Risky Business

A father of five, Shuli sent his ben yachid on a predictable path — to the same yeshivah he himself had attended. But by seventh grade, it was clear that Meir was an early bloomer; he didn’t just dwarf the rest of his class, he was a head taller than his rebbi and already shaving. Whether it was because of his mature appearance or some other underlying issue, the 12-year-old started hanging out with older boys and acting out. Things went rapidly downhill from there.

Traditional parenting techniques that had worked well with Shuli’s daughters didn’t seem to resonate with Meir. In retrospect, a relatively innocuous incident that took place shortly after Meir’s bar mitzvah illustrated the disconnect between father and son.

“He came out of shul holding his tefillin in his right hand, and he took off his hat and held it in his left hand,” says Shuli. “At the time, I totally lost my cool — how do you walk in the street without a hat? I was so focused on what I wanted him to be that I didn’t hear who he actually was.”

While today there are options available for students who don’t always toe the line, that wasn’t the case in 1999.

“The at-risk phenomenon was still in the closet at a minimum, if even that much,” Shuli recalls. “There were no organizations, no yeshivos for these kids. If you didn’t fit in, it didn’t work.”

During his ninth-grade year, Meir went through five different yeshivos until he finally ran out of options around Pesach time and took a job. He was eventually accepted to Torah Academy of Brooklyn, an alternative school whose student body hails primarily from the Syrian community, where he found his niche and got through high school.

Today, Meir is married and is himself a yeshivah parent, but that harrowing period of repeated school rejections left its mark. These days, Shuli Halpert is busy helping struggling kids and their parents secure those all-important school placements.

Bridge Over Troubled Waters

IT wasn’t until his son had successfully moved on to adulthood that Shuli finally felt comfortable following his heart. In 2007, eight years after finding multiple yeshivah doors slammed in his face, Shuli cofounded Gesher L’Yeshivos, along with childhood friend Moishe Rosenthal, in order to help kids who face the gut-wrenching reality that no schools want them. Gesher L’Yeshivos doesn’t charge for its services and has no office — it’s just two friends with big hearts, answering calls from desperate parents.

Shuli still comes to Brooklyn two days a week to continue his work in real estate, but the amount of time he spends on his day job doesn’t compare to the hours he devotes to Gesher L’Yeshivos. An average week finds Shuli meeting with a different set of parents and their children every night, sometimes even reaching out to young marrieds he helped get into school years ago for assistance. Having experienced the frustration, depression, humiliation, and anxiety that go along with rejection, those former recipients of Shuli’s largesse are often happy for the opportunity to pay the mitzvah forward.

Shuli works primarily with eighth graders, high schoolers, boys going to beis medrash, and young seminary hopefuls. All are either struggling with placements for the upcoming year or zeman or are, for any number of reasons, in need of a midterm replacement.

In this off-hours career, Shuli has advocated for over 2,000 boys and girls from all over the United States, as well as in England, Israel, and Belgium. Many come from wholesome homes and families, while others are at-risk teens or kids challenged with dysfunctional upbringings, social issues, trauma, or abuse.

In the beginning, Shuli says he saw five boys for every girl, but the situation has reversed itself in recent years, possibly because there are fewer nonmainstream schools for girls.

He believes that his own difficult situation gave him the clarity and sensitivity to help others navigate this seemingly hopeless time.

“Every organization starts with someone who struggled,” he says, “and because of that, I can talk to parents who are dealing with the frustration of a kid who is suffering. I know what it feels like.”

The stories that Shuli hears are so filled with pain and anger that just listening to them can be devastating. Sometimes they transport Shuli back to those heartbreaking moments when his own alma mater refused to accept his son, but life has shown him that even things that seem terrible in the moment can have a positive outcome.

“Each year, my yeshivah picks two alumni to honor at the 50th anniversary of their graduating class, and last year, I was chosen to be honored because of my volunteer work,” notes Shuli. “I clearly understood that the only reason I went through those hard times was so I could do what I’m doing today.”

As much as Shuli deals with the difficult realities of schools turning away certain applicants, he insists that that reality shouldn’t overshadow the fact that our academic institutions are quality, devoted institutions. Unfortunately, he notes, rejections are an inevitable part of the admissions process, leaving those who are turned away with hard feelings. Yet he says many of the school principals and administrators he deals with “are all heart.”

“Our yeshivahs and Bais Yaakovs are producing tens of thousands of successful boys and girls,” Shuli says. “Could we be doing better? Yes. If there is one kid out of school it is a problem. But we need to shine the spotlight on the good, not just the problems.”

Side by Side

Once Shuli receives an initial phone call from a distraught parent, he will insist on connecting with the child as well before he proceeds to intervene on the family’s behalf, a process that can include a Zoom meeting or FaceTime call for those who are out of town. Shuli is a skilled networker and has an unusual rapport with teens as well as adults. Getting a handle on the situation might include reaching out to family rabbanim and someone in the school that issued the rejection.

When Shuli recommends a school that he thinks is a good fit and might also be amenable to accepting a particular student, he gives the parents space to process that information. In many cases, the school might not be their first choice, but it’s important that parents come to terms with where their child is actually holding in a healthy way. In many cases, parents move things ahead on their own, but when asked for further assistance, Shuli is more than happy to jump in and make the necessary phone calls, whether it is to the school, a family rav or mentor, or anyone else who can help get that boy or girl accepted. The heartbreaking process can take months, and parent-child cooperation is an essential component of the equation.

“If you are working with each other and not being antagonistic, then you’ve already won most of the battle,” Shuli explains. “If the parents are adamant that ‘we are in charge of your education and you are the teenager who has to listen,’ it generally doesn’t work.”

Shuli has worked with boys who needed a yeshivah placement but were only willing to consider schools that had lax phone policies, essentially limiting themselves to just a handful of choices. He advises parents to work with their kids, perhaps allowing them to have one phone for yeshivah and another to use at home. Still, he says, compromise works well with some kids, but not with others.

“You can have a kid say that they won’t go to yeshivah without their smartphone, and they’ll wind up getting their way, because if the parent doesn’t allow it, the kid will end up acting out and getting thrown out,” says Shuli. “And that’s the real cardinal rule in high school: If you send a kid somewhere they don’t want to go, for sure out of town, they’ll be home so fast you won’t know what hit you.”

He tells of a young man who wanted to go to a particular yeshivah, a choice that didn’t resonate with his father. The father insisted his son would have to get kicked out of yeshivah 100 times before he would reconsider his decision. In the end, the son had to get expelled from only three yeshivos before his father gave in and agreed to his son’s choice.

“I think he should have been tough with him and asked him to describe the five best things about the place he wanted to go to,” says Shuli. This, he explains, would compel the son to consider if he had solid reasons for being adamant about that particular yeshivah, effectively encouraging him to evaluate the validity of his choice.

“You have to negotiate. You have to let kids feel like they have a say, that they’re being heard, especially when it comes to high school.”

Surprisingly, more than three-quarters of the beis medrash boys Shuli helps actually come to see him accompanied by their mothers — without their fathers.

“For some reason, a lot of fathers just seem to throw in the towel much faster,” he says. “But that’s a real shame for their sons. How does an 18-year-old boy feel that he is there with his mother but not his father?”

For girls who have yet to be accepted anywhere, summer is a true horror, with conversations in camp often revolving around uniforms and school shoes.

“That pain is the worst,” says Shuli. “They tell their friends in camp that they are going to ‘Bais Yaakov’ without being more specific, to save face. And yes, eventually they do get into a school, but why do the schools put them through that kind of agony, just because they don’t have the IQ?”

While it isn’t unusual for boys to leave home for yeshivah, a girl leaving home for high school often raises eyebrows, even if it’s the best fit for her. Shuli has found that parents are often nervous about an out-of-the-box solution, and how it might affect their daughter’s reputation once she enters shidduchim.

But shidduchim aren’t the only reason parents might try to push their sons or daughters into schools that might not be the best place for them. Parents who have multiple children who are doing well in a particular school might be reluctant to switch the one kid who is falling through the cracks into another institution.

“And it isn’t unheard of for fathers to say that if they send one child to a different school, they will lose their sibling discount and have to pay full tuition, which can be a huge financial burden,” Shuli explains.

Rabbi Tzvi Elimelech Rokeach of Bais Mordechai D’Bertch in the Marine Park neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York, is one of many community rabbanim who helps Shuli intervene on behalf of kids who have nowhere to go. He hails Shuli for his intuitive abilities in solving school placement dilemmas, a problem he considers one of the great challenges of today’s generation. Rabbi Rokeach recalls the time that Shuli needed help when the father of a high schooler who was facing certain challenges was adamant that his son attend a particular yeshivah.

“Shuli called me and told me that the father doesn’t understand his son and that he needed me to help him put this boy into the right yeshivah,” says Rabbi Rokeach. “I told the father that if Shuli says this is the right place for his son to go, then this was the right place.”

Ultimately, the father relented, and it became clear that Shuli had made the right call.

Rabbi Rokeach says that schools and rabbanim try to accommodate Shuli’s requests because they know that he has no vested interests and that his tireless advocacy comes from the purest of places — his heart.

“The gedolim have a tremendous trust in Shuli,” observes Rabbi Rokeach. “He understands how to get things done.”

When questions beyond his scope of expertise arise, Shuli turns to Mir Rosh Yeshivah Rav Elya Brudny, as well as other respected roshei yeshivah and gedolim, to discuss the often complex issues balancing students’ and schools’ best interests. He credits Rabbi Yoel Kramer, Rabbi Mordechai Besser, Rabbi Mordche Reichberg, and Rabbi Dovid Nojowitz, all of whom were with Torah Umesorah while he was in his early years as an advocate, with teaching him the ropes of how connections work and how to approach schools in a way that will get results.

Tough Decisions

Mrs. Bracha Wrona is the limudei kodesh principal of Flatbush’s Bnos Yaakov High School, and she estimates that she has taken in over 20 “Shuli” girls. She says that she welcomes his calls because he’s honest and up-front, yet it’s clear that he cares about the kids he represents even if they’re considered “difficult” cases.

Having to send out rejection letters isn’t an easy thing, but it is a necessary part of running a school, explains Mrs. Wrona.

“It’s for sure heartbreaking, but it’s part of a parameter I need to put up as a principal,” she says. “This isn’t about me — I would be happy to have any girl in my house for Shabbos. This is about the klal of the school, and what ways a girl could potentially impact the klal.”

As much as he tries to get a yes from schools, Shuli understands why schools sometimes aren’t willing to even consider certain applications.

“Schools, especially the ones that have been around a long time, work off their track record,” says Shuli. “They might get burned once, but they aren’t going to get burned a second time.”

Shuli encourages parents not to lose hope, no matter how many polite refusals they receive.

One of those parents is Brooklyn resident Rafi Klein*, who had actually worked with Shuli in the past to help find a school for a girl who hadn’t been accepted anywhere, never once dreaming that he might one day be in need of advocacy for his own child. Yet finding a mainstream Bais Yaakov for his learning-challenged daughter Miri, an eighth-grader who had flourished in a specialized elementary school, turned out to be an impossible task.

As Miri was the youngest of their four daughters, the Kleins applied to the same local Bais Yaakov high school that their other girls had attended, having assumed that their longtime relationship with the school would be a point in Miri’s favor, despite her challenges.

“It was the logical choice,” recalls Shuli. “They figured the school would go the extra mile for them.”

But the school saw things differently. While the Kleins had made the tough decision to mainstream Miri, feeling — after much investigation and consultations — that that was the best educational option for her, they received a rejection letter.

Klein, for his part, was devastated. He’s a person who’s always been there for his community, as a Hatzalah volunteer for over three decades, one of the founding members of his shul and head of a family with an open home for chesed. Yet it seemed like for this round at least, doors were being closed on them.

With no local Bais Yaakovs willing to accept Miri, Klein reached out to schools in the Five Towns, despite the fact that those schools were religiously a little more to the left and their tuition was double. When those schools refused to accept Miri, Klein went back to the Brooklyn Bais Yaakov his older daughters had attended, practically begging them that he was ready to pay the Five Towns tuition price if they would just agree to take his daughter.

Again, the school refused.

“I was hurt,” Klein admits. They’d been stellar parents in that school, always following the rules regarding things like phones or extra vacation days. “We always did whatever they asked — why couldn’t they work with me?”

Not knowing where else to turn, Klein reached out to Shuli, who acknowledges that mainstreaming a student isn’t as simple as it seems.

“The elephant in the room is that it is very hard to get out of special education,” says Shuli, who noted that Miri’s rejection was doubly painful because the Brooklyn Bais Yaakov had accepted one of her elementary school classmates while turning her away.

Shuli worked closely with the Kleins, speaking to Miri’s teachers and principals, and went through her report cards and evaluations to get the fullest possible picture. He decided to advocate for Miri at a small school that he had worked with previously, knowing that the principal had a more open policy and a big heart. It was a process that took time, and all the while, Shuli kept reassuring the Kleins that their daughter would find her place.

“I admit that I wasn’t very confident it would happen, but I was hoping that it would,” says Shuli. “I pushed the principal to meet with her and finally she did.”

It wasn’t until spring that Miri was finally accepted into the school that Shuli had chosen. But even with his daughter currently enrolled in a mainstream school where she is doing well, Klein remains concerned by the admissions process, where in the end, schools wind up divvying up the kids that no one wants to accept.

Klein described the months that it took to get Miri into a school as being filled with “a lot of phone calls and a lot of tears.When I was in high school, I was in the gimmel shiur and I struggled with Gemara, and now I give two shiurim a day,” says Klein. “Just give a kid a chance.”

Lifelines

Shuli has been at the weddings of dozens of kids he has helped in the past. Attending those simchahs is incredibly rewarding, but as joyful as each simchah is, the pain of rejection still lingers on, even years later.

“Everyone somehow ends up in school, but why they have to go through so much hurt, I don’t know,” says Shuli. “I keep telling them that they’re going to make it, but it isn’t easy.”

Despite the long hours he invests in school placements, Shuli hopes to be able to continue doing what he does for many years, because leaving kids behind is an untenable situation — and the many parents he has helped over the years gratefully recall how Shuli stepped up to the plate during one of the most trying periods of their lives.

“Meeting Shuli was like someone throwing me a life raft in the middle of the ocean,” says Klein. “Someone cared. Someone listened. Someone told me I did the right thing — and actually cared enough to do something to help me.”

*Names changed to protect privacy. 

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1029)