Rabbi Zechariah Wallerstein always kept his eye on the goal, knowing the potential was always there for transformation

Photos: Dmitriy Kalinin

IT didn’t take much

to get seventh-grader Zechariah Wallerstein to stare out of his classroom window. Athletic and musically inclined, he was a popular kid, whose big heart and infectious smile were obvious from the moment you met him. But academics weren’t his strong suit, and if the day’s lesson wasn’t compelling, his attention easily wandered.

The youngster was fascinated by the butterflies that filled a field adjacent to the yeshivah building, and one day he asked his rebbi if he could explain why Hashem had created the miracle process by which the homely caterpillar metamorphoses into a magnificent butterfly. “Don’t ask questions about Hashem!” came the rebbi’s annoyed retort. Undeterred, after school that day, Zechariah ran off to the local library, where he studied everything there was to know about how a caterpillar morphs into a butterfly.

The natural world is brimming with miracles, but the transmutation of caterpillar into butterfly is in a class of its own. It conveys a singular message of unlimited possibility and potential, proof positive that if one creature can literally transform into another one entirely, then nothing at all is fixed or immutable. Everything — everything — is possible in Hashem’s world.

“Rabbi Wallerstein told me to be a Nachshon.” Jeff Stern, Rabbi Wallerstein, and Yanky Elefant

Missing Rebbi

It was the belief in unlimited potential and the power to change that exemplified the life of the Monsey grade-schooler who grew up to become Rabbi Zechariah Wallerstein,  whose untimely passing last week at age 64 after a brief illness, was a devastating loss. Recreating himself time after time, he came to touch the lives of an ever-widening circle of fellow Jews, helping to release a thousand other butterflies to spread their wings and soar. His brother-in-law and close collaborator, Yanky Elefant, described him as someone “who simply didn’t see what he was looking at in front of him. He only saw potential.”

After high school, Zechariah studied in Brooklyn’s Mirrer Yeshivah. His winning personality earned him lots of friends, but, as one contemporary recalls, “no one wanted him as their sports league captain because with his big heart, he’d choose the guys no one else would.” A drummer and a hoopster, he was one of the cool guys, not likely headed for a career in klei kodesh, and when at age 20, he married Estee Elefant, he planned to join his father in his plastic bag business. But Yitzchok Wallerstein saw something in his son Zechariah that perhaps others hadn’t, and pushed him to spend his mornings teaching before coming into the business in the afternoon.

For the next 35 years, Reb Zechariah did precisely that, never taking a penny from teaching. Growing up, Zechariah had felt the sting of being taught by people ill-suited for the classroom — a rebbi once assured Zechariah that he’d never amount to anything more than a “large sewage rat” — and he was determined to be a major force for good in the lives of his young charges.