That was a special lesson, and I still think about it often

It might have been a few years, or even many decades ago, but the first day of school is a memory not easily erased. Mishpacha asked prominent readers to share one of those starting-off-the-new-year recollections.

One of the rebbeim at my elementary school, Yeshiva Shlomo Kluger on the Lower East Side, was Rabbi Rosenblum. He welcomed us with the pasuk, “Ma tovu ohalecha Yaakov” — the Torah you learn here in school is only good if you can succeed in bringing it into “mishkinosecha Yisrael.” He wanted us to understand that we were all ambassadors, there not just to learn Torah, but to live it in a way that would have an impact on our families too. That was a special lesson, and I still think about it often.

—RABBI MARVIN HIER, Dean and Founder of the Simon Wiesenthal Center

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 825)