| Magazine Feature |

Any Time, Any Place

By Eytan Kobre | September 29, 2020

For four decades, master mechanech Rabbi Shmuel Zalmen Kleinman has been reaching out to public school kids of all backgrounds and placing them in frum summer camps and yeshivos — and he’ll do whatever it takes to help them

Photos: Naftoli Goldgrab

On a Queens street, a middle-aged Jew with a flowing white beard, wise countenance, and chassidic garb that clearly announces “Williamsburg” stands chatting easily with two young Bukharian men. No one thinks the scene is odd though, because Rabbi Shmuel Zalmen Kleinman’s face is as well-known in these parts as it is on Lee Avenue, thanks to decades of dedication to drawing young Jews closer to their heritage.

The real surprise, though, comes at the end of the conversation with these former students of Midrash L’man Achai, the yeshivah high school he founded over two decades ago for teenage boys regardless of religious background or Jewish education level — the crown jewel of his wide-ranging kiruv activities.

“So how’s it going?” he asks. “What are you guys doing to put some Torah in your life?”

“Rabbi, I wish I could,” says one of them, “but with work and family I just have no time in my day for Torah study.” The second one nods in agreement.

“So when can you make time?”

Thinking he’d easily brush the rabbi off, he says, “Maybe at 6 a.m.” The reply isn’t a split-second in coming. “Okay, good. I’ll see you both tomorrow at six.”

Rabbi Kleinman isn’t kidding. The next morning finds him driving out of Williamsburg at 5:30 a.m. for a 6 a.m. learning session in Queens, which is to become a long-standing chavrusashaft. Not for pay, nor for recognition, but just because two young Jews need spiritual sustenance and he’s determined to provide it.

Over many decades, Rabbi Kleinman has singlehandedly sparked a positive upheaval in two quite different Jewish communities: He has brought the beauty of a Torah way of life to untold numbers of Sephardic and Russian families, plucking their children from the melting pot of New York’s public school system and placing them in yeshivos and camps as the first step on the path to a successful observant life.

And he’s introduced hundreds of his own neighbors to the idea that they, too, have something precious to give to unaffiliated boys whose neshamos are open to something more.

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Comments (1)

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Rabbi Ari Klapper
5 years ago
Reply

I was very excited to read the article on Rabbi Kleinman of L’man Achai, which brought me back almost 20 years.
I was a bochur at the time, learning in Yeshivas Ohr Hachaim, when a friend asked if I would stay after seder about once a week to learn with a Bukharian boy who was coming with his rebbi and a group of his classmates to the yeshivah. I was surprised to see this very obviously looking chassidish man with a group of boys, many of whom didn’t look very religious. But when I started to learn with them (one on one, and many times switching depending on who came that week), I saw an incredible desire in their eyes, and also heard it when they spoke.
These were boys who were starting off with almost nothing. Once, I asked Rabbi Kleinman what I should learn with one whom I had never met before. He said to learn with him what the words of Shemoneh Esreh mean. On other occasions he said to just read Chumash and explain it.
But oh did these boys grow! There is one incident I will never forget. It was Friday night in the dead of winter and the temperatures in Queens were way below freezing. It was an in-Shabbos that week and many of the yeshivah bochurim were taking advantage of the early nightfall to learn after the Shabbos seudah. While I was sitting there learning, a boy whom I had learned with many times from L’man Achai, named Bechor, walked in. I was shocked when I saw him because I knew he didn’t live in the area and I wondered where he was staying for Shabbos. He told me he had walked from his home in Lefrak City — about an hour and a half away — because he wanted to learn and he didn’t have a beis medrash nearby. He didn’t know where he would sleep but, he was driven by the intense desire to learn Torah on Leil Shabbos. (In the end a few of the bochurim in the yeshiva got together to get him a bed and linen for him to sleep in the dorm.)
This is just one example of the fire for Torah and avodas Hashem that Rabbi Kleinman ignited (and continues to ignite) in these heilige neshamos. I am proud to say that I was zocheh to be mishtatef a little bit in his amazing work. He should be zocheh to many more years of bringing our brothers back tachas kanfei HaShechinah.