When Prospect Park switched over to an all-girls’ school he was the guardian of their chinuch even in later years when he would traverse the corridors he built in a wheelchair. He was an imposing presence over six feet tall and lean in build yet his daughter Dina remembers him as “a big teddy bear.” He was unfailingly gentle to his talmidos and a rodef shalom in his dealings with congregants parents mechutanim neighbors. At the same time he possessed a steely self-discipline rarely seen in later generations and set immensely high standards for himself and often for others as well.

Vouchers for Freedom

Communal responsibility was always part of the Kelman tradition. The family was originally from Galicia but during and after World War I most had made their way to Vienna. They were affiliated with the Husyatiner chassidus (the first Husyatiner Rebbe Rav Mordechai Shraga was one of the six sons of Rebbe Yisrael of Ruzhin) and had been a family of rabbis for many generations. “Rabbis in those days didn’t make a salary so their wives usually had a job or a business ” Rabbi Leib Kelman explains. “My great-grandmother actually owned a bank but it collapsed during the First World War. They went bankrupt. My great-grandparents immigrated to Jamaica New York where my great-grandfather had a shul and did well for himself. He told his eldest son my grandfather to come join him.”

But the son couldn’t get visas for himself and his wife and five children — including a young Avraham — so he went alone to Canada and found work in several shuls until he was able to send for his family around 1930. The family still possesses a picture of a nine-year-old Avraham Kelman, taken shortly before he left Vienna with his family, wearing a long coat, peyos, and a chassidic-style cap. “The long peyos disappeared shortly after they came to Canada, because absolutely nobody dressed that way,” Rabbi Leib says.

There were also no yeshivos in Toronto in the 1930s, so Avraham and his siblings were sent to public schools, and tutored by their father before and after school hours. After his bar mitzvah, Avraham was sent to New York to learn at Yeshiva Torah Vodaath. But he found it hard to be so far from his family at that age, and years later, when his own children came of age to attend yeshivah, he chose to move the whole family to New York rather than send them off alone.

Avraham had only been in Torah Vodaath for three years when he was obliged to return home for the tragic reason that his father had been niftar at the age of 40. Now only 16 years old, he found himself the head of the household. “The youngest was just five years old,” Dina says. “He had to help raise his siblings.”

Rav Avraham Aharon Price, who became the chief rabbi of Toronto, took over Avraham’s father’s shul, and the two learned together and developed a close relationship. Rav Price would eventually confer semichah on the promising young scholar — who by 1943, at age 22, was named rabbi of the Bais Yehuda shul in Toronto.

Meanwhile, as World War II began, the British began rounding up Jewish refugees who had made their way to England, suspecting them of spying for the Germans. Many were sent off to internment camps in Canada, while panicked relatives sent letters to the Canadian community to intervene. Young Rabbi Kelman would go visit the camps, identifying Orthodox inmates and vouching for their innocence. Since the released detainees needed a guaranteed place to stay upon their release, his mother opened her home to them until they could find other places to stay, and Rabbi Kelman would help them find jobs. The father of Ralph Herzka, of Meridian Capital, was one of those boys. So was the founder of the Do-All travel agency in Boro Park, together with a few of his chaveirim. During that time, Rabbi Avraham also became a chaplain in the Canadian Armed Forces, attaining the rank of captain.

Master of Self-Control 

During the war, a young refugee by the name of Leah Pinter managed to get out of Europe at Dunkirk and come to New York. She and Rabbi Avraham were married in 1946, and Leah, according to her three children, was a model helpmate. “My father didn’t touch a thing in the house,” Rabbi Leib Kelman, his father’s only son, recalls. “If a light bulb needed changing, my mother would ask me, not my father. She took care of the children and everything else so he could be free to learn and help the community.”

Rabbi Leib, however, recalls an unusual childhood — one of love and devotion on one hand, and of silence on the other. “I don’t remember much interaction until I was old enough to learn, and after that, almost everything he spoke to me about was related to learning,” he says. “That’s what he wanted to pass on to me, and that was the best way he thought to do it.” All the children went to shul on Shabbos morning from a very young age, and Dina remembers him learning Torah with the children around the dinner table. “If nobody else was around, he’d ask me to bring him a Midrash Rabbah or even a Gemara so he could go over it with me,” she says.

Rabbi Avraham, for his part, worked hard to master his own taavos, and tried to impart some of that discipline to his children. “As children, we were never allowed to say we didn’t like what was on our plates; we learned to eat exactly what we were served,” Rabbi Leib recalls. “All my male relatives, including myself, tend to put on weight, and my father probably was not different. He loved good food, chocolate and sweets, as much as anyone, but he disciplined himself not to overindulge.”

“Every Friday he’d weigh himself, and if he gained any weight, he’d cut back,” Dina says. “He stayed at 182 pounds almost his entire adult life. At the table, he never took seconds, even though my mother was a balabusta. If one of us started to overeat, he’d give us a withering look — and we’d shrivel with shame. Then he’d say a kind word of encouragement to soften the mussar.”

Like their father before them, the Kelman children would have had to attend public elementary schools in Toronto, squeezing in Torah learning before and after school and then be sent away from home to New York. But Rabbi Avraham — who’d done that path — refused to send them away from home at a young age for yeshivah. As they got older, Rabbi Avraham called a relative in New York and said, “I’d like to move. Can you find me a shul that needs a rabbi?”

As it turned out, a shul near Prospect Park needed a rabbi, and the Kelman family moved to Crown Heights in 1950, near Ebbetts Field at Bedford and Montgomery Streets. “My father liked baseball,” Dina recalls. “Once he took me to a game. He himself was a very good hitter — in the country the men would play sometimes, and he’d go to bat. Often he’d designate a kid as his runner, myself included. It kept us busy.”

Rabbi Leib doesn’t hesitate to laud his father’s athletic abilities. “He could hit the ball into the next bungalow colony,” he says. “In college he played paddleball and squash, and with his long arms, he dominated the court. The only time he took off from yeshivah and learning was on Friday afternoons, when he’d play paddleball at the Brooklyn Jewish Center in Crown Heights. I went with him from the time I was eight until 18, and after a 45-minute game we’d go visit my maternal grandmother.”

As rav of the shul, Rabbi Avraham and his wife became known for taking in down-and-out Jews — “the more dysfunctional the better,” Rabbi Leib jokes, recalling a man who was invited for Shabbos dinner and proceeded to devour the entire plate of gefilte fish (to the horror of the children). “My father instructed us with his eyes not to react — and my parents continued to invite him.”

One rainy Friday night Rabbi Avraham noticed a man crying near an apartment house, and sent Leib to fetch him. He turned out to be a Jewish ex-soldier who’d stayed in Germany, married a German woman, then regretted marrying a non-Jew and left. A tinkerer, he’d invented a patent for plastic mold-injected suitcases that was stolen by Samsonite. He’d sued and been awarded a hefty settlement, but his ex-wife had gotten wind of it and sent the police after him for back alimony and support of their child. Now the police were at his door.

“He ended up moving in with us for many months,” Rabbi Leib says. “He got my bed, and I went to the attic. He never did receive his settlement… but he was one of many who moved in with us for months at a time.” For a while, as Hungarian refugees flooded into New York, the family took in many estranged Jews; Leah would take the ladies to shul and to doctors’ appointments. At the time, this wasn’t considered kiruv; it was pure chesed.

The family lived on the first floor of a two-family house in Crown Heights while Rabbi Avraham’s mother lived upstairs — although she remained fiercely protective of her independence and took in piecework, assembling garters for half a penny apiece, to avoid taking charity.

Guardian of the Clock

Rabbi Avraham not only felt strongly connected to Eretz Yisrael, he was also a staunch supporter of the fledgling state; he served as the president of Mizrachi for a time, and Chief Rabbi Shlomo Goren was once a guest in their home. Dina remembers that when she graduated from elementary school in June of 1967, “my father was completely preoccupied and depressed by the impending war.”

The family even made aliyah — almost. In 1969, Rabbi Kelman asked a cousin in Eretz Yisrael to find him an apartment, and the Jewish Agency to find him a position as a rabbi. The idea was to try it out for a few months. “They put him in Arad in the desert — it had just been built, and didn’t even have cars,” Rabbi Leib remembers. “He went to shul on Friday night and noticed a rabbinical-looking type sitting in the back, looking at loose ends. He approached the man and asked who he was, and the man told him, ‘I’m the rabbi of the shul, but the Sochnut people told me to take a vacation for three months, and they’d pay me for it.’

“My father said, ‘That’s out of the question. This is obviously your shul.’ We went back to Beit HaKerem in Jerusalem, then returned to New York at the end of the summer.”

Years later, the Kelmans’ daughter Sharon Kowalsky would move to Jerusalem. “My father was very sad to see me go — he was older by then and it was too hard for him to visit me there — but he would never tell me not to make aliyah,” she says.

Beyond their brief stab at aliyah, the Kelman family didn’t travel much; Rabbi Kelman didn’t believe in Chol Hamoed trips or vacations. “He’d say, ‘So imagine you went, and you came back. What did that change?’ ” Dina says. “He’d rather stay home and learn. Once my husband and I took him along to a wedding in Hamilton, Ontario, and my husband wanted to see Niagara Falls. My father didn’t really want to stop, but didn’t object when I told him my husband had never seen the falls. When we got there, my father got out of the car, took a look, and said, ‘Okay, you saw it,’ and was ready to leave! For him, such things were a waste of time.”

Rabbi Kelman was scrupulously protective of time. He called his family members every day, but would spend those conversations in divrei Torah (that included the relative who became the executive directive of the Conservative Rabbinical Assembly. The two of them spoke only Torah, never politics). Dina says that if she got into too much small talk on the phone, sometimes he’d simply hang up in the middle. Fortunately, she says, he was every bit as much a watchdog when it came to respecting other people’s time. He insisted on family simchahs running on time and ending early so guests didn’t have to arrive home late. Himself an eloquent and erudite speaker, he knew how to limit a derashah and would rail when others rambled away. “They have to learn how to park it!” he’d say. If there were too many speakers at a family simchah, and someone would call on him for yet one more speech, he’d stand up, wish mazel tov, and sit down again.

Nor did he understand why so much conversation was necessary to make shidduch decisions. He was meticulous about researching his children’s potential shidduchim, but flummoxed if his offspring didn’t immediately commit to getting engaged. “His attitude was, ‘If you have a good boy from a good home and a good girl from a good home, they should be able to make it work,’ ” Rabbi Leib says.

Rabbi Kelman lived his own philosophy; a year and a half after losing his wife, he approached his children and told them he was planning to marry Shirley, a widow who was the administrator of a nursing home. “Did you go out? Did you get to know each other?” Rabbi Leib asked. His father found that hilarious. “She’s a nice lady, we’ll make it work!” he replied.

“And they did,” Rabbi Leib says. “Honestly, I was surprised he managed on his own for so long. My mother had handled things for so long I used to sleep at his house for fear he’d forget to lock the door at night and turn off the lights.”

Shared Mission

Rabbi Avraham Kelman’s greatest achievement was clearly the founding of a yeshivah that became a Brooklyn institution. After assuming the position as rav of the Prospect Park Jewish Center in 1950, he realized there were more children — both boys and girls — who needed a yeshivah than there were yeshivos to educate them. Ever proactive, he set about to open one. Prospect Park Yeshiva opened its doors in 1952 on Ocean Avenue, bordering the park.

The building housed six classrooms of an active Talmud Torah that offered classes to public school students. Rabbi Avraham managed to maintain the after-school Talmud Torah while running the yeshivah during school hours, a feat that required much juggling. He didn’t want to delay opening the school, so he took responsibility himself for putting together the curriculum, hiring teachers, and serving as principal. “A year or so later,” Rabbi Leib recounts, “the Board of Jewish Education was founded, and my father connected to Rabbi Dr. Alvin Schiff. He consulted with him, and was a fairly frequent presence in the early days.” By the time the school had a fifth grade, it became necessary to hire an English principal, and the next year a Hebrew principal.

It wasn’t easy to convince postwar parents, many of whom were immigrants and blue-collar workers, to enroll their children in yeshivah — even though the tuition was only five dollars a week. Rabbi Kelman would go to people’s homes to convince them to send their children; his wife’s cousin, Rabbi Yasha Baumhol, would send over any children the Crown Heights Yeshiva couldn’t accommodate. But Rabbi Kelman would not only enroll children in the yeshivah, he’d invite the family for a Shabbos meal too; he kept the yeshivah open Chol Hamoed Succos so that children would eat in a succah or have food for lunch. Children who came in with little Jewish background would be worked with until they arrived at the right grade level.

Before long, space became a problem. “We quickly outgrew the Ocean Avenue building and eventually split into about five rental places before settling the whole school in Flatbush,” Rabbi Leib says. “Moving and relocating while still maintaining a functioning school was one of the most complex things I ever witnessed, and really showed my father’s strength of character and determination.”

In 1962, the school made the commitment to become exclusively for girls, and subsequently created a sterling Torah-based educational framework from preschool through high school.

Rabbi Leib says that his father discussed every detail at length with his mother. “My father would rethink every decision a hundred times, while my mother would make decisions and go forward. Together, they thrashed out all the details and got through it all; my mother had a big role.” (Years later, the yeshivah took on the name Bnos Leah Prospect Park Yeshiva, in honor of Leah Kelman.)

From the beginning, says Rabbi Leib, the yeshivah survived on a shoestring budget. “Every dollar that came in was important to my father. The only thing he believed in spending on was teachers’ salaries. We never had fancy offices or marble in the lobbies — his own office was a cubicle in the back.” When Rabbi Leib Kelman began working at the yeshivah in 1976, his father — expecting of his children what he expected of himself — offered him the princely salary of 20 dollars a week, telling him he could work a few extra hours for his shver to help make ends meet.

The yeshivah’s policy was to accept any girl who wanted to learn. “My father was never elitist,” Sharon Kowalsky says. “He took in any child who wanted a yeshivah education — Russian, Sephardic, all different backgrounds — wanting to give them both an academic and all-around wholesome experience.” The school gained a reputation for educating al pi darko, not trying to force students into a particular mold and producing well-rounded bnos Yisrael. With its founding premise of ahavas Yisrael and sense of shared mission, Rabbi Kelman attracted dedicated teachers who stayed not just a few years but 20, 30, even 40 years on staff. “They all loved him,” Sharon says. “At the shivah, countless women came by to say, ‘I’m who I am today because of Rabbi Kelman.’ ”

Each One My Child

As the school population swelled to over a thousand talmidos, Rabbi Kelman continued to be a hands-on mechanech, writing weekly divrei Torah for the school newsletter and speaking often to the girls.

“Girls would get detention, and he’d come to visit them there and bring them hot cocoa,” Dina remembers. A former student remembers him convincing her to eat a school lunch she didn’t like, bite by bite. Another remembers crying in class because she didn’t know the answer to a Chumash question, and when the other girls laughed, Rabbi Kelman said, “I am so impressed by this young lady — she has such a desire to learn Torah that she cries when she doesn’t know an answer.”

In his last years, Rabbi Kelman would come to the yeshivah — even in a wheelchair — to see the girls and speak to them. His frail voice could be heard over the loudspeaker, still doing his best to impart Torah knowledge and hashkafos to the girls. By that time the girls had trouble hearing him, but they kept quiet; they understood he deserved their respect.

“Someone once asked my father, ‘How can you remember the names of all your students?’ ” says Sharon Kowalsky. “He replied, ‘You never forget your own children. Each talmidah is my child.’ ”

Maybe that’s why Dina hasn’t really changed her childhood ideas about the lamed-vavniks in her grandmother’s tales. “I still think my father was one of them,” she says. —

Students remember

The Perfect Place

Rabbi Avraham Kelman was tall in stature, yet it was his humility that stood head and shoulders above the masses. He was a mechanech who understood the core ingredients needed to build the next generation.

I was a young student all the years I knew him, so I didn’t quite understand who he really was. Only as I ventured out into the real world did I realize the greatness of what Rabbi Kelman did. He accepted many immigrants and girls from a variety of backgrounds as students, and we were all treated equally in his eyes: all beautiful children of Hashem who were worthy of a proper Jewish education.

Rabbi Kelman knew how to handpick extraordinary principals and teachers to carry forth his dream. That, to me, is the single most critical factor in running a successful school. It’s also the success of Prospect Park. The staff members are no ordinary individuals; they are legends.

When I saw that shivah would take place in the school, it seemed an interesting venue. But when I went and saw that the family was sitting in our tenth-grade wing, literally next to the shul, it made perfect sense. There could be no greater kavod acharon to a man whose entire essence was his shul and school than the mourners and visitors sharing these reflections and appreciation in his “home.”

—Rivki Lang, Class of 2002

Students remember

Cocoa in the Cold

When I think of Rabbi Avraham Kelman, or Rabbi Avraham, as he was known in Bnos Leah Prospect Park, one phrase immediately comes to mind: ahavas Yisrael.

When I was in sixth grade, my parents decided to enroll me in Prospect Park Yeshiva. I came to school the first day, knowing very few people. Rabbi Avraham came over to me, asked me my name, and then began recounting stories about my parents and uncles. I felt honored and elated — my heart soared! The dean of the school knew my family! I wasn’t just the nameless new girl!

Later, as I went on to high school, and eventually returned as staff, I realized that this was Rabbi Avraham’s practice. He somehow found connections and meaningful anecdotes to relate about each student on the roster, and made each girl feel special and proud.

As a staff member, I experienced many incidents that clearly illustrate Rabbi Avraham’s concern for every Jew. However, one occurrence stands out clearly in my mind.

Occasionally, on Sundays, when school was not in session, I would be asked to supervise “comp time,” a study session for girls who had incurred an inordinate amount of unexcused absences or belatedness. One particularly cold, wintry morning, Rabbi Avraham walked into the classroom and inquired why we were in school on a blustery Sunday morning. I quickly tendered an explanation; he greeted the girls warmly and left. Twenty minutes later, he returned with cups of steaming hot cocoa for every girl. I quietly tried to explain that the purpose of the “comp time” policy was to encourage good attendance, responsibility, and accountability. We were trying not to make the experience too palatable.

Rabbi Kelman smiled, distributed the cocoa and left.

Back home, I realized that Rabbi Avraham had taught me a valuable lesson, one that I have tried to incorporate over the years. In chinuch, we must sometimes teach accountability in ways that may be uncomfortable to the student. However, the lesson should always be accompanied by a kind word or gesture, to ensure that she knows that she is still valued, regardless of what has occurred.

—Batya Sochaczewski, Class of 1978

Students remember

Prince of Principles

In my mind’s eye, Rabbi Kelman always was, and remains, larger than life. Three aspects of his giant personality stand out. The first — one that likely resonates with all alumnae — is the caring he showed every student, most easily remembered from his frequent classroom visits. As we all smiled in anticipation of his routine, he began to read the name of each student in the class and to try to place her, either by recalling her parents, other relatives, or even her street address. His knowledge of each student’s background never failed to astonish me, as the school boasted well over a thousand students. His caring and concern engendered a feeling of warmth and acceptance.

The second was the memorable teaching methods that he used, which at once evidenced his broad knowledge of Torah and our rich tradition, and his understanding of effective pedagogy. He once saw the remains of a student’s snack on his way out of our classroom. He seized this teaching moment to ingrain in us the importance of showing respect for food, and related the story of Rav Yehudah Hachassid, who covered remaining crumbs with earth after eating a meal during travel. Nearly 20 years later, I can still remember where he stood in the classroom as he told the story, and it echoes in my mind as I proudly battle the unending stream of crumbs that shower my kitchen floor.

The third was his perfection of character. He was a prince. Always calm, his actions were measured and carefully executed. As in the corporate world, where the direction of leadership has the largest impact on a company’s culture, his middos had a ripple effect that enabled Prospect Park to nurture a diverse group of students and stimulate growth through respect, thought, and acceptance, while ensuring that Torah values remained the yardstick for all initiatives and decisions at the school.

As we, his graduates, build our families and communities, we must follow his charge to “think big” and work to better both ourselves and the Jewish world.

—Dina Yankelewitz, Class of 2004

Students remember

Reaping the Harvest

Rabbi Kelman was at once ancient and ageless. I was sure, when I was in second grade, that he was at least 90. Twenty years later, it’s obvious that he couldn’t have been, but this gentle giant was a comforting, steadfast presence throughout the background of our school years. Like all my classmates, I knew he was the “dean,” but never quite figured out what that job description entailed.

His visits to our classroom always followed a predictable pattern. He would sit at the teacher’s desk, radiating a quiet but unmistakable pleasure at the sight of the rows of uniformed girls fidgeting silently at their desks. He would carefully work his way down the roster, with a greeting and a question for each girl. And, without fail, out of a school numbering over 800, he could identify each girl — who her father was, where they lived and davened. And though we all knew that he knew everyone, there was always that delicious frisson of pleasure that I was a Very Important Person — Rabbi Kelman knew my father.

In his soft and unpretentious way, he would share a thought — a story from the war years, a vort on the parshah. We would listen quietly, perhaps wondering why these visits seemed to matter so much to him. As I have matured, very much a product of the institutions he nurtured, what I couldn’t fathom then has become plain: Here was a pioneer who changed the Torah landscape of postwar America. And here, the farmer who sowed with tears was reaping his harvest with gratitude.

Rabbi Kelman, although at the time I had no idea how you toiled behind the scenes to create that idyllic tableau, today I stand in awe of the debt I owe you and can never repay.

—Elisheva Appel, Class of 2004

Students remember

Nothing to Fear

When Rabbi Kelman walked into the classroom, he brought a hush with him. Even as first-graders, we knew that this tall man with the white beard was in charge.

“Cofsky,” he’d repeat when he reached my name. “You know that your great-grandfather saved my beketshe?” The stern dean suddenly softened as he described his boyhood self. “It was right before my bar mitzvah, and your great-grandfather was visiting Toronto. I had an uncle who had become modern. When he saw the beketshe I was planning to wear, he told me it was too old-fashioned. Who needed that kind of clothing here in the New World? Your great-grandfather, Rav Itzikel Halberstam, was a small man…” He glanced at me again with a half smile. Did he know I was third-shortest in my class of 30? “But he stood up tall and said, ‘You will not decide what clothing this boy will wear!’ And you know what, he grabbed the beketshe and hid it overnight, so my uncle wouldn’t be able to take it away while I slept.”

Knowing of our “family connection” (only later did I find out that Rabbi Kelman found some connection to many of the students in the school), I was quick to raise my hand when he visited our classroom. Once, in tenth grade, he stepped in during a scheduled earth science lesson. “What are you girls learning right now?”

“Well, we’re supposed to be learning some apikorsus, something about the age of the earth,” I said boldly, “because it’s in the Regents curriculum. But of course we’re going to skip it.”

“Why would you skip it?” he asked, measured as always. “The Regents curriculum is nothing to be scared of. Why not learn what they think and why they think it — and then learn why Chazal are really right?”

In a certain way, that little exchange encapsulated a lot of the underpinnings of a Prospect Park chinuch. With the right teachers, the right tools, and an unshakeable foundation, there is nothing to be feared in knowing and learning, and nothing out there in the greater world of knowledge that can hold a candle to the primacy of Torah.

—Shana Friedman, Class of 1996

Students remember

All the Right Reasons

I first met “Rabbi Kelman Senior” as an insecure ninth-grader overwhelmed by a new school, a new set of classmates, and a demanding academic schedule.

“You’re Miss Rabinowich, yes?” he inquired, in his slow, grandfatherly voice. “How’s your grandmother? How’s the family?”

I was a former class socialite turned-new-kid-on-the-block. It’s terribly clichי to say “he made me feel like a million bucks,” but that’s what happened. In this strange, unfamiliar setting, I suddenly belonged.

Later I learned that Rabbi Kelman did this with every student. He took pride in knowing the name and background of each of his girls; he played a predictable Jewish geography game that felt warm and authentic.

Very quickly, I gathered that this tall, imposing man — always with a suit and tie, capped by a regal snow-white beard — was a school fixture: you’d find him in the lobby, the auditorium, the offices. Already elderly and infirm, he’d shuffle down the hallways with a cane or attendant or both.

What I didn’t know was how much he loved being there.

Some days, we’d find him sitting in a chair just beside the school entrance. At 5:05 p.m., when the swarm of laughing, loose-leaf-clutching girls oozed out of the building — down East 16th Street to the train, or up Avenue R for the locals — he’d take in the scene and nod, as if there were nowhere else he’d rather be.

I remember marveling at the father-son dynamic, so brimming with mutual respect. Rabbi Kelman Senior had handed the reins to his son, Rabbi Leib; the former no longer served actively in the school’s administration. But for the next 30-odd years, his son — “Rabbi Kelman Junior” — carved a clear, defined place for his chinuch pioneer father. Rabbi Kelman Senior maintained his office. He frequently spoke at events, “subbed” for absent teachers, and entered classes freely, savoring the chance to remain part of the process.

To the Kelman family’s credit, the operation didn’t feel like a hereditary monarchy; it was driven by a sense of mission and a powerful drive to do this right. As my mother, who saw four daughters through the school, astutely noted: “These are people who entered chinuch for all the right reasons.”

In later years, when I taught fourth grade in Prospect’s elementary school, Rabbi Kelman would visit each class before major Yamim Tovim to offer insights and wish them well. He’d sometimes speak for a good ten minutes, and by then his voice was not always audible.

But there was a reverence in the room that didn’t allow for whispering or giggling. It was clear, even to my nine-year-old students, that what took place between these walls meant the world to him. With a richness and chein, he gave them the gift of mesorah — a sense that their experience in this building was bigger and deeper and more panoramic than they could perceive.

I consider my years at Prospect Park Bnos Leah to be my most formative. In a world saturated with image and yichus and spiritual posturing, this institution is home to an endangered pedagogical species of wise, humble educators who create an impact that endures, who foster a growth that is steady and real and long-lasting.

I am deeply grateful to Rabbi Avraham Kelman — the man who started it all, and who was there till his very end.

—Michal Eisikowitz, Class of 2005

(Originally featured in Mishpacha Issue 675)