Rabbi Bentzion Kugler is first and foremost a master educator. He shares six lasting lessons from the gedolim that inform his approach to chinuch — and to life

Photos: Mishpacha archives, Flash90

For years, pundits and journalists at the Jerusalem Municipality marked Bentzi Kugler as a future contender for mayor. He was that rare chareidi politician with the energy and warmth to engage every other demographic coming through Jerusalem’s City Hall, an accomplished activist who set goals and met them. So it was a shock when he suddenly called it quits and left politics.

But insiders understood. The ability to intuit others’ unspoken needs that had made him successful as city councillor didn’t come from a background in politics or diplomacy, but from his first love and real calling.

Because Rabbi Bentzion Kugler is first and foremost a master educator. As principal of the Talmud Torah Chavas Daas in Yerushalayim — located at the heart of the capital and with an enrollment of over 1,000 students — he’s one of the most prominent chinuch personalities in the contemporary chareidi world, at the helm of an institution that straddles the line between tradition and innovation.

“You have to understand,” says a cheder alumnus who is now the rosh yeshivah of a prestigious yeshivah and sends his own children to his alma mater, “Rabbi Kugler was a revolutionary. Instead of expecting the children to adapt to the system, he tailored the system to work with each child.”

When Rabbi Kugler first founded Chavas Daas, the chinuch climate differed dramatically. Many chadarim in Yerushalayim maintained the strict, harsh approach of yesteryear — including, unfortunately, corporal punishment and uncompromising standards — and a child who couldn’t make the grade was out.

But Rabbi Kugler’s approach to chinuch was different, because he focused on every student as an individual. By identifying each child’s strengths and weaknesses, Rabbi Kugler was able to give his talmidim the tools to harness their strengths and compensate for any deficits.

Ask Rabbi Kugler, though, and he’ll give you a different reason for his success: he credits his close relationship with gedolei Yisrael past and present. Rabbi Kugler sought advice from Rav Shlomo Wolbe, Rav Elazar Menachem Man Shach, Rav Yosef Shalom Elyashiv, and Rav Aharon Leib Steinman, and today, he discusses concerns with Rav Chaim Kanievsky and Rav Gershon Edelstein. Their keen guidance, he says, has shaped his entire approach to education.

“Everything I know, I learned from the masters,” Rabbi Kugler says emphatically. “There’s a Midrash that one who takes advice from the sages does not falter. This isn’t just a helpful tip; it’s a guarantee.”

Speaking to the Heart

Along with his primary role as menahel of Chavas Daas, Rabbi Kugler wears several other hats. He serves on the board of major organizations in the chareidi world, among them the Kemach Fund that supports fathers of Torah families on the road to acquiring a vocation. For five years, Rabbi Kugler served as a councilmember of the Jerusalem municipality, but then he left the political arena. “I realized I couldn’t devote myself wholeheartedly to my talmidim when I had another official position competing for my attention and loyalties,” he says.

Rabbi Kugler also serves as chairman of the Keren Hashvi’is, an organization that encourages and funds the observance of shemittah among Israel’s farmers. It’s an intensive job that rolls around once every seven years, but he says the effort brings its own reward and recharges his spiritual and emotional batteries for the next seven-year period.

The Keren Hashvi’is is a natural fit for Rabbi Kugler — he was actually born in the Torah-observant agricultural settlement of Komemiyus, which was renowned for its collective observance of shemittah k’hilchasah, and from an early age, he formed a close relationship with its rav, Rav Binyamin Mendelsohn, who traveled the length and breadth of the country to encourage Israeli farmers unaware of, or struggling to observe, the laws of shemittah.

Those experiences helped young Bentzi Kugler gain an understanding of human nature, of the power of persuasion, and of how to speak from the heart.

“When I was a bochur, Rav Mendelsohn and the Slonimer Rebbe visiting Zavdiel, a nearby settlement populated mostly by Yemenite Jews, to promote the mitzvah and observance of shemittah k’hilchasah,” he remembers. “From the Rav, I learned how to speak to people, how to talk to their hearts and persuade Yidden to forfeit their parnassah for a full year. And I learned to appreciate the greatness of the struggle — to recognize how precious our effort can be to Hashem when the going is hard.”

Here, Rabbi Kugler shares six lasting lessons from the gedolim that inform his approach to chinuch — and to life.