***

“I had no idea what it meant, what I was getting myself in to,” Rabbi Kaufman throws his head back and laughs. He is a tall man, with an air that is somehow both easygoing and dignified.

Two decades later, he is able to smile at the transition, but back then it was overwhelming.

A veteran Flatbush resident tells me how Rav Ahron Kaufman seemed to be the last person looking for a career change. “He had it made, saying a shiur in a good yeshivah, successful within the beis medrash, and also giving time to struggling boys. On his ‘day off,’ on Shabbos, he had a minyan he’d established for them. He was doing it all.”

Reb Ahron remembers that minyan. “Yeah, back then my family thought they knew what mesirus nefesh meant, because after we finished davening on Leil Shabbos, I hosted a seudah in our makeshift shul for the boys, and my family waited for me at home to start the family seudah.”

But once the yeshivah in Waterbury was launched, the Kaufman family would develop a new understanding of the term.

Rav Ahron had spent years in the beis medrash, trained in explaining the fine points of a Ketzos, but the Waterbury experiment sent him into a whole new dimension.

The founding group of talmidim included some of his own talmidim from Far Rockaway, returning from Eretz Yisrael. Everyone was welcome. There were no alef bochurim or beis bochurim, no intensive background checks; if you were a teenage boy and wanted to give it a try, Yeshiva Ateres Shmuel of Waterbury was your place. The new rosh yeshivah perceived that the presence of talmidei chachamim would give the new settlement its heart, and he welcomed a kollel as well.

“And one of the greatest things that happened to us, real siyata d’Shmaya, was that a talmid of mine, a real choshuve yungerman named Rav Daniel Kalish, joined us. He’s a star, and he’s been a big part of the yeshivah’s success. Today he runs the high school and has emerged as a sought-after expert to mosdos and families across America. Not too many yeshivos have people like him on staff.”

Reb Ahron had said shiur before. He’d dealt with talmidim privately before. But now he was also responsible for fundraising and community building, worrying about meals and bedtimes and dealing with municipal inspectors who came to tell him that there were too many boys per house. It was like climbing onto a moving carousel that keeps picking up speed, he recalls: The realization of what his new role entailed might have overwhelmed him if he’d had time to think about it.

But there wasn’t much time to think. Back then it was more about survival. The rosh yeshivah was sleeping on a couch in his office. The family car had remained with the rebbetzin in Flatbush and Reb Ahron found himself using personal credit cards to finance the yeshivah.

“It was a difficult time, for my rebbetzin as much as for me. She went to speak to her father about it.”

Rebbetzin Adina Kaufman’s father — the rosh yeshivah’s father-in-law — is Rav Feivel Cohen, one of America’s preeminent rabbanim and poskim. Rav Feivel heard his daughter’s story and shrugged. “You’re very capable, you can handle it. You’ll be okay.”

The posek had ruled.

As the rosh yeshivah recalls those early challenges, he seems to anticipate my question: Why? How come? What drove him to leave his own family for six days a week and build a yeshivah when there were so many who doubted if the yeshivah was necessary, if it was a good idea, or if it could endure?

Instead of addressing it directly, he shares his own story. It’s some answer.

***

Ronnie Kaufman was a Yeshiva of Flatbush all-star: tall, handsome, good student, good ball player. As he grew older he was active in the Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry and Bnei Akiva, the sort of boy who emptied his bank account in 1967 and donated his bar mitzvah money to help Israeli soldiers.

Ronnie’s Hungarian-born father — he’d lived in Satmar and Munkacs — was a survivor, while his mother was American, herself an alumna of Yeshiva of Flatbush. They raised their children to respect all Jews, and when Ronnie and his friends wanted to adapt their schedule to include more learning, his parents encouraged it.

The Kaufman family lived on Flatbush’s East 7th Street, across the street from a businessman named Reb Avrohom Fruchthandler. As a little boy, Ronnie wasn’t fully aware of his neighbor’s relationship with Rav Yitzchak Hutner and Yeshivas Rabbeinu Chaim Berlin, but he was able to sense something different about the Fruchthandler family. “We talk so much about the hashpaah, the effect, of a ben Torah,” Rav Ahron reflects. “Reb Avrohom and his family had this powerful, intangible impact on our family. Without noticing it, we also started to want that. We wanted to be real bnei Torah.”

After graduating from elementary school, Ronnie Kaufman and his friends decided to make the unexpected jump and try to earn acceptance to Mesivta Rabbeinu Chaim Berlin.

“We prepared the Gemara, perek hamafkid, and were tested by the menahel, Rav Chaim Segal. We did well, and we were accepted.”

Chaim Berlin presented a bit of a culture shock. “I remember asking a classmate where the ‘trop’ were for the Gemara, it was fairly new to me.”

The ninth-grade rebbi asked all the new students which yeshivah ketanah they had attended. “Everyone else understood that he meant elementary school,” Rabbi Kaufman remembers, “but I didn’t. When he asked me, I confidently explained that I had gone to a ‘yeshivah gedolah,’ a very big school with five parallel classes. I was,” Rabbi Kaufman smiles broadly, “out to lunch, as they say these days.”

But after that rough beginning, the bright teenager who was drawn to in-depth learning hit his stride.

“Rabbi Segal got us. He understood us. Instead of telling us what to do, he taught us to think. Me and my buddies didn’t wear hats during davening, because that wasn’t where we came from, so he called us over and showed us the Mishneh Berurah that says that wearing a hat during tefillah is a sign of respect. I was a wise-guy, and I told him that it was true in Europe, but in America, hats were no longer seen that way, and the halachah didn’t apply. He listened to my argument, and then asked me, ‘Okay, so whom do you consider a gadol?’ I instantly told him that our gadol was Rav Yoshe Ber Soloveitchik. ‘Great,’ Rabbi Segal said, ‘Does he wear a hat during davening? How come?’ I said that Rav Yoshe Ber was an old-timer. “Okay, so who’s a rabbi you respect?’ I confidently responded that our shul rabbi, Rabbi Solomon Scharfman, was a role model. He was an effective, dynamic star of the American rabbinate. ‘Rabbi Sharfman also wears a hat, no?’ Rabbi Segal persisted. ‘Why do you think that is?” He left me with that question — having successfully conveyed the point that people of dignity behaved a certain way, one I should aspire to as well.”

With time Ronnie became Ahron, and Ahron became high school valedictorian. He joined the beis medrash of Yeshivas Rabbeinu Chaim Berlin, then traveled to its satellite Pachad Yitzchak in Eretz Yisrael, where he became a talmid of Rav Hutner’s son-in-law Rav Yonasan David.

“During my high schools years, I only knew Rav Hutner from a distance; he was already living in Eretz Yisrael, and would come visit, but there was a tremendous aura around him, a yiras hakovod, and he wasn’t so approachable. On one of those visits, he said a shiur on Chezkas Habatim and I had a kushya. I wanted very much to ask it to him directly, and Rav Yonasan, who was visiting along with his father-in-law, encouraged me to go over. With trepidation, I went over and introduced myself and the rosh yeshivah said something cryptic: ‘I know who you are; I’ve been watching you since you were in ninth grade.’ I didn’t understand what he meant. Not at that time.”

During his years in Eretz Yisrael, Reb Ahron would develop a close relationship with Rav Hutner. In time, Rav Hutner would begin sharing chinuch insights with the young talmid.

Reb Ahron married a bas talmid chacham — his father-in-law, Reb Feivel, is himself a prize talmid of Rav Hutner’s — and after learning in kollel in Yerushalayim, he moved back and became a successful maggid shiur.

It seemed the perfect story: hard work, diligence and focus paying off, a bochur from outside the system breaking his way in and rising to the top.

But then something odd happened.

In the follow-up to that 1999 Jewish Observer article, Rav Yaakov Bender wrote an article of his own. In it, he urged yeshivos to adopt more lenient acceptance policies and welcome those boys who wanted to come learn. He pleaded with the wider community to prevent yeshivos from becoming exclusive clubs for the very bright or well-connected. Rabbi Bender included a story about a few boys who wanted to enroll in the mesivta of Chaim Berlin after learning in a more modern elementary school.

A group of Chaim Berlin parents, Rabbi Bender wrote, put intense pressure on Rabbi Segal not to accept the group, feeling that they would introduce a negative influence to the yeshivah and weaken the overall level. Rabbi Segal resisted their advice, and the parents drew a line in the sand: If Rabbi Segal would accept the boys, they would pull their own sons out of the yeshivah and send them elsewhere.

The yeshivah was relatively new to Flatbush, still working hard to establish itself as a serious makom Torah, and Rabbi Segal went to discuss his dilemma with the rosh yeshivah, Rav Hutner.

“A yeshivah,” Rav Hutner told him, “is not a business. If bochurim want to come learn Torah, you have to take them. If parents choose to remove their sons because of that, then so be it.”

Rabbi Segal had his answer. He gave the bochurim a bechinah, and they did quite poorly; they clearly weren’t on the level of the yeshivah. But he sensed a genuine desire to learn and accepted them anyway, in line with Rav Hutner’s advice.

Rabbi Bender concluded the story by saying that all the bochurim had become bnei Torah and one was a preeminent maggid shiur.

Rabbi Kaufman read the story and wondered who the boys were. People were calling him to say, “Hey, I read the story about you,” but he was certain that the story was not his own. After all, he’d done well on his bechinah.

Finally, he called Rabbi Bender, who conceded that he’d heard the story from a close talmid of Rav Chaim Segal — and the story was indeed about Rabbi Kaufman and his friends.

Perplexed, Reb Ahron drove to visit Rabbi Segal, who was already unwell.

“Yes,” the menahel said, “the story is about you.”

“But I did well on my bechinah!”

Rabbi Segal looked at his talmid. “No,” he said gently. “You did very poorly. You were very weak. But you wanted to learn and the rosh yeshivah said that was all that mattered.”

Rabbi Kaufman was confounded. “But how can that be? Even when we made trouble and caused you grief, you never showed any indication that we didn’t really deserve to be there. You never hinted at it. How were you able to do that?”

“Because once I accept a talmid,” Rabbi Segal replied, “that talmid is l’chatchilah.”

Rabbi Kaufman concludes the story and taps the table “That’s what Rav Hutner meant when he said he’d been watching me since ninth grade. He’d taken a big risk for us. That’s my story, and really, that’s the story of the yeshivah.”

The yeshivah where every bochur is seen as l’chatchilah.

***

We are sitting in the ezras nashim of a vacant Manhattan shul, talking, and Rabbi Kaufman looks at me.

“Stand up,” he says suddenly.

I comply.

“Raise your right hand high as you can,” he charges me, so I pick up my hand.

“Now lift it a bit more,” he says, and I push it even higher.

“See? You didn’t even realize that you could go higher, right?”

Okay, I hear the point, but the whole experiment seems a little new-agey pop inspiration — so the rosh yeshivah moves in with the vort.

“People like to talk about unconditional love, which is nice and necessary, but in Waterbury, we’re into unconditional belief, which is more much effective.”

We sit back down and he elaborates.

Imagine, the rosh yeshivah says, someone has a business idea, but lacks capital, so he goes to his favorite uncle for a loan. The uncle says, ‘Listen, I don’t like the idea and don’t see how you’ll make money, but I do like you, so I’ll give you the money anyway.’

Alternatively, the would-be entrepreneur can borrow money from a wealthy neighbor with whom he has no real relationship. He shares his idea, and the neighbor says, ‘I don’t like you very much, or even at all, but the idea is a winner and you’re very capable, I know it’ll do well so I’ll invest.’”

The rosh yeshiva points at me. “You know that any sane person would take the loan from the neighbor. In business — in any risky venture, really — you want to have the backing of people who believe you will succeed.

“Now, of course love is necessary to create that relationship with talmidim, otherwise there’s no connection. But love doesn’t motivate: belief does.”

I’ve heard similar ideas at various conferences over the years, but too often, they’ve come from experts with no skin in the game, few of whom have sacrificed savings accounts or cushy jobs on the altar of that ideal.

“It got easier; we moved the family to Waterbury. I have a staff that any rosh yeshivah would be grateful for, maggidei shiur who would be successful in any yeshivah in America. But some things never changed.” He looks like a proud parent. “You have no idea. We’ve taken in every type of boy over the years, but we’ve never thrown anyone out. If we find out a boy has broken one of the rules, if he’s taking drugs, for example, Rabbi Kalish will say, ‘Listen, we can’t wait to have you back. Obviously, you need to deal with it, get it taken care of, and come right back. We’re waiting eagerly.’

“We don’t send bochurim away, because we don’t reject. Period. Any broken bochur I’ve ever met has been rejected, perhaps by his parents, his school or even himself. We accept. We give you the relationship that will give you the sense of respect a person needs, and our rabbeim know how to chart a growth course that works. Fake growth doesn’t do anything for a person.”

***

Waterbury today is somewhat of an empire. The high school — situated on a magnificent campus in Durham, Connecticut, about 25 minutes away from the yeshivah gedolah — numbers 200 students, while the beis medrash and kollel remain in the original location.

The responsibilities that rest on the rosh yeshivah’s shoulders call for a broad skill set, but he unwittingly reveals part of his secret.

“Rav Aharon Schechter once told me that Rav Hutner was the sort of mechanech who could teach nursery school or cheder, high school or beis medrash or say a shiur to gaonim, and he’d always be effective and relevant.”

Rav Hutner himself, unaware of Rav Aharon’s comment, once asked Rabbi Kaufman, “Do you believe that Abaye could explain the din of ‘yi’ush shelo mida’as’ better than any pedagogue or professionally trained mechanech?”

Yes, of course he could, the talmid agreed.

“Why? Haven’t the rabbeim been exposed to all sorts of methodology that Abaye never had?” Rav Hutner asked — and answered. “It’s because Abaye was one with his lesson; it was his essence, so when he taught it he was giving over himself.”

And Rav Hutner left him with a practical application. “We make the mistake of giving the best bochurim the most accomplished talmid chacham as a rebbi, but really, it should be the opposite. The alef bochurim should get a gaon, but the beis bochurim should get a gaon hagaonim, the bigger talmid chacham; they need that connection to the essence of Torah more.”

Rav Hutner’s words would prove prophetic.

“What I find amazing,” says Rabbi Baruch Levine, a rebbi at Waterbury’s yeshivah ketanah, “is the way the rosh yeshivah is able to deal with all sorts of issues that many mainstream roshei yeshivah don’t generally see — and they don’t affect his essential chashivus. His freshness in learning, his long-term vision, his personal avodah — that’s a chiddush, to remain elevated and see nothing as beneath him when it comes to helping a talmid.”

Exactly as Rav Hutner had said.

A mechanech close to the yeshivah tells me that at one point, some in the industry laughed at Rabbi Kaufman. “He feels like every alumnus is the best bochur in Brisk and the yeshivos in Eretz Yisrael are lucky to have his boys. I used to think he didn’t know his bochurim well enough, but I’ve come to realize that he knows them better than the rest of us.”

In fact, several of the bochurim currently in the beis medrash have come to Waterbury post-Eretz Yisrael, after observing the way Waterbury bochurim spoke about their rebbeim.

“They see that the system works. It’s a big part of the way the rosh yeshivah set things up,” says Rabbi Avi Oberlander, a maggid shiur in the yeshivah. “The talmidim remain close with us after they leave and when they come back to Waterbury after having learned in Eretz Yisrael, they are full-fledged bnei Torah, ready for a genuine beis medrash program with three full sedorim a day.”

The rosh yeshivah and his staff work hard at maintaining that connection. “There are two special ‘Waterbury Shabbosos’ in the year,” says Rabbi Oberlander, “one when the rebbeim travel to Eretz Yisrael to visit alumni learning there, and the other on the Shabbos before Pesach, when the boys all come back to spend Shabbos in yeshivah, and it’s a special time, we’re thrilled to see how they’ve grown, and the bochurim are so excited for us to see that our belief in them has paid off.”

Rabbi Kaufman has his own insight into the elevated feeling at these gatherings. “Our talmidim are healthy, wholesome boys, because they’ve learned early on not to judge others. Our bochurim come back from Eretz Yisrael, on fire in learning, but they don’t see themselves as higher than the others who’ve gone to work. The achdus between them is tremendous. They’ve all benefitted from being believed in at some point, and they pass that gift along.”

***

Fundraising should be easy, I speculate, for a yeshivah so suited to the call of the hour.

The rosh yeshivah looks at me as if to check if I’m joking. “Not for one moment.”

There are those who prefer to support yeshivos that are clearly producing the next generation of roshei yeshivah and others who think yeshivos like Waterbury are making a fundamental mistake, keeping boys who “should really be working” locked into the system.

“But they don’t understand that yes, a teenage boy having a job, with a program that gives him some framework in Yiddishkeit, is nice, but that won’t make the bochur happy. To be happy, he needs to be growing. He needs a real relationship with a rebbi who believes in him.”

Earlier this year, the rosh yeshivah was under tremendous financial pressure after purchasing the new high school campus, and it wasn’t clear if the zeman would start on time.

Emergency help came not from a philanthropist, but from Rav Dovid Feinstein.

“I didn’t really know Rav Dovid well, but he called me and told me that a yeshivah like ours cannot start even a day late, we need to welcome the bochurim already and give them a yeshivah. I told him we had no money to open and he said, ‘Let me make a few phone calls.’”

Rav Dovid called a prominent donor and asked him if he gave money to Chinuch Atzmai. “Of course, the rosh yeshivah knows that I do,” the gentleman replied.

“Yes, but what about the Chinuch Atzmai of America, the yeshivah in Waterbury that gives Yiddishkeit to boys who might not be in yeshivah without it?”

Then Rav Dovid called another acquaintance, a generous supporter of many causes, and asked if he gave money to the French Children’s fund. “Yes, certainly, the rosh yeshivah knows that I’ve given.”

“Yes, but what about the French children of America, the yeshivah in Waterbury that opens up the world of Torah for bochurim who never really tasted it?”

Rav Dovid’s phone calls — along with the steady support of the Wolfson and Fruchthandler families, and the involvement of Reb Shlomo Yehuda Rechnitz, who donated both money and heart to help push the yeshivah over the bump — ensured that the yeshivah was able to open its doors wide.

“There is no place like the high school,” Rabbi Kaufman says. “An hour after they arrive, the bochurim already get it. Rabbi Kalish makes them feel at home. Someone holds of them, someone think they’re going to make it. We don’t get scared off when a bochur slips, or even if he falls, that’s nothing.

“You know, if you really believe in a stock, you don’t pull your money out when the markets dip, and if you do, it means you never really believed in it.”

It all goes back to a private ma’aamar delivered by Rav Hutner to an audience of one.

“Emunah, faith, is connected with ‘em’, a mother, and ‘omein’, which means to raise, to nurture,” Rabbi Kaufman recalls Rav Hutner telling him, “because the mother’s act of carrying and loving a child whom she hasn’t seen — she doesn’t even know what gender it is — is an act of emunah. She experiences the tremendous pain of childbirth, and then the child comes out and has needs and wants that she provides with no expectation of payback, because she loves the child, she believes in its future, she’s connected to it. Rav Hutner shared this with me one night, and I never forgot it. Now I live with it.”

A wise man, Chazal teach us, is superior to the prophet.

Rav Hutner chose to spend nights in conversation with a talmid he’d been watching all along — an expression of his own emunah — each word and idea forming the bricks of a yeshivah, one that can take its place in the holy chain stretching back to Volozhin. There is no watchman at the door to examine those who enter, not because the one who welcomes them is certain that their insides match their outsides but quite the opposite — he sees that their insides are, as he wrote in that long-ago JO article, yearning to understand and craving to be closer. So why waste time on the outside?

***

Before leaving, the rosh yeshivah reaches into his jacket pocket and removes a paper from a stack. It’s clear that he carries these cards with the purpose of sharing them, like the teenagers who distribute Breslover self-help books in Brooklyn pizza shops.

It’s a copy of a letter from the Chazon Ish, (Igros Chazon Ish 115).

I very much wanted to know the situation… a negative prognosis given by doctors carries no weight, and hope is vibrant and alive….

“My father-in-law told me that this is true even in spiritual matters,” the rosh yeshivah says. “No human being has the power or right to offer a negative diagnosis about another; hope for growth is always alive. A rebbi can never say there’s no hope, a parent can never believe that their child has no chance. Hope is always vibrant and alive.”

Rabbi Kaufman sticks the card into my pocket. “This is valuable. Keep it in a safe place,” he says.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 710)