"At first I called it the Shoel Umeishiv hotline, but a lot of boys don’t know what a shoel umeishiv is, so we changed it to Dial-a-Rebbi"

Rabbi Yaakov Moshe Resnick is the founder and director of the Shoel Umeishiv/Dial-a-Rebbi hotline. He lives in Cleveland, Ohio.

What I do: I run a Dial-a-Rebbi hotline for boys, 856-40-REBBI.

What that means

Kids come home from school with homework or chazarah, and if they have a question or need some help, ideally they turn to their father or older brother. But what about the boy whose father isn’t home — he’s working late, or the parents are divorced — or whose father doesn’t know the material? That’s where the Dial-a-Rebbi hotline comes in, it’s like a beis horaah line for students with schoolwork. We have rebbeim ready to answer any schoolwork-related questions: helping with a Rashi, teitshing a mishnah, reading a few lines of Gemara, answering a stirah between two gemaras. New York City has Dial-a-Teacher, a program that helps public school kids with homework. Dial-a-Rebbi is for questions in limudei kodesh — a free hotline for schoolwork questions.

When I came up with the idea

I learn with bochurim and younger boys once a week or so; I’ve been doing it for years. So many parents wanted to find a good chavrusa for their kid, so I made these lists of who’s available to be a chavrusa and I went into chavrusashaft shadchanus. When a kid needs a chavrusa, I look at my list to see who’s available, who’d be the perfect match, and I arrange it. I’ve made 100 shidduchim so far. Last Pesach, I noticed there were a lot of boys who didn’t need a chavrusa, but who could use someone to talk to in learning when a question came up. That’s how I got the idea.

How I got started

At first it was just local, for the boys here in Cleveland, and I asked some rebbeim to be meishivim. We did a test run — I set up a hotline that was open for half an hour a night, and I told local menahalim about it, because that was the easiest way to spread the word.