All-Around Guy

His fearless innovation reinvented the childhood and coming of age of American yeshivah boys, but Reb Eliyahu Teitelbaum was not American-born himself. He was born a refugee in London, where his family had fled from Vienna, Austria, just before the outbreak of war.

Rabbi Yaakov (Yankel) Teitelbaum, his distinguished father, had been the rav of Ze’irei Agudas Yisrael in Vienna. When the family made their way to the States, Rabbi Teitelbaum sought to build a shul and community where none existed, and found his place in Kew Gardens, Queens, where he pioneered a heimishe kehillah.

“My own family moved to Kew Gardens a few years after the Teitelbaums, in 1952,” says maggid and mohel Rabbi Paysach Krohn, “and that was because the Teitelbaums were there. Reb Elimelech Tress advised my father, ‘if you’re looking at moving to Queens, go to Rabbi Yaakov Teitelbaum’s community. He built up a very fine shul.’”

Eli was the second of the eight Teitelbaum children. Since Kew Gardens had no suitable yeshivah at that time, Rabbi Teitelbaum chose to send them to the Lubavitcher yeshivah on Dean Street in Crown Heights, which was the closest option. This had a lifelong impact on Eli and some of his siblings, who were influenced by the Chabad path. Childhood friends remember Eli as exceptionally handsome, short, like all the Teitelbaum siblings, and supremely capable all-around.

“Anything Eli touched became gold,” says Rabbi Krohn. Determination and strong principles were dominant Teitelbaum traits, which guided Eli as he grew into a charismatic teenaged Pirchei leader and yeshivah bochur.

The family spent summers at Camp Agudah, where Rabbi Yaakov Teitelbaum was the mara d’asra, and Mrs. Teitelbaum served as camp mother — a role she continued to fill even after her husband’s passing.

Unforgettable Rebbi

Eli learned in the Lubavitcher yeshivah for several years, then in his mid-twenties, still single, he took a position as a rebbi in Torah Temimah, then called Yeshivah Torah Vodaath of Flatbush. Today his talmidim are middle-aged men of all walks of life, but they remember their time in his second or fourth grade classroom like yesterday.

According to Rabbi Nosson Scherman, who was his colleague as a rebbi, “Eli brought a camp-kind of lebedigkeit to the classroom which was completely new. Nowadays, this is taken for granted, and in some cases possibly overdone, but in those days, yeshivah classrooms were very serious and staid.”

With hands-on activities, 3D models, use of the technology of the time such as an overhead projector, and extensive dramatic storytelling, Eli was a master teacher who embraced any method that brought Torah topics to life.

Music producer Sheya Mendlowitz, who considers himself a talmid of Reb Eli Teitelbaum since second grade, speaks about the way his rebbi drew his pupils close. “He had a big class, and he always got the weaker students. I remember he’d go up and down the rows and ask each boy what he wanted to be when he grew up, if he could be anything he wanted. Then, he would build the roles those kids had mentioned, whether carpenters, or plumbers, into characters in a story, giving the children such standing and giving respect to their thoughts and inner world. Of course, he would always stop the story for recess with a real cliff-hanger, so we couldn’t wait to get back.”

Sheya was a sixth-grader when his larger-than-life mentor married Toby, nee Perkowsky, of Boro Park, and the entire grade made a sheva brachos.

In 1967 and 1968, Rabbi Nosson Scherman served as Eli’s co-head counselor in Camp Torah Vodaas. “Eli was running the camp, but they needed someone with more gravitas alongside him, so I became co-head counselor. He was incredible to work with, and kavod meant nothing to him. I was learning from him, but he pushed me forward as the face of the camp.” And he combined his incredible talent with determination and stamina. “He could work for 36 hours straight,” recalls Rabbi Scherman.

Eli saw camp as an opportunity to cultivate talent and creativity, and looked to hire counselors who could put on plays with the campers. He had no hesitations about arranging unconventional activities, and took the view that making the boys as happy as possible would help get them “into” their learning. In camp, as in his class, he would observe the boys carefully and give out awards to those who excelled in middos and bein adam l’chaveiro.

Summers to Remember

In 1969, Eli Teitelbaum left his head counselor role at Camp Torah Vodaas to break completely new ground. Just two years after the Six Day War, new vistas in Eretz Yisrael were available for touring, and Eli decided it was time to give American youth the incredible experience of seeing the Holy Land for themselves. His camp would offer them a taste of the kedushah of Eretz Yisrael, let them touch its history, meet its Torah giants, and marvel at its incredible beauty. It would give them a summer that they could never forget.

“He was always shooting for the top, doing everything on the highest level. He believed in challenging and developing his campers in every way possible, in providing summers packed with excitement that a child could never forget. We did things that were not done in frum camps at the time, things which bordered on the meshugah. From horseback riding to an early version of paintballing, from waking the kids at 2 a.m. for a tiyul, to live music, he proved that there is plenty of simchas hachayim within the four amos of halachah — everything fun can be done in a kosher setting,” says Rabbi Baruch Chait, rosh yeshivah of Maarava Machon Rubin, who was head counselor in Camp Sdei Chemed for eight years. Spiritual experiences such as meeting gedolim and walking through Jerusalem, from Meah Shearim to the Kosel while singing, were intertwined with anything that Eli could introduce to make the summer more memorable, more intrepid, and more out-the-box.

And then, there were the concerts.

Eli loved to see boys using their talents and decided that his camp would record music albums and stage fully kosher, professional concerts with separate seating. Yisroel Lamm, who was assistant head counselor, recalls how “Eli was the one who gave me my first opportunity to conduct a symphony orchestra. During the second summer at Sdei Chemed, he called the Israeli Philharmonic, based in Tel Aviv, and hired musicians to rehearse and play with us. When they drove down to camp, he showed them in to where he had set us up in the camp dining room, with a choir that he produced. It was amateurish by their standards, but the concert came together well in the end.”

Within a couple of years, Sdei Chemed drew 250 campers from the States, Canada, Europe, and England. Yigal Calek of London Pirchei fame joined Eli and collaborated on some hit musical experiences. The camp was expensive, but Eli didn’t seem to make much money on it. He loved giving the boys this unique experience, and sending them home full of satisfaction, confidence, and pride in their identity. No one who experienced a summer at Sdei Chemed could ever subscribe to the regrettable idea that Torah Yiddishkeit was drab, dull, or restrictive, and perhaps that was Eli’s greatest gain.

Port of Call

Eli loved technology for its unbounded potential. Students of the early 1960s remember that he told them, “Imagine, one day you are going to turn on the television, and instead of garbage, one channel will be broadcasting Rashi and one channel Tosafos.”

The dream began to take shape when Eli bought 20 minutes of Motzaei Shabbos radio time on WEVD Jewish radio and persuaded his friend Rabbi Nosson Scherman to deliver a program called “Mishnayos on the Air.” It was his way of reaching out to young Jewish audiences and adults as well, who loved radio. This radio program lasted several years, until Eli’s computerized call-in system took over. The idea of picking up the phone and hearing a shiur was an utter novelty — “There was nothing in the Jewish world that came close,” says Rabbi Scherman.

With Dial-A-Daf, Eli fully realized his dream of using technology to spread Torah and Yiddishkeit. It was in the early 1980s when a friend of his confided that he required a certain medical procedure, but didn’t want to go into the hospital, as it would mean missing his daf yomi shiur. Eli was spurred to action: He knew there had to be a way to get that shiur on the phone, and his creative mind figured out how to make it happen, not just for this one friend, but for whoever wanted and needed access to Torah long-distance.

The first step involved recruiting top maggidei shiur to his cause (including Rav Mechel Zilber from Eretz Yisrael) and having high-quality tape recorders and scores of cassette tapes delivered to them. When batches of taped shiurim arrived at the Teitelbaum home, nerve-center of Dial-A-Daf, Eli copied each one multiple times and shipped them to Dial-A-Daf branches run by his brothers in Miami and California, as well as others in Toronto and Baltimore. (These local hubs were necessary because of the cost of long-distance calling at the time.)

Eli found sponsors for his new venture, then conferred with two engineers and the phone companies. When he told AT&T that he wanted hundreds of phone lines for his basement, they told him that such an order required a commitment that he would continue to pay for the lines for some years. With full confidence, Eli agreed. Soon, residents of 43rd Street between 16th and 17th Avenue were surprised to see their entire block being dug up by AT&T, as they laid hundreds of new phone lines.

The engineers built the program, lines lit up as the calls came in, and the tape recorders hummed, a selection of shiurim running every hour. Upstairs, inside the house, Reb Eli had the shiurim playing the entire day, so that if something paused or malfunctioned, the family would be aware of the problem and could rush down to the basement. His daughter recalls falling asleep at night to the sound of daf yomi.

During the 1980s, when boys came into New York from out of town to join the annual Pirchei Siyum Mishnayos, one of their sightseeing stops was the Teitelbaum home. They would arrange to be there in advance of the hour, and troop down to the basement. There, Reb Eli would give them a tour of the Dial-A-Daf wonderland in his basement. Hundreds of lines would light up as callers got on the phone. As the clock struck the hour, the tape recorders automatically began to roll, as the hourly shiur was broadcast to callers.

Soon, in addition to the daf shiurim in English and Yiddish, Dial-A-Daf offered shiurim in Mishnayos, mostly recorded by Rabbi Nosson Scherman, who also presented a Holocaust history series in 18-minute segments. Eventually, Dial-A-Daf morphed into the Torah Communications Network — still housed in that basement wonderland in Boro Park — and in a very real sense, is the father of today’s chizuk phone lines, online shiurim, and daf yomi podcasts.

The Right Notes

Eli played the piano and clarinet, produced the early Sdei Chemed albums, and even composed part of the classic song “Venikeisi.” His main contribution to Jewish music, though, was not his own music, but his vision in encouraging others’ efforts and developing their gifts. Yisroel Lamm was one of Eli’s early protégés, when the frum music scene consisted only of the albums of Reb Benzion Shenker, Chazan Dovid Werdyger, and Shlomo Carlebach.

“Eli was a visionary, who saw how much potential Jewish music had, not in terms of a money-making industry, but in terms of what it could offer the community as an outlet, an accomplishment, and a sense of belonging.”

Eli recruited what Yisrael Lamm terms “a little army of Jewish musicians.” He opened up opportunities for them, encouraging them to practice, perform, and record, taking them along to perform with him as a wedding band. He started the Chait brothers off on the clarinet, encouraged Abie Rotenberg to compose, and it was from Eli’s Camp Sdei Chemed that Moshe Laufer sent his first composition “Mi She’asah Nissim,” off on a cassette tape, to be included on the New York School of Jewish Song album. David Nulman was another of these young musicians who says he would never have had the opportunity to sing, play in bands, and develop musically without Eli.

And Eli’s sense of fun gave these young Jewish musicians joy as well as opportunity. “I remember Eli taking us to Washington D.C. to perform there. We stayed overnight in a motel and Eli took us to the Capitol and to a session of Congress. We also once went along to London to perform. They were great times,” Yisroel Lamm remembers.

In 1980, Avraham Friedman, who had been a child soloist on the Pirchei and Sdei Chemed albums, was considering singing adult solos. Reb Eli told him to send a demo to Sheya Mendlowitz, also a bochur at the time, who had always been amazed by Avremel’s voice. Through Eli, young Sheya became the shaliach to put “Avraham Fried” on the map, and the “shidduch” bore fruit in the form of Fried’s first eight albums which were produced by Sheya.

Music was never a personal business for him. Eli had no concept of keeping his talents and any potential income to himself, but made himself available to help anyone in the field by making connections and offering opportunity. His basement music studio was also where some of the 851 Torah Avenue and Rabbi Shmuel Kunda tapes were produced, with the Teitelbaum kids getting to star as parts on the tapes.

Somewhere a Star

Since childhood, Eli had been fascinated by photography and videography. At Sdei Chemed, he walked around with a video camera on his shoulder, capturing the boys’ fun and excitement. He loved Eretz Yisrael passionately, and as the camp explored and hiked, Eli took pictures, from which he created slides.

His daughter, Shaindy Friedman , relates, “My father was never possessive. He was happy to share all his professional slides, pictures of Eretz Yisrael and nature, with anyone interested in making a slide show. He used his video skills to help out the Vaad Keren Hashviis, by producing a powerful fundraising video for them. Long before it was standard, my father was videoing the Agudah and Torah Umesorah conventions. He became close to Rabbi Moshe Sherer and would do anything he asked, later being one of the only visitors allowed to see Rabbi Sherer when he was very sick.”

Reb Eli crossed communal and organizational lines. While he breathed the spirit of Chabad, he was at the heart of the world of Agudah too. “He was also involved with the Vaad Mishmeres Stam, with the founding of Shomrim, and many more projects that we didn’t even know about,” Mrs. Friedman adds.

It is no secret that he was an early “mekarev kerovim” of New York’s Jewish youth, giving so many teens and young men direction and guidance. They admired his talents — anything they could do, he could do better — but his influence was enabled by his non-judgmental outlook, his genuine caring, and his gift for spotting others’ gifts.

“He didn’t see them as ‘kids at risk,’” insists Sheya Mendlowitz. “He looked to include them rather than label or exclude.”

There were students who came over to Reb Eli and Toby Teitelbaum’s home on Friday night to farbreng and hear about Eli’s latest dreams and plans, and teenagers who came over Motzaei Shabbos to talk music to Eli as he worked in the basement. He encouraged them to develop their talents, admiring any self-expression or creativity, sometimes offering to teach them judo or clarinet, and always pushing them to achieve.

After Eli was niftar in 2008, Camp Sdei Chemed was left in the capable hands of his son, Dovid and his wife, Elisheva, who ran the girls program. They then branched out to include other summer programs, including Camp Chemda and Camp Kedma.

During the shivah, many came in with their personal “Eli Teitelbaum stories,” about how he had helped them through difficult times, conspicuously supporting faltering frum businesses, discreetly helping out widows or those who had lost money in scams, and advising parents with struggling children.

“The Teitelbaums were all people of principle, and very strong-minded ,” Rabbi Scherman says. “If they felt something was the right thing to do, they did it whether or not it was popular.” Eli used his writing skills to stand up for justice and support the underdog in newspaper columns and articles over the years, and at one point, he enlisted the eloquence of his friend Rabbi Scherman to write a regular column in a Jewish newspaper countering the harmful influence of a certain group. People knew he was behind it, but he would not back down, until the publication caved in to outside pressure to end the column.

Eli passed away suddenly, during a brief hospitalization at the age of sixty-seven, which brought his active life to an end before talmidim could mobilize to daven for him. As Abie Rotenberg wrote in “Somewhere a Star,” a poignant tribute composed and sung at the Event in 2009:

“Alas, if we had only known how soon his final days would come / we would have stormed the Gates of Heaven / ‘Reb Eli’s work is not yet done’ / But as the light of sun and stars will forever shine / His precious legacy will last until the very end of time.

“Somewhere a star now shines high in the Heavens / telling the tale of whom it can be said / Umatzdikei, umatzdikei harabbim kakochavim le’olam vo’ed.”

What Eli saw in me…

Rabbi Eli Teitelbaum was a trailblazer, a man ahead of his time. I got to know Eli initially from Pirchei and later when he was head counselor at Camp Torah Vodaas and director at Camp Sdei Chemed. I would like to highlight three of his accomplishments that had a huge impact on the Jewish world and on me personally.

First, the Dial-A-Daf, which opened the daf yomi to thousands who could now pick up a phone and hear outstanding shiurim on the daf at their convenience. People could learn during lunch break, or after coming home late from work. When I began doing daf yomi, I subscribed to Dial-a-Daf and loved it. Eli managed to put together a group of outstanding maggidei shiur who were able to give the daf with absolute clarity, so it was a tremendous benefit to those just beginning to do daf yomi. This was before the advent of the ArtScroll Schottenstein Talmud. Who knows how many people joined daf yomi because of Eli? It was also a huge technological feat: The setup in his basement looked like AT&T headquarters with computers, phone lines, and huge tape recorders everywhere you looked.

Second, he was one of the founders of the original Pirchei Sings recordings, that I was fortunate to be a part of. By today’s standards the musical arrangements were simple, but the songs were great, and classics like “Mi Ha’ish,” “Eilecha,” and many others still resonate today. The Pirchei records added a new dimension to Jewish music, and as the first professional boys’ choir, it was the forerunner for the London School, Miami Boys, and the other boys’ choirs that followed over the years. By the way, the multitalented Eli also played clarinet on those albums.

A third innovation was Camp Sdei Chemed, the first camp of its kind to take campers for a summer of touring and fun while learning to love Eretz Yisrael. I went to Sdei Chemed in its first year with Eli as camp director and Rabbi Boruch Chait as head counselor. Who could dream of taking hundreds of kids to Israel for the summer? Who could pull it off? Only Eli! And Eli, in true fashion, also produced a Sdei Chemed record, playing clarinet and trumpet.

Thinking about Eli reminded me to go to my bookshelf and pull out a Haggadah he once gave me, written by Eli himself, entitled Thoughts on the Haggadah, one of several seforim he authored. I don’t know when a person as busy as Eli found the time to write seforim, but he was the quintessential doer, a person who truly embodied “Emor me’at v’asei harbei.” Eli was a great friend, a special person who added so much to my Yiddishkeit and to thousands of Jews all over the world.

—Yossi Sonnenblick

What Eli saw in me…

I grew up a block away from Reb Eli’s home in Kew Gardens.

In the eyes of a young teenage boy, Eli was larger than life. He played the clarinet, he knew photography, he was incredibly strong, and he knew judo. He could tell captivating stories, and, if you asked him, he could learn any Gemara with you. So we had this amazing icon in our midst. But we had to share Eli with the rest of New York… because he was famous! He produced the world-renowned Pirchei records and he was a head counselor. He even made a camp in Eretz Yisrael.

For me personally, Eli was also a dear friend. In the darker moments of my life he was there to help and guide me. He always encouraged me with my music and other endeavors. After I moved away from New York, we saw each other infrequently. But whenever we did, he would enthusiastically show me his latest project. And he was always working on the next great idea, always a step or two ahead of everyone else. It was because he loved Klal Yisrael so much. He wanted to do anything and everything to help, elevate, and bring them closer to Hashem.

—Abie Rotenberg

What Eli saw in me…

I knew a man who built a whole mountain resort in Tennessee. Someone asked him how he became so fabulously wealthy, and he replied, “Many saw the mountain, but I saw a hotel upon it.” What set him apart was the vision. Eli was a visionary. Others saw a young boy on a trumpet and another on the piano, but in Eli’s mind’s eye, he saw frum orchestras, tapes of dozens of Jewish songs, choirs and wedding bands and kumzitzes. Then, he began to build his vision. He was the general who laid out the battle plan, and we are all still reaping the benefits of his foresight today.

—Yisroel Lamm

What Eli saw in me…

Eli Teitelbaum took his very first piano lesson from my mother. What was soon clear about this child was that he was not only talented, but multitalented. He played piano and clarinet, and was a talented photographer. He and his older brother Moshe were the fastest runners in camp. When we traveled by bus, Eli would be reading Scientific American — if it was anything to do with electronics or science, he loved it and he understood it. He could take apart and put together a radio or a telephone. He was a talmid chacham too. Once, at a siyum, his father asked him to stand up and speak. The rav’s son, he gave a brilliant derashah on the spot, showing a machlokes between Beis Shammai and Beis Hillel and how it played out through all of Shas Mishnayos.

Eli was the lifeguard at Camp Agudah. Then he became a karate champion too. Once, a non-Jewish teenager started up with me in our neighborhood because I beat him at a ball game. The guy was much bigger than me, and far taller than Eli. But Eli had him flipped over on the sidewalk in two minutes, and he never tried again.

Of course, he created slide shows, he wrote and produced plays, and produced music. As a rebbi and a camp director, he was like the Pied Piper. What a kolbo, and what a lev tov.

—Rabbi Paysach Krohn

What Eli saw in me…

I was 11 or 12 years old when I was invited to the house — correction, the basement — of Reb Eli Teitelbaum. That was where he had a professional recording studio set up. He had heard me sing on Eli Lipsker’s Pirchei recordings, and was now trying me out for the Camp Sdei Chemed album. He liked what he heard and gave me a solo on “Venikeisi,” which he and Yisroel Lamm composed.

A year later, he called me again, to record a solo in a song called “Hakshiva el Rinasi.” I had a very high range, and Reb Eli had imagined me belting out the high part. I stepped up to the mic, but try as I might, I could not hit those high notes. Had he sent me home without me singing any part in that song, he probably would have crushed me. But with his quick thinking, he suggested that I try singing the low part of the song. And that’s exactly what I did.

—Avraham Fried

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 851)