Every neshamah is unique and uniquely beloved irreplaceable in its mission here on earth. But when someone whose uniqueness we’ve witnessed up close leaves the world the ensuing void is so much more deeply felt. My father-in-law Reb Mendel Beer (Menachem Mendel ben Yehoshua) z”l who left us a little over a month ago was one of a kind — one of a kind of Jew that is whom we don’t have enough of anymore. 

He was the picture of dynamism for the first six and a half decades of his life active in innumerable community endeavors deeply involved in the lives of family friends and any individual in need and warmly welcoming to all who crossed his path. But a creeping dementia whose signs we first noticed over 14 years ago eventually overtook him eclipsing his vibrant accomplished life and leaving his lustrous neshamah muted within until his passing at age 79.
My father-in-law came as close as anyone I’ve known to the ideal of the Torahdige baal habayis that Rav Shraga Feivel Mendlowitz sought to produce in a then-spiritually arid America. He was Jewish to the core his identity as a Yid suffusing his brain his heart his very DNA. Mitzvos and chesed were his delight Torah study his life raft on the rocky seas of life loyalty to gedolei Torah his pride and taking responsibility for family and community his trademark.
Mendy Beer was a product of the Brooklyn of the 1950s Dodgers a born-and-bred Williamsburg boy who blossomed in Yeshivah Torah Vodaath and in Camp Agudah in Highmount New York. Under mentors like Rav Gedalia Schorr and Rav Yaakov Teitelbaum he grew into a young man with a desire to share Yiddishkeit with others. As a Pirchei leader Camp Agudah learning director and Talmud Torah teacher he made a real difference in many boys’ lives. In one instance he traveled to Boston to convince a former camper today the head of a beautiful frum family to leave public school for yeshivah. He married the daughter of Rabbi Chaim Uri Lipschitz a colorful Williamsburg personality and well-known Torah activist in his own right with my mother-in-law becoming a full partner in all her husband would go on to achieve.
The relationships he developed with great men and so-called pashute Yidden alike spanned the communal spectrum. He was a loyal lifelong lieutenant of the rebbes of Kopycznitz a shaliach ne’eman in their manifold chesed activities with warm ties to other rebbes as well. But his klal and chesed work created similarly deep connections to leaders of the yeshivah world like Rav Elya Svei and yebadel l’chayim Rav Avrohom Ausband. A lifetime association with Rav Shaul Brus began when my shver along with others brought Rav Brus to serve as a Torah presence in their bungalow colony. But more: Reb Mendel had an Esther-like quality whereby both chassidishe Yidden and litvishe bnei yeshivah claimed him as one of their own — and both were right.
He began his day with an early morning shiur started his workday at 11 a.m. after a morning seder with his longtime yedid Reb Chaim Leibel and attended yet another shiur after a long day’s work; his much-anticipated summertime “vacation” consisted of two weeks of learning at Lakewood’s Yarchei Kallah. It didn’t always go smoothly but he’d try this shiur and that seder refusing to let go of his beloved learning. Chazal say that a litmus test of a man’s character is his conduct b’koso when alcohol has loosened control of his faculties. What a lesson it was then to witness my shver’s great frustration as his mind deteriorated at his inability to any longer comprehend Hashem’s Torah as he tried again and again to learn Gemara Chumash anything.
Growing up his boys knew their attendance at yeshivah was nonnegotiable in all weather and under all circumstances. But when his slightly uncoordinated youngster needed to improve his playground prowess he spent hours teaching him the rudiments of ball-playing to help smooth his social acceptance. High expectations of himself and his family in regard to learning Torah were no contradiction to spending hours tossing a ball to and fro with a son who needed just that.
He was the quintessential “people person ” whose hearty “Shalom aleichem how ya doing?” would reverberate down the street to an approaching familiar face from among his unusually wide circle of friends and acquaintances. In his later years he began davening at Rav Moshe Wolfson’s beis medrash Emunas Yisroel basking in its atmosphere of spiritual striving and exalted tefillos. It was at the other end of Boro Park from his home and as I’d walk with him down 16th Avenue he would stop and be stopped so many times that I privately fancied him the “mayor of Boro Park.”
A marvelous baal tefillah his Shabbos table resounded with the majestic niggunim of Modzhitz and others. He enjoyed classical music too; it didn’t masquerade as something it wasn’t unlike some of what passes for Jewish music nowadays which he found quite distasteful. In that sentiment one could hear an echo of his father Reb Sheeya z”l who had come to these shores in the 20s from Galicia with a beard which he shaved soon after arriving. When an acquaintance from der heim derided his new appearance as a concession to treifeneh America he replied calmly “I know my limits and this is where they end.” A year later the two met again: Reb Sheeya was frum the acquaintance tragically no longer.

REB MENDEL didn’t shrink from the hard stuff — he embraced it. The Ponevezher Rav is reported to have said that despite being a prodigious fundraiser each time he rang a doorbell he’d think to himself “I hope they’re not home.” Yet for years my shver trudged out night after night with his dear chaver Reb Shlomo Klein to ring the doorbells of potential donors to Be’er Hagolah Institutes a school for Russian children that no child of his ever had or would yet attend. His son Reb Avrohom related that a client once took a major account away from his father during a time of great financial difficulty for him but after learning Rav Chaim Friedlander’s writings about the greatness of being a ma’avir al midosav he made a point of calling the former client that Erev Rosh Hashanah to wish him a gut yohr.
He was a rock of reliability an anchor of achrayus. A board member of the Yitti Leibel Help Line — the mental health organization my parents-in-law were instrumental in founding in memory of a dear friend — recalled: At board meetings when something needed to be done and no one wanted to do it there would be a brief silence and then Mendy Beer’s voice would be heard saying “I’ll do it.” It wasn’t just well-known and established mosdos whose burdens he bore but so many other unheralded causes: an orphan’s chasunah a widow’s support a rosh kollel’s budget crisis. He’d call and knock on the doors of the same givers he’d just recently solicited for another cause which surely couldn’t have been pleasant.
But he had a potent secret weapon in his work for Torah and chesed. In addition to the chein he exuded he was all heart. He really meant it and people sensed that and responded in kind. Neither I nor anyone else close to him can recall hearing a word from him about his klal work. Rav Ausband rosh yeshivah of Telshe Riverdale where Reb Mendel was a pillar of strength for so long told of once telling another rosh yeshivah that the key to success is having board members not of great means but of great dedication and hartz — “people ” he said “like Mendel Beer.”
A person’s true character can often be best discerned by how he handles situations that tend to be difficult. Being a boss is one of those: His longtime secretary Mrs. Meisels told my wife she had originally planned a teaching career but felt she had gained more working for Mendel Beer than she could have as a teacher. Being a partner and neighbor is another: When my parents asked for shidduch information about the Beers one thing impressed them more than any other: They co-owned a two-family house with friends for decades and shalom still reigned between them.
One imagines that after living a life filled with such giving his neshamah must have been pained at its inability to do for others during his many years of illness. But shortly after his petirah his beloved granddaughter our Perri — named for his mother Perel — became the kallah of a wonderful ben Torah Yisroel Kahn. Reb Mendel’s neshamah it would seem took the first opportunity it had in a very long time to get back to work doing for others.
Yehi zichro baruch.—