Page 37 - HaMizrachi Yom Yerushalayim - Shavuot 5782 USA

Tell us about your childhood and the years you were
active in Bnei Akiva. How did those years shape the future
direction of your life?
Childhood begins on January 1, 1938 – the day of my pidyon haben.
My grandfather, my father’s father, who had come to America
as a young kid in 1900, was a frum Jew who was never mechalel
shabbos. And so for my pidyon haben, he brought a very big rabbi,
Rabbi Yaakov Meskin, the man who ruled that the agunot of the
Titanic could remarry, and he was the Kohen who redeemed me.
The power of Torah is such that generations later I was taking
attendance in a class of mine in Jerusalem and I came to the
name “Rachel Meskin”. I looked at her and asked: “You’re a great-
granddaughter?” She said “Yes.” I started to cry, and she started to
cry. Everyone looked at us and said “what are we crying about?”
This is the power of Torah.
Before he came to America, my mother’s father learned in
Volozhin; he knew Gemaras by heart. But my mother is the only
one of his six children that had any real Jewish feeling. When it Rabbi Rakeffet and Rav Soloveitchik at Rabbi Rakeffet's wedding, 1960
was time for me to go to school, in 1943, I went to public school. – Italians and Irish. Around the corner, on the other side of the
Who ever heard of a yeshivah day school in 1943? But she also put building, lived Mr. Gabriel Weinstein z”l. On Shabbat he would
me in a cheder a few times a week. It was mostly a waste of time, come home from work, make kiddush and sit down to learn
but I knew I was Jewish.
Gemara. Since my father could barely read Hebrew, he would
In public school I was a wild kid, so the teacher, a Jewish woman help me with Gemara!
named Ms. Delaraya (a member of the Spanish Portuguese The only place you could get a proper Jewish environment was
Synagogue), sent for my mother. She said: “Look, the class is Bnei Akiva. We were a handful of religious kids out of 700,000
Jewish, Irish Catholic, Italian. Your son learns so quickly, he goes Jews in New York. Bnei Akiva met at the other end of Crotona Park
wild – it’s a waste of time for him. There’s a Jewish parochial in the Bronx in a Modern Orthodox shul, Kehillat Israel. It was
school a few blocks away from here. You should send him there; a long walk; my wife, Malkah, walked even further to get there.
the dual curriculum will occupy his mind.” So my mother sent
me to Yeshiva Rabbeinu Yisrael Salanter. There was very little From the yeshivah, I got a tremendous love for Torah, halachah
money at the time; my father was a postman and women didn’t and learning. A day hasn’t gone by since the seventh grade that I
work in those days. So they arranged for me to go to Salanter haven’t learned Gemara! But Bnei Akiva gave me something else
for $5 a month. that the yeshivah did not give me: the belief in Am Yisrael B’Eretz
Yisrael al pi Torat Yisrael (the people of Israel in the Land of Israel
At Salanter my teachers were mostly “lo yitzlachim,” people who according to the Torah of Israel) as the central goal of my life.
had learned Torah in their youth in Europe, people who tried to
sell insurance but didn’t succeed, so they became teachers. They The incredible people I met at Bnei Akiva – it’s overwhelming!
were mostly mechalelei shabbos (Shabbat violators) but they knew What they built here, after they came on Aliyah, is unbelievable.
Hebrew and they knew how to learn. When I joined, the rosh ken (head counselor) was Rina Buchwald,
Rabbi Ephi Buchwald’s older sister, who lives today in Bayit Vegan.
In seventh grade, a miracle happened. And this is why, though A truly inspiring person! And Miriam Beinhorn Levinger zt”l, my
I consider myself the greatest Zionist in the world, we still have wife’s madrichah – we were madrichim together – changed many
to worry about the Jews in the Diaspora. If all the survivors people’s lives. At the age of 17 she said “you have a choice in life
of the Mir Yeshiva had gone on Aliyah after World War II, I – to be another social security number or to change the course of
wouldn’t be sitting here today! As it was, half of the Mir moved the history of our people. I want to change the course of history!”
to Israel and established the Mir Yeshiva there, and half went to I’ve quoted her often, and many people told me that they made
America, where they began teaching at schools like Salanter to Aliyah because of Miriam’s influence. She came on Aliyah, went to
make a parnossa. In seventh grade, my rebbe was Rabbi Gershon nursing school, and married Rabbi Moshe Levinger z”l. Chevron,
Yankelovitch; he didn’t speak a word of English and I didn’t speak Kiryat Arba, Yehuda and Shomron – everything we have today
a word of Yiddish! But I learned, and the rest is history. goes back to the Levingers! Her granddaughter just completed
People today don’t understand my generation. I’m not a ba’al her doctorate on the role of women in the settlement movement
teshuva; our homes were kosher, our parents were “Jewish in Yehuda and Shomron.
conscious,” but there was no concept of halachah, of the laws of Another unbelievable person I knew from Bnei Akiva was Rabbi
Shabbat; everyone worked half the day on Shabbat. I don’t think Avraham Silbert zt”l. With his wife Shoshana, they came on Aliyah
there were ten shomer Shabbat families outside of Rabbi Moshe and built Be’er Sheva. Today Be’er Sheva is a city filled with Torah;
Bick’s small community in the East Bronx. In my building, 2115 before they got there, there was nothing. He built a high school,
Washington Avenue, we had a lot of Jews, but also Catholics a yeshivah – he transformed a city! And Rabbi Shlomo Merzel zt”l,

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