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1041)

The post A Pioneering Spirit      first appeared on Mishpacha Magazine.

With the world of opportunity open wide before him, Reb Meir Chaim Gutfreund, who passed away on the 17th of Cheshvan, sacrificed all for the sake of his people, and the Torah he cherished so much. 

The young rebbi sat in the black swivel chair in the menahel’s office. This was his first progress meeting with the Cheder of Brooklyn’s veteran menahel and founder, Rabbi Meir Chaim Gutfreund — and he assumed it would be a quick process. He began with the first name on his class list.

“Let’s start with Adler,” he said.

“Baruch?” Rabbi Gutfreund interjected. “He has a lot of chein, that one.”

The new rebbi was taken aback. There were three parallel classes at the Cheder, and Rabbi Gutfreund was the menahel of two other schools as well; he couldn’t possibly keep track of thousands of individual talmidim! Perhaps the menahel was somehow acquainted with the Adler family.

After discussing Baruch with the menahel — who was jotting down information in a fresh notebook — the rebbi moved on to the next name on the list.

“It’s been tough to keep Dovid engaged,” the rebbi began. “I constantly try new tactics to keep him focused on the material, but I keep losing his attention.”

Rabbi Gutfreund was quick to respond. “Didn’t his rebbi from last year recommend additional kriah therapy?” Without skipping a beat, the elderly mechanech reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out an older notebook. He flipped through it until he found the page with the class they were discussing.

“Here’s a summary of my last meeting with his previous rebbi,” Rabbi Gutfreund explained, and showed the new rebbi the note scribbled near the boy’s name, which read: May need additional kriah help to keep up with the pace in the classroom. Revisit next year.

As they went through each name on the class list, the rebbi was astounded to discover that the menahel was intimately familiar with each child — his strengths, weaknesses, and whatever struggles he may be facing at home. He would occasionally glance at his notes from the previous year, but in most cases, he already knew the information. While his recommendations were succinct, they were all thoughtful, compassionate, and goal-oriented. The rebbi soon realized that he was sitting with a true master.

Rabbi Meir Chaim Gutfreund passed away a few weeks ago after a severe illness, and although his family and multitudes of talmidim are now bereft of his love and leadership, he left them an inspiring legacy. He taught them to never be afraid to do the right thing, regardless of whatever personal struggles they may encounter along the way; he taught them how to give of themselves wholeheartedly; and, most of all, he taught them how to believe in people and to empower them to reach their fullest potential.

Those who knew Rabbi Meir Chaim Gutfreund over the past three decades can describe his many accomplishments for the klal and for individuals.

However, you may not hear the backstory of this master of chesed and champion of his talmidim. Rabbi Gutfreund’s early years tell the tale of a man who dared to follow his ambitions against all odds. A young Meir Chaim was raised by parents who were pioneers in serving the tzibbur, fighting relentlessly for the growth and proliferation of Torah in America.

In Search of Pure Chinuch

Rabbi Shalom Shachne Gutfreund was a paragon of the piety of yesteryear. As a devout disciple of Rav Elchonon Wasserman and Rav Boruch Ber Leibowitz, Reb Shalom Shachne kept the teachings of his beloved rebbeim close to his heart throughout the Holocaust and all the way across the Atlantic. He eventually married Esther Lobenstein and settled in Vineland, New Jersey, where he worked on his father-in-law’s farm.

At the time, there were no local schooling options for Vineland’s many frum families, who mostly sent their boys to Far Rockaway for day school. Reb Shalom Shachne initially planned on sending his eldest son, Shlomo Zalman, there as well. But when he attended the orientation, the concerned father realized the faculty followed some unorthodox ideologies — and being a true talmid of his rebbeim, Reb Shalom Shachne immediately withdrew his son from the school.

A few days later, Reb Shalom Shachne convened a meeting of local frum families and secured commitments to establish a school for the community. From its modest beginnings — it started with just six boys — the school soon grew into a beacon of Torah education for Vineland’s frum community.

Not long after that, Reb Shalom Shachne and his wife realized that Vineland wasn’t the ideal place to raise frum children. The closest shul was miles away, and the children would fare better in a larger community. In 1961, the family decided to move to Monsey, where Reb Shalom Shachne rekindled his longtime connection with Rav Reuven Grozovsky, son-in-law of his revered rebbi Rav Boruch Ber. However, even in Monsey, the chinuch didn’t meet the Gutfreunds’ standards. Before long, Reb Shalom Shachne took matters into his own hands, and was instrumental in the founding of Yeshivah Beis Dovid, one of Monsey’s first heimishe chadarim.

All of this made a last impression on Reb Shalom Shachne’s son Meir Chaim. He grew up watching his parents diligently striving to provide their children with pure chinuch. That sacrifice would reap dividends for decades to come.

After Meir Chaim Gutfreund married Dina Augenstein of Boro Park, the couple settled in her hometown. Meir tried out some odd jobs, initially struggling to make ends meet. But as time went by — some attribute it to a personal brachah he received from the Ribnitzer Rebbe — he became very successful, amassing large amounts of real estate.

By his early thirties, Reb Meir felt financially comfortable enough to return to learning part-time, a reflection of his lifelong love of learning. His children share how his favorite time was the summer when he could spend many extra hours devoted to Torah study. He kept a cheshbon of how many times he reviewed each daf of Gemara.

During those years of learning in Beis HaTalmud, which he considered his home, he compiled a sefer titled A Gut Vort — a collection of Torah thoughts for the Shabbos table.

But his passion to do something significant for the tzibbur continued to grow.

Ambitious Undertaking

Reb Meir’s feelings for chinuch were no secret. He would often relate to family members that his experiences growing up in fledgling communities taught him the importance of stable schools where the talmidim enjoyed their learning. He dreamed of creating a school where he and his faculty could invest maximum effort in securing each child’s successful future in Yiddishkeit.

Reb Meir would realize his dream — albeit not in the way he expected. In the late 1980s, the principal of Bais Yaakov of Boro Park approached the Novominsker Rebbe with an urgent plea: There was a dire shortage of schools for the city’s frum girls, and a new Bais Yaakov was desperately needed. The Rebbe called a meeting with several wealthy balabatim in Dayan Brody’s shul, where he apprised them of the critical need for a new school. Reb Meir was present, and immediately offered to take on the project.

A short while later, he flew to Eretz Yisrael to ask Rav Shach for guidance on this new undertaking. He described his determination to establish a new Bais Yaakov — but the Ponevezher Rosh Yeshivah had a curious response.

“The tzibbur may need a Bais Yaakov, but that can be done through others,” he said. “When a yachid like yourself has such a passion for chinuch —and is willing to give so much of his own wealth for this cause —he should open a cheder for boys.”

Reb Meir was somewhat baffled by the gadol’s instructions, but he knew what he had to do. Upon his return to America, he set about single-handedly establishing a new cheder in Brooklyn. Reb Meir purchased a property and went from shul to shul to recruit talmidim. He was determined to overcome any obstacles that could arise.

“No one ever said doing the right thing would be a piece of cake,” he would often say.

“He was very clear to anyone who questioned his initiative — this was what Rav Shach told him to do, so he was going to take it all the way to the finish line, no questions asked,” says Rabbi Gershon Gutfreund, Reb Meir’s nephew.

One kollel yungerman from Beis HaTalmud related that when Reb Meir’s walked into Beis HaTalmud and started telling everyone that he was opening a new school, “we all thought he had gone off the wall. Why was this young clean-shaven businessman getting himself involved in opening a school? What could he possibly bring to the world of chinuch?”

With time, the answer would become readily apparent.

After the Cheder was established in 1991, Reb Meir subsequently assumed the role of menahel, and his peerless dedication to his talmidim came to the fore. Reb Meir’s brother-in-law, Rav Zev Egert, related at the levayah that ever since he’d met Reb Meir when he was a 16-year-old bochur, he would talk about his dream: “One day, I’m going to open a yeshivah that is 100 percent dedicated to its talmidim.”

Indeed, Reb Meir merited to live his dream.

“Rabbi Gutfreund wanted school to be geshmak for every kid, even if they came from homes that weren’t so well-off,” says Rabbi Nachum Sacks, a longtime rebbi at the Cheder. “He once saw a boy coming to school without a briefcase, so he went and bought him one.”

Another rebbi remembers how Reb Meir would give boys money to buy snacks and supper when he sensed they couldn’t afford it.

Reb Meir would meet with each rebbi three times a year and discuss each talmid’s progress.

“When he saw that a boy’s grades were declining, he would explore which therapies were warranted — and paid for them out of his own pocket, when necessary,” one rebbi says.

These therapies were often very expensive, especially given the sheer number of students, but Reb Meir was never fazed by the price tag.

“Many years ago, there was a boy who came from a different school, and Reb Meir heard that he had been bullied terribly in the past,” recounts this rebbi. “When Reb Meir met with the boy, he noticed that a facial feature was a likely cause for the name-calling and teasing. Reb Meir promptly arranged for a medical procedure to remove the uncomfortable feature, and the boy was successfully integrated into his new class. He thought out-of-the-box, always looking for ways to boost a child’s self-esteem, even if it meant doing something unconventional.”

Reb Meir would accept boys into the school as long as there was a chance that they would succeed — even if the odds seemed negligible. A couple once approached him to ask if they could send their son in the middle of the school year. Reb Meir knew that it was a tricky situation; there were mental health issues in the family, and the boy had performed poorly in his previous school. On top of all that, the class was full, and it wouldn’t be wise to cram in another boy who could potentially destabilize the classroom dynamic. For most schools, this would be a nonstarter.

But not Rabbi Gutfreund. He called a rebbi familiar with the boy and asked: “Tell me, does the boy have a disruptive personality?”

The rebbi answered that although there were difficulties at home, and the boy would need some assistance, he wasn’t the type to disrupt the class.

“Perfect, then I’ll take him.”

It didn’t take long for Reb Meir to also establish a high school for the Cheder boys — named Mesivta Shalom Shachne for his father a”h — which was run according to the same principles as the elementary school. When he began shopping around for a camp for his talmidim, Reb Meir’s primary goal was an enjoyable experience for his students — regardless of the cost to him.

He was once about to sign a contract with the owner of one camp, when he asked: “If a bochur needs some forks and plates for his room, would he be allowed to take some from the lunchroom?”

The owner answered that as per the camp rules, the lunchroom and its contents were for mealtime only. Upon hearing that, Reb Meir kindly thanked the man for his time and called off the deal.

“It was a rare phenomenon,” one close talmid relates. “He wasn’t concerned with his personal comforts at all. He drove an older car, ate very simple meals each day, lived in a very modest home… but when it came to his talmidim or those in need, he just threw money at them.”

One rebbi tells a story that emphasizes Reb Meir’s true motives behind his involvement in his institutions. “I recently told him that it would probably be wise to open a kollel for the Cheder’s alumni, here in Brooklyn,” he relays. “The trend had become for yungeleit to settle in Lakewood, and the lack of local yeshivah families could cause the school to lose its relevance.”

But Reb Meir didn’t miss a beat. “If the school won’t be needed anymore, I’ll be perfectly fine closing it down.”

Reb Meir started the school to fill a need; if that need no longer existed, then he’d direct his resources to help the tzibbur in other ways.

Helping Those in Need

Aside from his talmidim, Reb Meir was always looking for ways to help others. Over his years in the public sphere, he got to know many families in financial need — and once they were on his radar, he never forgot about them. He would offer struggling families any assistance that he could — whether financial or emotional.

“He would always answer the phone, even when he knew that the caller was expecting a lengthy chizuk conversation,” one rebbi relates. “I was once in a meeting with him when he got a call from a parent going through a difficult episode. He promptly wrapped up the meeting, called the parent back, and was on the phone with him for close to an hour. No matter how busy he was, he didn’t want to keep a Yid in distress waiting.”

Reb Meir was a master at discretion. At the shivah, one of his sons shared that when he was a child, he would join his father each Friday on a special secret project. Reb Meir and his son would take a stack of checks, pack them into envelopes, and then head out for a drive around Brooklyn. Reb Meir would stop at each address on the ever-growing list, and his son would run to the front door, stick the envelope through the mail slot, and dash back to the car before he could be seen. Most of these Erev Shabbos beneficiaries never discovered the source of their pleasant surprises.

His dedication went beyond giving money. One Erev Shabbos, Reb Meir heard that there was someone in a hospital in Manhattan who needed to show his medical records to the staff. Although it was late, he got into his car and took the papers to the hospital. As he started to head back, he realized he wasn’t going to make it to Boro Park before the zeman, so he phoned a friend in Williamsburg and asked if he could join him for Shabbos. He then parked his car and walked from Manhattan to Williamsburg, passing through neighborhoods that most Orthodox Jews would never dream of entering. Of course, Reb Meir never bothered telling the fellow in the hospital about his harrowing experience. He did what he had to do.

R

eb Meir invested much of his personal fortune in building up the Cheder and supporting its talmidim — but his largesse extended even further. A few years ago, the Kamenitz Cheder in Lakewood was in financial distress. When the situation was brought to Reb Meir’s attention, he knew what he had to do: Buy out the school and restructure it on a more financially stable foundation.

Rabbi Nachum Sacks remembers hearing about Reb Meir’s intentions while they were in the Catskills for the summer. “I went over to him and asked, ‘What do you need this Kamenitz headache for? Don’t you have enough responsibilities already?’

“He simply answered, ‘For Torah! The children need to learn Torah!’

“I shook my head slowly and said, ‘Reb Meir, I really don’t think you should do this.’ But he didn’t listen to me. He bought the school, and together with some sponsors, he built a new building and revitalized the entire mosad. Today, Kamenitz has three parallel classes per grade, and it’s a highly sought-after school.”

Another rebbi relates that he asked Reb Meir before the purchase if he had gone through the school’s numbers to make sure it was salvageable — to which he curtly answered, “No.”

The same was true when he opened the Cheder of Queens three short years ago. Reb Meir was approaching 70 when he heard from members of the Queens Bukharan community that they desperately needed a mainstream yeshivish school. Reb Meir jumped right in, successfully founding a school that breathed new life into the Bukharan community.

Rabbi Meir Chaim Gutfreund is now in the Next World, basking in inthe rewards he never sought in this world. And from that vantage point, he surely reaps much nachas as he watches thousands of Yiddishe kinder learning every day in the schools he built.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1039)

The post He Lived His Dream first appeared on Mishpacha Magazine.

Over half a century ago, when Lakewood’s Orthodox community was still in its infancy, Rabbi Schenkolewski was tapped by Lakewood Rosh Yeshivah Rav Shneur Kotler ztz”l to serve as his right hand in building the kehillah, including a vital role as the yeshivah’s “ambassador at large,” tasks he fulfilled prolifically — and unassumingly — over the ensuing decades.

He built valuable relationships on local, county, and state levels, founded Lakewood’s first girls’ high school, personally served as Hatzolah’s evening dispatcher for nearly 25 years, and created the conditions for Lakewood to become a thriving kehillah.

His levayah was held in the yeshivah itself, a testament to the esteem in which he was held by the Roshei Yeshivah and rabbanim, and condolence calls streamed in from elected officials, showcasing the respect he commanded in political circles as well. Lakewood’s long-serving Mayor Raymond Coles mourned the rabbi’s loss, calling him “my teacher, advisor, and confidant — my Rebbi,” and credited him with having an “immense impact on Lakewood.”

Rabbi Aaron Kotler, President Emeritus of Beth Medrash Govoha, shares his reflections on a lifelong friend.

T

he famed Oxford English Dictionary defines “byword” as “a person or thing who becomes proverbial, as a type of specified characteristics.”

I am unsure at what point the word “Schenky” morphed from a young bochur’s nickname to the byword for our exceptional Lakewood Torah community, but certainly at some point, it did.

That is because Rabbi Yisroel Schenkolewksi, or Schenky, as he was so affectionately known, perfectly captured the holy essence and beauty of our kehillah, particularly for those “outside” our tightly woven community, whose perception of us was via the window of his soul.

Fifty years ago, these “outsiders” typically had no clue who we strange folks were. Many were curious, a minority were pretty angry, and they were often accompanied by fellow travelers who were only too willing to get riled up at the massive growth of an Orthodox Jewish community in their backyard.

And we did not always make it easy for “them” to understand “us,” yet we needed friends. Badly.

Through knowing Schenky and experiencing his wisdom, thoughtfulness, patience, caring, devotion, dedication, and a thousand other superlatives, “they” thought they knew who “we” were.

How wrong they were. We strived and aspired to his greatness, and basked in his reflection, but in no way did we live up to the existential greatness that infused his entire being.

When I say we, I refer to the entire first and second generation of Lakewood askanim or shtadlanim or roshei mosdos — the people who worked day and night to build our community and its massive foundations and infrastructure.

Yes, his loss hurts.

MY earliest memories of Schenky involved my twisting his peyos from under his big yarmulke. At the time he was driving my father, the Rosh Yeshivah, Rav Shneur Kotler, and my mother, Rebbetzin Rischel, down the Garden State Parkway. We were headed home. Cars did not have air conditioning in those days and he, Schenky, the young bochur, naturally, was driving his Rosh Yeshivah and Rebbetzin home. Along with a bunch of other kids in the car. We did not have seatbelts either, so there I was, five or six years old, “chepping” the young bochur from the back seat.

I began by grabbing his peyos and graduated quickly: at some point I tossed his yarmulke out the open window. Schenky never let me forget it. Even as I approached my sixties and he his eighties, he would conclude the most serious kehillah meetings by playfully turning to me and saying, “Don’t forget, you still owe me a yarmulke.” I don’t know why I never went out and bought him one. I think I feared that had I done so, I would lose his cherished chiding, a reminder of innocent, bygone years.

Schenky graduated rapidly, too. His father, Rabbi Meir Schenkolewksi, was instrumental in the rescue of Rav Aharon Kotler ztz”l, from the Holocaust. Reb Meir was among the first Agudah leaders in America, and his work throughout those years of war and destruction was legendary.

With such a family bond, and with such a noble legacy, Schenky held a special place in our home, which only grew stronger as he displayed constant readiness, without hesitation, to accept any mission and fulfill any task for the Rosh Yeshivah.

Lakewood was tiny in those days, and the challenges were abundant. The township could often be hostile to seeing a yeshivah grow in its midst. Some folks preferred to hang on to a fading hotel industry rather than embrace a very religious group that wished to live somewhat separately.

My father, Reb Shneur, often shared with me how the first time the yeshivah needed a bank loan, the manager cordially responded, “Rabbi, your type makes my type uncomfortable. We only lend to our type and not yours.” Back then, people talked directly that way, with no shame or embarrassment, telling you openly what today they conceal with layers of glibness.

Reb Shneur did not focus on building a “typical” community. The needs of the Jewish people were (and perhaps still are) too great for that. His focus was singular: to build a makom Torah filled with talmidei chachamim who would develop and shteig, and through their own gadlus would shape Klal Yisrael’s future. As Rosh Yeshivah, all he needed to do was to help them bring out their own innate greatness.

A visionary like Reb Shneur — who, in building Lakewood and the yeshivah, may just be one of the most successful gedolim in Jewish history —needed trusted lieutenants.

With his keen eye for human nature, Reb Shneur confidently chose Schenky, the young bochur, as his primary lieutenant, and entrusted him with the most sensitive and major tasks. That mission included anything to do with the “outside,” while Reb Shneur focused on the inside.

Reb Shneur didn’t just trust Schenky; rather, he empowered him to speak in the yeshivah’s name and to represent the yeshivah in places large and small.

Schenky set to the task. In no time, the small yeshivah became a brand name in New Jersey, with governors and senators vying for its attention.

Every candidate running for office, major and minor alike, dutifully made the trek to Reb Shneur’s home, with Rabbi Schenkolewksi, the humble maestro, setting the stage. He had Reb Shneur’s complete confidence in making the decisions as to whom to support and in what manner.

This rabbi was not what politicians expected. He was so friendly, approachable, and unassuming. He quickly built a cadre of friends for the yeshivah, legends whose early support for our community continue to this day. They include names of today and of yesteryear, from Governor Brendan Byrne and Governor Jim Florio to Governors Whitman, Christie, McGreevey, Corzine, Murphy and others. Lifelong friends include our beloved Senator Bob Singer, retired Mayor Michael Levin, my own dear friend Joe Buckelew, and many more.

Under the watchful eyes of these friends, and in the face of sometimes incessant shrieking headlines and snide asides, our world was built.

For you locals reading this: Know that without Reb Yisroel (the simple man who never objected even in old age to the use of the youthful moniker Schenky), you would be striving to live, learn, do mitzvos, raise your families, and build your mosdos in a gale of unremitting hostility.

You would not be living in your home — as the zoning rules from the 1970s precluded more housing — nor would you have your shul, your mosdos, your mikvaos — the town said no a thousand times to each of these, with faceoffs at the township and planning boards and mass crowds crying foul at every Orthodox application.

With Reb Yisroel, that master diplomat, consummate mensch, and wise mentor, the world became a welcoming place. He led the political battles when necessary, and he built strong relationships so that battles were not necessary.

In the 1980s, a first alumni shul was proposed on 14th Street in today’s heart  of “Old Lakewood.” The local community rose up in arms, mongering how a neighborhood shul would destroy the character of their little paradise. The same thing happened with the first mikveh. And for the next dozen, too. Tensions rose. A handful of haters created organizations with innocuous names that implied that they were going to “save” the town from an alien invasion. The battle was on. The press weighed in daily, opposed, without pretense, to the rights and needs of Orthodox Jewry.

Reb Yisroel was the leader who stepped into the fray. Because of his work — directly — our community emerged from a small yeshivah and grew into the major metropolis of Torah for the world.

He cajoled, compromised, cared, and spent day and night in the battles. Remarkably, over the years, the enemies became friends, the friends became advocates, and the advocates became passionate supporters of a Torah kehillah.

When else in Jewish history was there such a man, a prince of his people?

And if there was, were those princes one of us, or were they of torn identity?

Hark back perhaps to the early 1500s, to the time of Rabbi Josel of Rosheim, that legendary shtadlan of the German and Polish Jews during the reigns of the Emperor Maximilian I and Charles V. Or perhaps further, to Bustenai, reputed to be the last surviving prince of the Davidic Kingdom, who led the Jewish people  in the times of Sura, Pumbedisa and Nehardea. We have had a handful of such men in our 3,300 years; Reb Yisroel earned his leading place among them.

Princes often get to live like princes. What did Reb Yisroel gain from all this glory and influence?

Not money — he was forced to sell computers out of his home to cover his bills. He lived for over 50 years in the Yeshivah Apartments, a complex of small units for which he himself raised the money and built for the yeshivah.

Not honor — no one gave him shlishi or siddur kiddushin. And not power either, as he never ran for office, never built a business, never lived above a most modest life a few blocks from the yeshivah.

What he did get was a stream of those in need. He got a door that never closed, with those in distress trekking to him day and night. He got the not-so-coveted achrayus as Hatzolah late-night dispatcher, a position that he used to develop generations of Hatzolah members.

“Reb Yisroel, we need help with this, we need help with that. Our child is a choleh. We need a doctor. I am in jail, I need help. I am in debt, I am losing my home. My wife was in an accident, and we don’t have insurance. I messed up with this or that or the other. I don’t have a passport. We need a kevurah in the middle of the night. There was a terrible crash, and someone needs to inform the family of their devastating loss.”

Schenky, Schenky, Schenky. All day and all night.

To a point where he would sadly joke to me that his very appearance evoked loss and tragedy.

Oh, how that burden shapes a person! Yet instead of him becoming cynical — he didn’t have a cynical bone in his body, or weary — he didn’t have a weary muscle in him, or cold — his heart was warm and caring to his very last day; he remained princely and dignified.

In his calm manner, he could go from coordinating a massive levayah, to a car crash victim, to a simchah, and from there to see a governor, all with the same equanimity and poise.

How many organizations does it take today to make a community? Misaskim? Chaverim? Mekimi? Mesamchim? Tomchei Shabbos? Bikur Cholim? A Vaad? Chai Lifeline? An Igud Hamosdos? Those all sound like one short afternoon in Reb Yisroel’s life.

If only we all lived his way.

I find it fascinating how his tasked role, seemingly focused on the outside, was spent day and night on the inside, helping every single person. If only we all made a kiddush Hashem in our every action. If only we all did not allow our roles and influence to get to our heads. If only we could experience success and yet live most modestly and simply. If only we all had impeccable judgment that was so wise and respected by both the kehillah and those beyond. If only we were all trusted by gedolei hador for our keen advice and input — while remaining loyal to daas Torah as more than just a catchword, but as our reason for being.

When Reb Yisroel lost his precious young daughter Kaila, the blow to him and his beloved Rebbetzin Craindel was a mighty one. Many a man would stagger in response. His response was to step forth from his pain and build Lakewood’s first girls’ high school, Bais Kaila, in her memory. Through this, he reminded himself of his loss every day, not by remaining mired in tears but by building a world-class mosad of chinuch for our daughters.

When Reb Yisroel was unfairly targeted by an ambitious prosecutor seeking to put us all down and to score a win against the “rabbis,” he did not complain. Despite screaming media headlines, he did not despair.

Nor did he accept an easy way out — an offered deal with no real consequence to him. He noted that doing so would reflect poorly on us all. Instead, he suffered through years of a legal process that completely vindicated him, not once but twice.

This is the man I knew. How I yearn for one more hour in his presence.

For more than 50 years, he was zocheh to loyally serve as Lakewood’s primary address for those in distress. Through his life, our community was created. Through his persona — calm, focused, dignified, caring, warm, and devoted — we became known. Through his chesed, spending countless nights on his couch even in his older years while waiting to hear back from those post accidents, in hospitals, in jail, stuck overseas, without passports, without papers — we were all elevated.

We are overwhelmed by this loss.

We are bereft of his wisdom.

We are devastated to have lost our meilitz, our advocate, who was appointed by the original builders of our kehillah to watch over us.

May his zechus continue to protect us all.

Yehi zichro baruch.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1028)

The post A Prince of His People first appeared on Mishpacha Magazine.

Photos: Mishpacha archives

Every summer, when frum communities in the greater New York area fled north to the Catskills, the Kossover Rebbe, Rav Shraga Feivish Hager ztz”l, flew east — to Jerusalem.

He would head out in the evening for the Kosel. Finding his shtender, he would sit down and open sifrei Kabbalah, remaining there for hours. Often he would fix his gaze on the stones of the Kosel, commiserating with the Shechinah’s distress. He yearned with his whole being for the Geulah, deep in thought, occasionally weeping.

As hundreds of mispallelim began to arrive toward dawn, dragging shtenders and chairs, the Kossover Rebbe remained riveted in place, his features still furrowed in concentration.

This summer, that shtender will sit empty. Only now are people becoming aware of what they’ve lost.

Those all-night vigils open one narrow window onto the multifaceted life of the Kossover Rebbe. As the rest of frum society took summer vacation, the Rebbe just moved his office to another locale. But throughout the year, around the clock, he remained on call.

He was born on 18 Teves/January 10, 1958, in Boro Park, where his father, the Kossov-Zalishchik Rebbe, Rav Avraham Yehoshua Heshel Hager ztz”l, had his beis medrash. He learned in Yeshivas Be’er Shmuel in Boro Park, eventually moving to Bnei Brak to learn in Ponevezh and Chachmei Lublin, where he was noticed by Rav Shmuel HaLevi Wosner. The young man merited to be a ben bayis in Rav Wosner’s home. It was also where he began to study hora’ah.The Shevet HaLevi selected him as chassan for his granddaughter Sarah Rochel, the daughter of Rav Chaim Meir Wosner.

The young couple lived near Rav Chaim Kanievsky in Bnei Brak. There, the chassan attended the tishen of his cousin, the Yeshuos Moshe of Vizhnitz, eventually forming a bond. At the request of his mother, the Rebbetzin of Kossov-Zalishchik, the Yeshuos Moshe tested the young man on Ketzos Hachoshen and was very impressed with his knowledge.

After a number of years, the couple returned to America to be near the Kossov-Zalishchik kloiz. Young Rav Hager became renowned as a fiery chassidic mashpia, and he spent a lot of time with the Toras Mordechai of Vizhnitz-Monsey. In 5751, he was appointed to serve as the rav and dayan of the Vizhnitz community in Boro Park, and from then, he became known as a moreh hora’ah in America.

When his father was niftar in 1999, he succeeded him, taking the title Kossover Rebbe. People were drawn to this thin, ascetic Rebbe with fiery eyes that opened a window onto a lofty world. The Rebbe’s Torah, which demanded a lot from his listeners, soon drew throngs to his long tishen to hear his divrei Torah.

His words were not always easy to understand, laced as they were with deep and esoteric Kabbalistic concepts. Thousands who yearned to rise to a world of purity and truth were drawn to him. The tishen soon had to be moved from the beis medrash to the more spacious Bais Rochel hall in Boro Park; even there, the bleachers were quickly filled.

The Rebbe gained renown as a posek and a dayan, as well as a reputation of being fearless to take on thorny halachic challenges presented by modern dilemmas. He developed a long-standing working relationship with Chesed Shel Emes, which was dealing with HIV-related issues as early as the 1980s. He also took strong stands during the Covid pandemic, urging people to daven in socially distant backyard minyanim.

When the Rebbe urged men to abstain from daily immersion in a mikveh, one person objected that he had never missed a day since his bar mitzvah. The Rebbe was said to have replied, “G-d doesn’t care about the Guiness Book of World Records.”

Already as a youth, the Rebbe was known to seek out holiness, investing himself in fervent tefillah. He would later publish two volumes on tefillah titled Avda D’Malka, which became widely popular among chassidic mevakshim.

“When I reached bar mitzvah age,” he once related, “I took upon myself to abandon the trivialities of this world, not to take an interest in them and not to pursue them.”

A frequent theme of the Rebbe’s Torah was the sanctity of Shabbos. He would constantly exhort his listeners to bask in the glow of Shabbos, and he would delve into deep secrets of the holy seventh day. In his final years, the Rebbe published two volumes titled Shabbos Malka Kaddisha. Anyone who witnessed the Rebbe’s Shabbos in his beis medrash could testify to the fire with which he served his Creator on that day.

Rabbi Yosef Meir Hass, a well-known writer and researcher of chassidus who merited to be very close to the Kossover Rebbe ztz”l, shares a glimpse into what attracted him.

“I was a young bochur of just 16 at the time,” Hass relates. “One Friday night, as I was walking in Yerushalayim, I heard singing. I followed it until I came upon an amazing scene. The Rebbe was sitting on a plastic chair, on the street corner, surrounded by about twenty young men. He had them all singing lofty niggunim of Shabbos, igniting their souls.”

Hass was enthralled. He would have many long, deep conversations with the Rebbe, traveling to Jerusalem every summer to spend Shabbos with him.

“Once, I wanted to speak with him about something, and I came into his dining room,” he relates. “To my surprise, I found him sitting at the table, without a kapote or hat. He was wearing woolen tzitzis and slippers, and he was immersed in a sefer by the Rema MiPano. He didn’t even notice that I’d come in.”

This wasn’t a one-off incident. The Kossover Rebbe was also known for his extreme humility. He didn’t have gabbaim in the usual sense, as the term is used in the chassidic community. The people who functioned in that role for him were volunteers drawn from his followers.

Common protocol in chassidic shtiblach calls for the shaliach tzibbur to wait to begin the chazaras hashatz until the rebbe has finished his silent Shemoneh Esreh. But the Kossover Rebbe would have none of that. If he became aware that the shaliach tzibbur was waiting for him, the Rebbe would motion to him to continue without him.

“Sometimes, especially in the days leading up to Shavuos, the Rebbe would be immersed in learning for 14 hours straight,” says Rabbi Hass. “Right after Shacharis, he would delve into a pile of seforim, and toward Minchah, with shkiah at around 9 p.m., the gabbaim would come in and find him in the same position.”

But that is not to say that the Rebbe made himself inaccessible. People would approach him on the street, knock on his front door, call him on the phone from early morning to late at night — and the Rebbe would always answer, never turning anyone away. No matter how complex or arcane the issue, the Rebbe would always try to give a psak or eitzah. Although his illness slowed him down, he still made himself available.

Rabbi Hass relates, “A renowned Boro Park posek recently asked one of the Rebbe’s meshamshim, ‘For several months now, I’m getting a lot more very complicated cases. What happened?’ The answer was simple — ‘The Kossover Rebbe is sick.’

“And now, Boro Park has been left without a shepherd.”

Each year, ahead of the Three Weeks, the Rebbe left his home in Boro Park and came to Eretz Yisrael for what might be termed a “working vacation” —exhausting learning sessions at the Kosel, long trips to kivrei tzaddikim. Those trips gained him a following in Eretz Yisrael every bit as devoted as his chassidim in America. In recent years, he traveled with them to ancient Shilo.

“The Rebbe had a very strong emotional bond with the Makom Hamikdash,” Rabbi Hass relates. “In recent years, the Rebbe heard in the name of Rav Moshe Mordechai of Lelov zy”a, that the souls of the Avos and Imahos dwell at the Kosel at Kabbalas Shabbos. When he learned this, he began to come to the Kosel many hours before Shabbos began and conducted a special avodah there. The Rebbe would pace back and forth in the plaza with his emotions and disquiet showing on his face. From time to time he walked over to the stones of the Wall and leaned on them longingly. It was awe-inspiring. Anyone who saw it cannot forget it.”

Rabbi Hass notes that the Kossover Rebbe took on this practice of visiting Eretz Yisrael in the summer from Rav Moshe Wolfson ztz”l, who also passed away the same week as he did. “Rav Wolfson, with whom the Rebbe was very close, began this tradition, and the Rebbe followed suit.”

Last week, chassidic Jewry in America bid farewell to two of its greatest lights, as the Kossover Rebbe and Rav Moshe Wolfson passed away days apart.

A quiet crowd of thousands escorted the Rebbe through the streets, living testimony to the tremendous impact he had on their souls.

Zechuso yagen aleinu. 

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1019)

The post Left without a Shepherd     first appeared on Mishpacha Magazine.

By Ruti Kepler, with Esty Kempinsky

Thousands of chassidim paid their respects to Rebbetzin Tzipporah Feiga Alter a”h last week, eishes chaver to the Pnei Menachem of Gur zy”a. But her granddaughters merited to know another side, a grandmother who learned, taught, took life seriously yet appreciated a good joke, while leaving behind a formidable legacy

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was during the shivah for our grandfather, Rebbe Pinchas Menachem Alter of Gur zy”a, that his sons decided to title his book of divrei Torah “Pnei Menachem.”

“Saba had many faces,” they remarked (referring to the meaning of title, “Faces of Menachem”). Savta agreed.

“He wasn’t a simple figure,” she said. “It’s hard to eulogize Saba. How could you ever write a book about him? After all, there were so many aspects to his character, and each one was a world of its own.”

On Sunday last week, when we were asked to write about our grandmother, Mrs. Tzipporah Feiga Alter a”h, who passed away at age 97 on 10 Sivan, we faced the same quandary. Born into the chassidish nobility of the Gur court, a great-granddaughter of the Sfas Emes and the daughter-in-law of the Imrei Emes, she merited to know that generation up close. Yet she had the common touch, patiently giving her attention to everyone.

Before “dialectics” and “complex personality” became fashionable terms, she was there, reconciling contradictions and never fazed by human complexity. She was a public figure and a family woman, a talker and a listener. She integrated action with silence, sharpness with sensitivity, beauty with tradition, strict reverence for G-d with a broad-minded intellectual outlook.

She was eloquent when it came to addressing thousands from a podium, while at the same time she shunned publicity, hated flattery and the pomp and ceremony surrounding a rebbishe family. She knew how to make decisions and demands — but never for herself. She was so watchful that her grandchildren — the “eineklach” — not be pampered, not get the impression that they deserve more than others. After all, their grandfather had accepted the role of a servant, not a monarch.

And at the same time, she seemed to take care of everyone. Of young mothers, for whom she set up a stroller gemach, of the elderly women she visited, of the children of the Jerusalem cheder. When mothers complained that the food at the cheder wasn’t adequate, she went to the cheder kitchen herself to make sure that there would be a nutritious and tasty menu.

She could laugh with the women during a break in davening at the beis medrash on Ralbach Street, and she also knew how to thump the table for silence a moment later, when Krias HaTorah started. “Shah, Krias HaTorah!”

Shah, we’re talking about Savta.

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the Gur seminary (high school) in Jerusalem where she taught, she built a Lego model of the Mizbeiach, decades before digital imaging. The focus of her teaching was Sefer Vayikra. Years after she’d retired from teaching, when she heard that one of her great-granddaughters was in eighth grade, she would become animated again, expounding on Olah and Shelamim.

At the seminary, she had a detailed lesson plan for every class. The famed model of the Second Beis Hamikdash at the Holyland Hotel was her favorite spot. She’d visit often, alone or with her granddaughters, looking at it with sparkling eyes as if it were a model of her future home.

“Look how beautiful it is,” she would point with delight at every marble ornament and column. At a certain point, the guides learned to step back when she approached, leaving her to explain the exhibit to visitors instead.

She would explain to her students the significance of the Me’il and Tzitz (the Kohein Gadol’s robe and headplate), Avnet and Choshen (sash and breastplate). At home, we saw the wife of a Kohein Gadol, learning from Saba, learning with him, devoting herself to him, and also knowing how to give him space.

“I’m giving him up,” she told us when Saba accepted the burden of leading the chassidus, bowing under the weight of thousands of followers, transforming from a devoted family man into a public figure, a rebbe.

And her uncanny ability to let him be, to wait for him at home, is something I wish we could take with us.

At home, she was a devoted daughter to her mother-in-law, helping Rebbetzin Feige Mintshe with everything in the 16 years she lived with her. It’s not that “Savta didn’t need privacy,” but she was able to forgo her own needs for what needed to be done. [Rebbetzin Feige Mintshe was the Imrei Emes’s second wife, and mother of the Pnei Menachem. His brothers the Beis Yisrael and the Lev Simcha were from their father’s first wife, Chaya Ruda —Ed.]

She lost two sons, Moshe Bezalel when he was just a child, and years later Rav Yehuda Aryeh, a 27-year-old illui who was severely injured in a car accident on Malchei Yisrael Street and passed away on the first day of Succos in 1988.

As a bereaved mother, Savta bore her suffering with grace. Savta talked to Saba. The two bore their grief together, sitting for hours, talking, talking, and learning. There was no “awareness” in those days, no support groups or public dialogue about bereavement. But Saba and Savta found consolation together. The loss is never forgotten, but her motto was that you recover in order to hold the family together, to continue to live.

IN

her lectures and lessons, she would integrate midrashim, sayings, and parables from all over the Torah, always organized, always succinctly. Straight and to the point. Women would tell us, “When your grandmother stands up to speak and says that she’ll talk for ten minutes, we know that in exactly ten minutes she’ll step away from the podium....”

She participated in the Torah and halachah conversations at the Shabbos table, she asked questions, understood the answers and posed challenging follow-up questions. She didn’t let a subject go until she’d delved into its core.

“Nashim b’mai zachyan [in what merit do women ascend to Olam Haba]?” her grandson Rabbi Avraham Mordechai eulogized at her funeral. “There are women like Savta, whose merit is in the ‘mai [what],’ the power of questioning, of delving deeper, striving for the truth, for what Hashem wants for each of us.”

She knew Torah, she knew Tanach. And yet she always consulted Saba about what to say and how. “I need Korach’s handkerchief,” she would tell him, referencing a darshan who only had one drashah in his repertoire, about parshas Korach. Each time he stood up to speak, he would drop his handkerchief, bend down to pick it up, sigh, and say, “Oy, when Korach was swallowed up in the ground, his handkerchief was swallowed with him, too,” and from there continue with the drashah.

But Savta didn’t just have one drashah; She was a treasure trove of information on every subject.

“Eishes chaver k’chaver,” her son Rav Daniel Chaim Alter eulogized at the funeral. “When Rebbetzin Feige Mintshe died, the Beis Yisrael said of her that there is such a thing as an eishes chaver who is seen as a talmid chacham in her own right. One could say of Ima that she was also like a chaver mamash.”

When Saba became Rebbe, the Shabbos meals at home became shorter. The grandchildren wanted to “speed things up,” so that Saba could get to the tish already — but when they came to the kitchen too quickly for her liking to serve the next course, Savta stopped them with a smile. “Go say divrei Torah,” she would admonish them, sending them back to the table.

Savta was intelligent. Cerebral. Multilingual. Yet she could speak to others in their own language, while always maintaining a high, dignified level. But Savta didn’t just talk. There was no gossip or slander, simply because it wasn’t her level. Women knew that when they came up to her, they had to bring something with them. A new idea they’d encountered, an interesting lecture they’d heard, a novel educational principle.

Even with us granddaughters, she always wanted to hear what we’d learned, what we’d read, what we had to say about such and such. Gossip? She wasn’t interested.

“Why don’t we make blintzes with mushroom sauce for the Shabbos seudah?” she once asked in one of her lectures, staunch in the idea that as much as we might like the trendy and the new, we have to keep alive the good and the old.

Savta managed an enviable balance between the old and the new, the beautiful and the traditional. She laid out an elegant table, down to the exacting rules of etiquette in setting out the cutlery on her pristine tablecloth. Yet there was never a contradiction to the preservation of her Polish minhagim, which she adhered to tenaciously, always serving the same fixed order of gefilte fish, soup, chicken, and compote.

Savta maintained her home with utmost devotion. Her home was her kingdom. She refused to let any helpers into her special space. Visitors? With pleasure. Guests? Without hesitation. But the dishes she would wash herself — at the very most the granddaughters could help. During seudos, the grandchildren served, and as long as her strength held, she would do her own cooking — fish and eggplant salad, soup and chicken, schnitzel and cake.

Years passed before she would let Rabbi Yaakov David Flinker, the attendant who came to make Havdalah on Motzaei Shabbos, stay to wash dishes — but not all the dishes! Just some dishes….

Savta had quite a green thumb and would tend to the plants in her own little mikdash me’at herself, so they grew green and lush and adorned her home — a house of G-d that should be beautiful inside and outside. She would move lovingly from plant to plant, flower to flower, watering them as she spoke to each one.

Savta taught us to love Torah. In fact, she didn’t just teach Torah, she truly loved Torah. When she stood up in the ezras nashim of the Ralbach beis medrash during the break to read Rav Yisrael Najara’s shtar tena’im between HaKadosh Baruch Hu and Knesses Yisrael, we heard her voice, we knew which parts moved her when her voice shook, when it broke on a particular word: “To give her heart and soul to the Torah... With devotion and desire, bidchilu u’rechimu....”

Savta not only appreciated Torah learners, she not only valued their time; she not only married a talmid chacham and raised sons to be talmidei chachamim — she loved learning Torah herself. Understanding it, interacting with it, fulfilling it.

And we saw that and imbibed it ourselves. Our spirituality, as girls, was not limited to making chocolate cheesecake for Shavuos. Our connection to the Torah didn’t run through an intermediary. We earned knowledge of our own. The Torah was hers, too, and ours.

Savta was a serious woman. She took time, people, and words very seriously. It wasn’t uncommon for her to arrive at a simchah hall as the waiters were still folding the napkins and none of the family members were to be found. After all, she’d been invited for seven o’clock….

She didn’t make jokes about life. She took life seriously, practically, weightily. She always did what needed to be done, precisely. She was also a real stickler for grammar, and wouldn’t let her grandchildren get away with recounting some incident with incorrect conjugation.

But despite her profound seriousness, Savta was also full of humor, good nature, and wit, but never in a biting way. There might have been some jokes and witticisms, but there were no barbs, derogatory epithets, or sarcasm. There was genuine patience and human respect even for those less wise than her.

Even in her later years, when Savta found it difficult to remember people’s names and faces, she tried to avoid showing that she didn’t remember her visitors, lest they be offended. With subtle verbal sophistication, she would try to tease out from the conversation where she knew them from.

And Savta knew how to laugh, too.

I heard the following story from a chareidi woman who was one of the pioneers of chareidi female stand-up comedy in Israel, a new genre at a time when such performances were a novelty. “My sister and I decided to produce a comedy show for women,” she told me. “We invested a lot of time and money in writing, editing, rehearsing, marketing — and finally, we got our first gig at a major conference for women. We were so excited.

“We went up on stage, facing row after row of icy, dignified women. In the front row was your grandmother, Rebbetzin Tzipporah. We started the skit we’d invested so much in, and we knew it was really good — but no one laughed.

“We reeled off one gag after another, but the audience seemed unable to unwind, so we awkwardly stumbled through our act. But then, at the next punchline, we heard a hearty, sympathetic laugh erupt from the front row. Your grandmother, Rebbetzin Tzipporah, had started laughing, warmly, joyfully, freely.

“And after that, it was as if the ice was broken, and the entire audience relaxed and allowed themselves to enjoy the performance.”

Such was our Savta, this shrewd woman who could laugh seriously while leaving behind such a rich and multifaceted legacy. A legacy from which there’s something for everyone. Whoever wants is free to take and pass it on to the next generation.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1017)

The post Savta of a Generation   first appeared on Mishpacha Magazine.

Last week, the Jewish world lost a leader.

On Tuesday, the 27th of Iyar, Rabbi Moshe Yehudah Kotlarsky z”l embarked on his final journey among thousands of journeys.

As the vice-chairman of Merkos L’lnyonei Chinuch, Rabbi Kotlarsky oversaw the operations of some 5,000 Chabad centers worldwide. In a single week, he could be in San Diego, Krakow, London, and Philadelphia, traveling wherever he was needed — which was wherever a Jewish soul was present.

Rabbi Kotlarsky was also the director of the International Conference of Chabad-Lubavitch Emissaries, otherwise known as the “shluchim conference” or “shluchos conference” respectively.

There he’d stand, before thousands of shluchim, delivering impassioned remarks with the confidence and energy that propelled him to accomplish all that he did. He would then take “roll call,” paying tribute to shluchim in each location, identifying them by the country or state in which they were stationed.

“The shluchim from Belgium, please stand up. The shluchim from Azerbaijan, please stand up. The shluchim from Finland…”

And the crowd would cheer, applauding those who sacrificed every convenience to service the Jews in the most far-flung places.

Dedicated as he was, Rabbi Kotlarsky never saw himself, or his position, as authoritative at all. In a sense, he was the greatest of the shluchim — overseeing thousands of emissaries but attributing the entirety of his accomplishments to his meshaleiach — the one who sent them all.

The Rebbe.

From the youngest age, Rabbi Kotlarsky greatly admired the man whose speeches he didn’t fully understand, but whose energy uplifted him all the same.

Speaking to Mishpacha in June 2021, Rabbi Kotlarsky shared the following story: “It was the early 1950s, and I was about six, maybe seven years old. There were only a handful of children in Crown Heights back then, and we all wanted the zechus of doing something for the Rebbe, to connect with him.

“We soon figured out that the best way to interact with him was to hold the door open for him, the large outer door of 770. This way he would look at you and say, ‘Yasher koach.’ But I had a better idea — if I opened the door after Kiddush Levanah, I would get a ‘Yasher koach, a gutte voch, un a gutten chodesh,’ all in one. It was a bargain.”

And so that Motzaei Shabbos, a young Moshe Kotlarsky opened the door after Minchah and remained there, protecting it until after Maariv. He remained stationed at the door, as all the other chassidim proceeded outside to recite Kiddush Levanah along with the Rebbe. Finally, the Rebbe began making his way toward the door.

“The Rebbe came back and looked at me. ‘Were you mekadesh levanah yet, or were you too busy holding the door?’ he asked gently. I admitted that I hadn’t yet recited the tefillah. The Rebbe instructed me to go get a siddur and say Kiddush Levanah, then I was to come to his room.

“I knocked at the door and he opened it, a broad smile on his face. ‘Yasher koach, a gutte voch, a gutten chodesh,’ he said.”

Perhaps it was this ingenuity that inspired the Rebbe’s decision to guide the Kotlarskys on a path quite different from that of most other chassidim.

When Moshe married Rivka Kazen, the daughter of one of the Rebbe’s first shluchim, he, together with his new wife, approached the Rebbe, awaiting instruction as to where to do shlichus.

“We said to the Rebbe that we would go anywhere he wanted us, distance was no obstacle, language was no barrier.”

But keen as they were on going anywhere in the world for the sake of their Rebbe, the Rebbe had other plans.

Rabbi Moshe Kotlarsky’s shlichus was to take place in Crown Heights. From there, he’d spread light to the whole world.

With time he’d assume the role of vice-chairman of Merkos, and in that capacity, spearheaded initiatives such as Chabad on Campus International, which operates on over 230 campuses worldwide, and the Rohr Jewish Learning Institute (JLI). He also founded Merkos 302, a division led by his son Rabbi Mendy Kotlarsky, which has launched programs in thousands of locations worldwide including the CTeen: Chabad Teen Network, Chabad Young Professionals, CKids, Chabad on Call, Mitzvah Society networks, and more.

In his decades of avodas hakodesh, Rabbi Kotlarsky got to see his fair share of stunning instances of siyata d’Shmaya. He shared one such incredible tale.

“The Rebbe once instructed me to go to the Caribbean island of Curacao. When I arrived on the island, I asked a taxi driver to take me to the Jewish center, and after meeting a few locals, I stepped into the street. A fellow hurried over to me and asked, ‘Why are you here?’

“I said, ‘The Lubavitcher Rebbe sent me.’

“The man’s eyes widened in astonishment. ‘Then you came for me.’

“He told me his story. He’d been raised on the island unaware of his Jewishness, but before her death, his grandmother told him that he must marry a Jewish woman.

“She left him with another piece of advice. If ever he encountered any sort of problem, he was to contact the Lubavitcher Rebbe in Brooklyn.

“ ‘I married a Jewish woman and we have a son and a daughter,’ he told me.

“The fellow explained that the local educational system was under control of the Church, and prayer was part of the school day. When the Catholic children prayed, the Jewish children had been allowed to play ball.

“But there was a new bishop who decided that every student must participate in the religious service, and at the beginning of this year, the headmaster forced his son to join. ‘My son refused to go to church, and the headmaster tried to prod him inside,’ the man said. ‘My son resisted, and in the scuffle that ensued, the headmaster ended up on the floor.’

“The man’s son was immediately suspended and had nowhere to go to school.

‘Last night, my grandmother appeared in a dream and reminded me about the Lubavitcher Rebbe. It’s a miracle that you’re here!’ ”

Rabbi Kotlarsky traveled back to New York with the gentleman, who spent Purim in Crown Heights and enrolled his son at the Lubavitch yeshivah.

The man was exhilarated by the experience, and when he returned to Curacao, he wrote a thank-you letter to the Rebbe. He expressed his gratitude and signed off, You touched the heart of a small Jew from a small island.

Rabbi Kotlarsky kept a copy of the Hebrew, typewritten response, to which the Rebbe had added a handwritten annotation with instructions to his secretary, Rabbi Nissan Mindel, to translate into English: “Every Jew carries a piece of the Divine with him, as explained in Tanya, chapter 2… so there is no such thing as a small Jew, as you refer to yourself.”

Rabbi Moshe Yehudah Kotlarsky has completed a 74-year long shlichus. And if he had one final message to the Jews of Belgium, Azerbaijan, Finland, and everywhere else in the world it would be: “See Tanya, chapter 2. There is no such thing as a small Jew…” 

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1015)

The post No Jew Too Small first appeared on Mishpacha Magazine.

Look up Dr. Yosef Walder a”h, who was niftar on 16 Adar II at 73, and you’ll find phrases like, “brilliant scientist,” “innovative entrepreneur,” and “distinguished philanthropist.” Dr. Walder’s sons give us deeper insight into who this man was, what made him so unique, and what it is that the world lost when he passed.

Joseph Walder was born in 1951 in Philadelphia; his father was a furniture salesman, and a child of immigrants.

The family moved to suburban Chicago, where Joe grew up. Joe had a passion for science from the very beginning, and his father built him a basement chemistry lab for homemade experiments. He went on to earn both an MD and a PhD from Northwestern, eventually becoming a professor of biochemistry at the University of Iowa College of Medicine.

In 1987, he established Integrated DNA Technology (IDT — not to be confused with Howard Jonas’s communications company), which would grow over the years to become the leading provider of synthetic RNA and DNA for life-sciences research. IDT’s products and services are now used in virtually all aspects of biomedical research around the globe. An inspiring encounter with Torah Judaism in Skokie on Purim 1994 set him on a course of increased observance. He immediately moved to an apartment near the Skokie Kollel and Chabad, while still making the three-hour-plus commute back to his other home in Iowa City, near the company, as needed. About a year later, Dr. Yosef met his future wife Shira Malka, and in 1998, the family moved to a house in Chicago, where they identified some of the most important needs of the Jewish community that they set out to fill.

While the beneficiaries of Dr. Walder’s generosity span the globe, it is his hometown of Chicago and the surrounding areas that reaped the most from his transformative visions — Walder Education, Walder Science, and the Kehillah Fund to name a few.

“You know what he meant to you,” his son Mordechai said to the locals at the levayah, “but I don’t know if you know what you meant to him.”

Dr. Walder saw his chesed as merely “coming full circle,” for he felt an eternal debt of gratitude to the community that introduced him to Yiddishkeit.

Everything he accomplished was at the side of his life’s partner, Mrs. Shira Malka Walder. When she joined IDT, Dr. Walder split his own office so she could have her own. The tzedakah was theirs.

“Whenever he made a trip to the IDT Iowa branch,” remembers his son Moshe Chaim, “he would return for Shabbos and say he first had to stop at the local flower store to buy flowers for his ‘precious meideleh.’ ”

When it came to his scientific advancements, Dr. Walder’s number one priority was using the proceeds to support the Jewish community — through both his own innovative projects and his contributions to others’. It was never about how much he could make, but how much he could give. He’d pledge significant contributions in advance, as though he were saying to Hashem, “I am making myself into a kli to give, fill me up so I can do it!”

At the levayah, Moshe Chaim recalls a powerful line from Rabbi Gadi Levy: “The Walders donated most of what they earned.”

With such a “lishmah” motor powering the company, it is no coincidence that over the next two decades, IDT blossomed into the world’s leading manufacturer of high-quality, custom synthetic DNA (known as oligos). Today, this product has become an essential tool in genetic research and finding cures for diseases, a testament to Dr. Walder’s pioneering efforts.

In 2018, the Walders decided to sell IDT. The sale’s proceeds were used to establish the Walder Foundation — which supports Jewish life, science innovation, the performing arts, migration and immigrant communities, and environmental sustainability, among other causes.

“Wherever I go,” says Moshe Chaim, “when people realize who my father is, they beam with praise and tell me how lucky I am to be his son. Mordechai, my sister Kathryn, and I feel so blessed to have been raised in the home of someone so incredible. I now live in Yerushalayim with my wife and children, and I hope to raise them to remember their grandfather by following the lessons that he embodied for the world.”

Those lessons can be distilled into four main categories: humility, chesed, attention, and emunah. Dr. Yosef Walder parlayed those lessons into a life of accomplishment.

The post He Held the Secrets to Success first appeared on Mishpacha Magazine.

F

or 53 years, the house on 56th Street held the most unlikely pair — and over those five decades, their love and friendship only deepened.

In many ways, Dr. Marvin Schick and my grandfather, Rabbi Shmuel Hoch, zichronam livrachah — could not have been more different. Dr. Schick was a fiery activist, brilliant professor, and relentless klal advocate; my grandfather was a soft-spoken talmid chacham, devoted Radziner gabbai, and ever-in-awe talmid of Rav Hutner.

Yet for half a century, they not only lived under the same roof, they developed a yedidus that continues to span families and generations.

For as long as I can remember, my second-favorite place on Earth (after home) was the spacious house with the white siding on 56th Street.

It wasn’t just because my grandparents lived on the top floor, plying us with Tofutti Cuties, Cornell lemon soda, and a ceaseless outpouring of love.

Downstairs, on the first floor, lived Marvin and Malka Schick — our third set of grandparents.

On paper, the Schicks were my grandparents’ tenants. In reality, they were — and remain — beloved family members: celebrating our joys, sharing in our nachas, and supporting us through crises in the most practical, meaningful ways.

The open inner staircase typified the families’ relationship.

“Bracha!” Malka Schick tblch”t, would call up the stairs every Friday night after candlelighting.

“We’re coming, we’re coming,” my babi, Mrs. Bracha Hoch tblch”t, would call back.

Not a Shabbos went by without us heading down the green-carpeted stairs and spending time: updating, tsheppering, and of course — debating. Lots of debating.

As a child, I sensed the Schicks were special: the passion, intelligence, and clarity of their convictions. There was a strength in their home that was palpable.

It was only when I got older that I realized what a giant I merited to know. The warm and fuzzy Zeidy Number Three whom I called “Marvin” was a towering askan — a one-man powerhouse who used every fiber of his intellect, oratory, and astounding breadth of knowledge to help his people.

When I was a teenager, the Schicks opened my eyes to a sparkling world of spirit and wit. Around their Shabbos table, there was little “narishe” talk about people or stuff — just a fast-moving, breathtakingly articulate exchange of ideas (and lots of laughs). In the Schick family, verbal sparring is an art. Newcomers to this world could only sit, open-mouthed, and squint as they concentrated, trying to keep up with the whizzing, 120-mph discussion.

But these were not the off-the-cuff opinions of ignorant men who needed a soapbox.

Marvin’s positions (and those of his children) were the product of rigorous factual analysis; for every counterargument you made, he had an instant, hard-to-refute response.

Years later, during the time I wrote regularly for weekly magazines, he would always ask me what I was working on. An askan to the core whose piercing op-eds and columns numbered in the hundreds, Marvin saw writing as a powerful conduit, and I sensed his pride in my work.

Marvin’s achievements as an askan are too many to count. Perhaps his most extraordinary feat was the single-handed revival of his alma mater, RJJ — a dying yeshivah gasping its last. After 40 years of his devoted presidency of Yeshivas Rabbeinu Yaakov Yosef, the institution today is thriving, with four schools located across New York and New Jersey.

Money and power meant little to Marvin; he was hungry for truth.

His decades-long success as an activist stemmed from an unshakable belief in every cause he undertook — and from his complete submission to his “bosses,” gedolei Torah such as Rav Aharon Kotler, with whom he shared an unusually close relationship.

Marvin’s fire was contagious, his passion unignorable. He loved HaKadosh Baruch Hu; he loved Klal Yisrael; he loved his community — and he used every waking moment of his life to further their cause.

Upstairs, a very different kind of giant resided.

My Zeidy, Rav Shmuel, was the kind of person you could set your clock by. For decades, he awoke at 5 a.m. sharp — he would daven with a minyan, drive one and a half hours to work in New Jersey, and come home with enough time to put the kids to sleep and have a two-hour seder at the dining room table.

As a bochur, Zeidy served as a role model and chavrusa for some of today’s Torah giants, including the Novominsker Rebbe ztz”l and ybdlch”t Rav Yeruchem Olshin, Rav Lipa Geldwerth, and Rav Berel Shachar. For these children of survivors, he was a novelty: an “Amerikanishe” bochur who lived and breathed Torah; a budding talmid chacham of whom Rav Avigdor Miller ztz”l said, “When Shmuel Hoch left the beis medrash, the walls cried.”

But Zeidy never really left the beis medrash. Even as he built an impressive career as a chemist — he patented numerous inventions during his four decades at Tenneco — his Torah and avodah always took front and center. Besides his regular chaburos, shiurim, and sedorim, Zeidy became a pivotal supporter of numerous mosdos — quietly giving away thousands of dollars each year.

He was singularly dedicated to his alma mater, Yeshivas Rabbeinu Chaim Berlin. In his younger years, when he had less money to give, he gave weeks of his life — calling donors, arranging parlor meetings, and coordinating appeals in shul.

His discipline was such that at age 70, after decades of moderately indulging his sweet tooth with ice cream and cakes (how he loved ice cream!), when his doctor told him he needed to lose weight to stay healthy, he stopped eating sugar, cold turkey.

Remarkably, despite his diligence and self-mastery, Zeidy epitomized sweetness and eidelkeit. In the 30-plus years I was zocheh to know him, I heard him shout once — when my little sister refused to fasten her seat belt. His oh-so-rare moments of anger stemmed never from ego, but from a deep-seated concern for our well-being.

When you sat with him, sharing the nitty-gritty details of your life (the ones only grandparents really care about), there was no sense of tension or rush; you felt he had all the time in the world. His time management was about priorities — and spending time with eineklach was a priority.

A fellow once rear-ended Zeidy’s car in the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel. He approached my grandfather, sweating and bracing for a rant. Instead, he found himself being comforted and calmed; Zeidy reassured him that it was no big deal.

In his final years, when dementia robbed him of his memory and cognition, there were a select few things that would reliably bring Zeidy to life: photos of his rebbi, Rav Hutner (“the Rosh Yeshivah!” he’d say, with a reverence that never waned); learning Chumash (even in the final throes of dementia, he glowed as he finished pesukim and teitshed them); and his favorite zemiros — the ones he’d sung every Shabbos of his life, in his deep, resonant baritone.

Nafsho keshurah b’nafsho. To me, it is no coincidence that after half a century of living together, Rabbi Shmuel Hoch and Dr. Marvin Schick took leave of This World less than 30 days apart.

Their personalities (and politics!) could not have been more different — but as the years went by, the love and respect they had for each other only grew.

Zeidy deeply admired Marvin’s complete dedication to and sweeping impact on Klal Yisrael; Marvin cherished Zeidy for his hasmadah, sweetness, and unyielding fealty to halachah.

On Friday nights at my Babi and Zeidy, we’d enjoy a seudah enveloped in peace — the table set in the exact same pattern, the predictable zemiros we loved, the steady, rhythmic shalom bayis we’d come to know well. It was comfort food for the soul.

Then, after bentshing, the Schicks would come up for dessert — and the sparks would start flying. Passion! Conviction! A battle for truth! We were now in the company of His warriors, and you could not help but feel yourself light up with purpose and mission.

For 53 years, the house on 56th Street was the consummate marriage of fire and water — a wellspring of conviction and consistency, action and erlichkeit, vitality and steadfastness.

From within its doors emerged an unstoppable force that has secured generations. Now, it stands bereft of two giants — two fiercely loyal soldiers of HaKadosh Baruch Hu who used their unique kochos hanefesh to build legacies that endure.

We — the Hoch and Schick families — are determined to carry those legacies on.

Yehi zichram baruch.

L’illui nishmasam Meir ben Dovid Yosef and Shmuel ben Nissan.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1009)

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