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Like His Own Children

By Rachel Ginsberg and Sharon Gelbach | November 14, 2018

Rabbi Rosenfeld’s appearance was so ordinary that most people had no idea he was a giant in Torah, halachah, and Kabbalah

Before anyone used the term baal teshuvah, Rabbi Zvi Aryeh Rosenfeld was on the front lines of kiruv, bringing Breslov chassidus to a new world and teaching a young generation of Americans about Jewish basics. Forty years after his untimely passing, he’s still their rebbi

He was one of those rare men who fomented a revolution in Yiddishkeit — and whose impact continues to be felt on successive generations four decades after his passing. Rabbi Zvi Aryeh Rosenfeld was perhaps best-known as the brilliant Breslov mashpia of the last generation, the person primarily responsible for bringing Breslov chassidus to American shores and for opening the locked Soviet door to Rebbe Nachman’s backyard kever in the 1960s.

But Rabbi Rosenfeld was first and foremost a phenomenal educator, one of the first kiruv activists in the US before anyone even knew the term baal teshuvah. He was threatened with violence and was even subjected to humiliating police searches after irate parents filed complaints against him for brainwashing and kidnapping their children, but the boys and girls he instructed flourished under his care. He taught them how to keep Shabbos, how to understand Chumash, how to learn Gemara and prepare for their bar mitzvahs, and even how to find a shidduch. And as for his students — most of whom are now older than he was at his untimely passing at age 56 on 11 Kislev 5739 (1978) — he’s still their rebbi.

This clean-shaven, American-raised chassid was born in Gdynia, Poland, in 1922, after his parents were forced to flee their hometown of Kremenchug, Ukraine. The following year, the Rosenfelds — once wealthy from Reb Yisrael Abba’s lumber business but leveled to poverty from pogroms and the Communist nationalization of assets —arrived penniless to America.

The family settled in Brownsville, Brooklyn, and Zvi Aryeh attended Yeshivas Rabbeinu Chaim Berlin, moved on to Torah Vodaath, and at age 17, transferred to Yeshivas Beis Yosef Novardok in Boro Park, headed by Rav Avraham Jofen, the son-in-law of Rav Yosef Yoizel Horowitz, known as the Alter of Novardok. (Rav Jofen reestablished the venerated yeshivah after arriving in New York as a destitute refugee together with other gedolei Torah who managed to secure exit visas from Russia.)

It didn’t take long before Zvi Aryeh’s phenomenal genius and diligence were recognized, and Rav Jofen assigned his own son, Rav Yaakov, as his chavrusa (Rav Yaakov followed his father as rosh yeshivah of Beis Yosef until his own passing in 2003). At age 23, after completing Shas twice, he was one of only five students to receive semichah directly from Rav Jofen.

A year later, Rabbi Rosenfeld married Rebbetzin Tzipporah (nee Faivelson), a shidduch that had been arranged by Rav Yaakov Jofen’s wife, Rebbetzin Jean. At first glance, it seemed an unlikely match: Reb Zvi Aryeh traced his lineage to Rav Aharon of Breslov, while Tzipporah was the daughter of a well-respected Lithuanian family. The Faivelsons valued Reb Zvi Aryeh’s Torah scholarship, but were taken by surprise at the wedding when Rabbi Rosenfeld came wearing a gartel. People started whispering — how could the granddaughter of Rabbi Shmuel Avigdor Faivelson, a prominent Lithuanian rav, marry a bochur who wears a gartel? Then one of the relatives commented, “Why is everyone so upset? Reb Shmuel Avigdor also wore a gartel!” (It turned out that Rabbi Faivelson wore a gartel once a year, on Simchas Torah.)

Speed Learning Rabbi Rosenfeld decided early on that he would work to earn a living, but he deliberated over which avenue to pursue. Already then, he was known for being meticulous with money matters, a trait he cultivated and perfected all his life. (While over the years he helped raise huge sums for the poor of Eretz Yisrael and other causes, his own family lived in extreme privation.)
“I know one thing,” he told his chavrusa, Rav Yaakov Jofen, “I’ll never go into business. It’s impossible to run a business without ever taking advantage of the customer. Nothing is worth that.”

Despite having already earned his degree in accounting (he completed the six-month program in just three weeks), Rabbi Rosenfeld decided to change course after discussing the matter with the Rosh Yeshivah. Rav Jofen saw in his talmid the potential to be a great educator, and felt that his talents and brilliance would be wasted in accounting. Indeed, he succeeded in completing the entire Shas every few years.

His son-in-law and talmid Rabbi Chaim Kramer, head of the Breslov Research Institute, recalls how he would learn with two fingers, seemingly scanning the page “with one finger on the Gemara text and the other on Rashi. He would drag his fingers down the page as if he were just scrolling,” says Rabbi Kramer. “It was like speed learning, but he absorbed and remembered every word and idea. His amazing speed gave him such a breadth and depth of information that he had an encyclopedic knowledge of Gemara, Shulchan Aruch, and Kabbalah.” (One year when the Rosenfeld family spent Succos in Eretz Yisrael, they celebrated Simchas Torah in Yeshivas Mir, which had a second-day Yom Tov minyan where aliyos were sold in exchange for a specific learning commitment. The auctioning began with three hundred pages of Gemara. Rabbi Rosenfeld, who looked like a regular American balabos, shocked everyone by asking if three hundred pages of Zohar would be acceptable.)

Finally, a Rebbe

Rabbi Rosenfeld’s appearance was so ordinary that most people had no idea he was a giant in Torah, halachah, and Kabbalah.

He began working as a congregational rabbi at the Young Israel of Coney Island and taught at the Shaarei Torah Talmud Torah, headed by Rabbi Yechezkel Kahane (father of the late Rabbi Meir Kahane and ybl”c, Rabbi Nachman Kahane of the Old City). Rabbi Rosenfeld taught after-school classes for elementary-school children to give them a rudimentary education in Yiddishkeit and to prepare boys for their bar mitzvah. But those kids were immersed in American culture and had little interest in wasting their free time on religious studies. Their parents didn’t want their children becoming “too religious” either. Somehow, though, Rabbi Rosenfeld got through to them.

In addition to his teaching, Rabbi Rosenfeld had a sideline task. After his father passed away in 1947, Rabbi Rosenfeld was charged with taking over Reb Yisrael Abba’s extensive tzedakah activities, which included raising money for the tiny Breslover community in Jerusalem. This project involved extensive correspondence with Rav Avraham Sternhartz, one of the elders of the Breslover chassidim in Jerusalem and his father’s rav from Kremenchug.

As the son of a Breslover chassid and a scion of prominent Breslov personalities, Rabbi Rosenfeld had learned the few Breslov seforim that were available at the time in America and endeavored to put what he learned into practice. However, with no more than a handful of Breslov chassidim in all of the US, he had no one to give his chassidic side a direction for life.

Rabbi Rosenfeld found in Rav Sternhartz a brilliant talmid chacham who was able to answer his most complex questions. And so Rav Sternhartz became the Novardok talmid’s rebbi in his further study of Breslov chassidus. It was also through Rav Sternhartz that Reb Zvi Aryeh was inspired to take a major part in financing the building of the central Breslov shul in Meah Shearim. At the time, when there were so few Breslover chassidim, it wasn’t considered prudent to invest in such a huge building, yet within a decade of its construction, Rabbi Rosenfeld’s vision proved prescient, with the massive growth of the Breslov community. (The Israeli Breslovers assumed that Rabbi Rosenfeld was a wealthy American philanthropist, but those who traveled to the United States were shocked to discover that he was living in conditions that were poor even by their standards.)

Rabbi Rosenfeld finally met his chassidus rebbi in person in 1949, when he made his first trip to Eretz Yisrael. In fact, his lifelong dream was to move to the Holy Land, and he was opposed to purchasing property anywhere else. During this visit (it was to be the first of 52!), Rabbi Rosenfeld discussed with Rav Sternhartz his desire to move to Eretz Yisrael, grow a beard, and join the Breslov kehillah. However, when he described his work in the United States, how he had begun teaching youth and bringing them back to Yiddishkeit, Rav Sternhartz told him that he must remain in America. “Although living in Eretz Yisrael is kodesh, bringing American youth back to their heritage is kodesh kodashim,” he said. Rabbi Rosenfeld accepted that this was his mission, and decided that if a year would go by without a new talmid, he would leave the United States. Of course, that never happened, and he remained until 1978, shortly before his passing.

Rabbi Rosenfeld accepted these words as a charge for life, returning to the US with a renewed commitment.

Against the Odds

Understanding that he was up against the all-encompassing lure and pull of the American street, Rabbi Rosenfeld didn’t do much “real” teaching in the beginning; instead, he told stories and used riddles and games to pique his students’ interest. He was also an expert in the “pin test.” He’d have someone stick a pin into a Gemara, and judging how far the pin had penetrated the pages and according to its position, he would tell his shocked students the exact word the pin had touched.

Rabbi Rosenfeld’s influence was so powerful that he was able to implant even eight- and nine-year-olds with powerful emunah and a desire to keep Torah and mitzvos, even if that meant going against their parents’ wishes. These children started walking around wearing a yarmulke and with tzitzis out, and dozens of children transferred from public school to religious schools such as Toras Emes and Bais Yaakov. When tuition was a problem, Rabbi Rosenfeld would arrange a significant reduction or manage to have the tuition waived altogether. In the same way, he sent many children to frum camps, at times covering the cost from his own pocket.

The talmidim became a close-knit group, davening together every Friday night in Rabbi Kahane’s shul, and on Shabbos morning, in their own minyan on the lower floor of the building. After davening, they walked across the street to the Rosenfelds’ tiny one-bedroom apartment for Kiddush, and in the afternoon, would come back to hear a shiur. Those who lived further away would make the 40-minute walk and stay.

Some parents felt threatened by the changes in their children though, and that anger once even brought on a police raid in his home on Leil HaSeder.

One of Rabbi Rosenfeld’s talmidim had run away from home because he didn’t want to be in a place where there was chometz. Convinced that their son was at his teacher’s house, the parents filed a police report charging Rabbi Rosenfeld with kidnapping. Right in the middle of the Seder, several policemen barged into their apartment and proceeded to open all the cabinets in their search for the missing child. When they came to one certain cabinet, Rabbi Rosenfeld begged them to stop — it was the cabinet with the chometz. Convinced that they’d found what they were looking for, the police triumphantly opened the door, only to be met with disappointment.

Eventually, though, many of the parents realized that Rabbi Rosenfeld was making a positive impact on their children’s lives and were actually grateful. Some even became more religious themselves.

Nine-year-old Stevie Vigdor came to the Talmud Torah after school out of curiosity — it was either that or going home, which was a less appealing choice. Stevie was tough and enjoyed fighting, like his uncle who was a professional boxer. He’d never liked school, and didn’t have much use for learning. He knew he was Jewish — the Italian guys on the block never let him forget it — but not much more. Still, his friends had told him it was worth it, so he was giving it a shot.

“The rabbi’s here!” one of the boys called out. Stevie didn’t know much about rabbis, except that they were old and strict, with long gray beards and thick European accents. If he forces me to wear one of those yarmulke thingies, I’m outta here, he thought.

Stevie’s eyes widened when the rabbi walked in. He didn’t look old at all, and he didn’t even have a beard. The rabbi spent the entire class telling stories, about another world called Gan Eden, a wonderful place with unimaginable reward. Stevie was mesmerized. He would never admit it, but he couldn’t wait until the next class.

One Shabbos, Stevie Vigdor was crossing the street when he was hit by a car. He lay unmoving in the middle of the street, not terribly hurt, but in shock. Someone called an ambulance, but meanwhile his friend came walking up the street. “Steeeevie!” he yelled when he saw his friend. “What are you doing on the ground? The Rabbi’s giving a class in ten minutes. Let’s go!” Stevie immediately jumped up and ran to class.

That summer, Rabbi Rosenfeld paid for him to attend Camp Agudah, and at the end of the summer, Rabbi Rosenfeld spoke to Stevie’s father about taking him out of public school.

“I’d like to take him out of public school, Rabbi,” Mr. Vigdor admitted, “but I can’t afford to send him to private school.”

Rabbi Rosenfeld waved away Mr. Vigdor’s concerns. “Why are you worried about money? I didn’t ask you for money.”

That year, Stevie began attending Yeshivas Toras Emes in Boro Park.

Stevie couldn’t believe it when his father told him that he’d bought a ticket for High Holiday services. His father had always spent Rosh Hashanah at the race track. “What’s going on, Dad?” Stevie asked. “I’m going to shul, Stevie. No more track. That’s the least I can do.”

Stevie’s mother, however, refused to kasher their kitchen, and by the time he was in his second year at RJJ yeshivah, Stevie (now Simchah) wanted to leave home. He phoned Rav Elya Svei, telling him that he was desperate. “I can’t stay here anymore. My home is treif. But my parents won’t let me go.”

Rav Svei, realizing the urgency of the situation, phoned Rabbi Rosenfeld and the two rabbis soon showed up at the Vigdor home. “I can’t eat in my own home. I want to learn in an out-of-town yeshivah, where I can live in a dorm,” he told the rabbis. His parents, however, didn’t want their only son to leave home.

Rabbi Rosenfeld agreed. “Stay in RJJ,” he told Stevie. “It’s the best place for you.” Then he turned to the parents. “Mr. Vigdor, if you want your son to remain at home, you have to make this house kosher. I’ll kasher it for you. We’ll purchase new dishes, we’ll do everything.” Rabbi Rosenfeld kashered the kitchen and Steve remained in RJJ.

Don’t Lose Because of Me

Part of what drew young people to him was a staunch integrity they could sense. Everyone knew Rabbi Rosenberg lived, not just preached, his emes.

“Growing up with my father, we never asked questions, because everything was just so clear,” says his daughter Mrs. Gita Kramer. “His own emunah was so strong, that anyone who heard him just caught it.”

She remembers how someone came to ask her father a sh’eilah about the kashrus of a valuable china plate. Rabbi Rosenfeld ruled that the dish was treif, and that there was no way to kasher it. But before the questioner left, the rabbi asked him the price of the dish and then handed him the amount. Rabbi Rosenfeld said that he could probably find a heter, but explained that “the majority opinion is that there is no way to kasher it, and I personally wouldn’t depend on the lenient opinion. Still, I feel bad about making you spend money because of my psak.”

Rabbi Rosenfeld was close with many gedolim, and most people never knew that he met regularly with the Lubavitcher Rebbe. He also had a close relationship with Rav Moshe Feinstein, with whom he would often consult. Once, one of Rabbi Rosenfeld’s critics heard that he’d instructed someone to sit shivah on Shabbos, and he “tattled” this to Reb Moshe. Reb Moshe replied that if Rabbi Rosenfeld had said such a thing, he was sure there was a good reason. As it turned out, the person who had asked the she’eilah was not yet keeping Shabbos, and Rabbi Rosenfeld told him to sit shivah so that he would stay home from work, thereby keeping Shabbos in his late father’s merit.

Giving tzedakah was one of Rabbi Rosenfeld’s foremost priorities. When he started teaching in the Talmud Torah, he encouraged the students to bring tzedakah from their pocket money, and many of his teenage students would collect in subway stations and on the street to raise money for the poor of Eretz Yisrael.

The students so imbibed his love for tzedakah that one former student says it empowered her to stand up against a would-be mugger. Mrs. Esther Schorr, who lives in Jerusalem today, tells how she and her friend Elaine had taken upon themselves religious observance when they were both just eight years old and attending Rabbi Rosenfeld’s classes at Shaarei Torah. Although they were already high school girls in Esther Schoenfeld Bais Yaakov on the Lower East Side, they still considered Rabbi Rosenfeld their rebbi, going to his home every Shabbos for Kiddush and his shiur. And, as loyal talmidos wanting to emulate their rebbi, they went every day after school to collect tzedakah.

One day, they were on the subway platform, holding out their pushkes filled with coins, when Esther poked her friend. “Don’t turn around!” she whispered. Behind them, Esther saw a young Hispanic man with a switch blade aimed at Elaine’s back. “Give me your boxes!” he demanded. But Esther felt emboldened — she wasn’t going to let some common thief get his hands on the money earmarked for Eretz Yisrael’s poor — and stared him down, until the crowds suddenly began filling up the platform and scared him away.

Open Door in English

In the ’50s, Rabbi Rosenfeld began teaching at Magen David, a Sephardic day school in Bensonhurst, and at both Shaarei Tzion and Achiezer, the two main synagogues that serviced the Syrian community. The Americanized, second-generation Syrians couldn’t relate to the Arabic-speaking chachamim, but Rabbi Rosenfeld found a way to gear his classes to the unique needs of his students, teaching them halachah according to the Sephardi mesorah, and using the Sephardic accent when reading Torah texts. By the late 1950s, Rabbi Rosenfeld had two distinct groups of talmidim who looked to him as their guide and mentor.

Eventually, his students grew up, becoming spiritually devoted young men who continued to look to Rabbi Rosenfeld as their rebbi. He might not have dressed like a chassid, but he was a Breslover through and through, and many of his talmidim became interested in Rebbe Nachman’s teachings, although it was difficult for them to navigate the original texts. And so, Rabbi Rosenfeld approached Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan — a prolific author and brilliant talmid chacham, whose works are regarded as a significant factor in the growth of the baal teshuvah movement — and asked him to translate two fundamental Breslov seforim, Shevachei Haran and Sichos Haran, which comprise a basic introduction to Rebbe Nachman’s life as well as his main teachings in a simple, straightforward manner. Rabbi Rosenfeld edited the manuscript, which he published as Rabbi Nachman’s Wisdom.

This groundbreaking work opened the way for the translation of other Breslov works. A few years after Rabbi Rosenfeld’s passing, his son-in-law Rabbi Chaim Kramer founded the Breslov Research Institute, which to date has translated Rebbe Nachman’s magnum opus, Likutei Moharan and other works into several languages.

Rabbi Nasan Maimon, popular lecturer, executive director of the Breslov World Center, and a younger son-in-law and talmid of Rabbi Rosenfeld, has archived all his father-in-law’s taped shiurim online.

Not all those shiurim were based on Breslov teachings though; in fact, some of his talmidim had never even heard of Rebbe Nachman. However, those who stayed with him over the years invariably imbibed Breslov teachings along the way. Although he was reluctant at first to tape his classes, he later recognized their value and invested in a quality tape recorder. To this day, people benefit from those shiurim, which are as relevant today as they were half a century ago. Some talmidim say they still listen to Rabbi Rosenfeld’s shiurim every day.

Above the Obstacles to Uman

Some of those disciples accompanied Rabbi Rosenfeld on the early trips to the small Ukranian village of Uman back in the 1960s when Rebbi Nachman’s gravesite was locked behind the Iron Curtain.

They reached Uman for the first time in the winter of 1963, with the help of a former CIA agent-turned-travel agent named Gavriel Reiner, who was personally acquainted with former Soviet dictator Nikita Khrushchev.

Reiner, who spoke eight languages, became friendly with Khrushchev when he was appointed to be the Soviet leader’s companion on a trip to the US in 1956. Reiner convinced Khrushchev that it would be a lucrative move to open the Soviet Union to tourism, and Reiner’s travel agency would oversee all tourism from the United States, which was a lucrative business in itself.

Rabbi Rosenfeld was introduced to Reiner by Rabbi Tzvi Bronstein, a baal mesirus nefesh who had been traveling to the Soviet Union on his American passport for years and clandestinely performed thousands of bris milahs, until the KGB caught him and threw him in jail. (He was released with the intervention of the US president after suffering a heart attack in a Soviet prison.) Under Reiner’s persuasion, the Soviets eventually agreed to permit a small group of Jews to enter the country and travel to the gravesite, which was located in a Ukranian woman’s back yard. When the group, accompanied by Soviet Intourist staffers, finally arrived in Uman after several days of traveling and many delays, they ran into the final obstacle: The woman wouldn’t let them into her yard.

Rabbi Rosenfeld promised the Intourist guide, a KGB agent, that if she would manage to get them in she would be promoted to the head of her department, and so – taking responsibility for the group who’d traveled for days under the oppressive all-seeing Soviet eye — she commanded the woman to open the gate and forcefully pushed her way inside, as Rabbi Rosenfeld and the talmidim rushed through, prostrated themselves at the tziyun, and spent an emotional hour and a half in intense prayer. (Afterward, the guide was indeed promoted.)

Several years later, after much finagling with the Soviet authorities, the help of Gavriel Reiner, a harrowing journey and some hefty bribes (the authorities had made Uman a closed military zone, off-limits to foreigners), Rabbi Rosenfeld and his students managed to return to Uman in the summer of 1966, and again in 1967 — rekindling a possibility that became reality over two decades later, with the fall of the Soviet Union.

Secret of Success

The late ’60s and ’70s saw an upheaval in American culture. Young people were questioning traditional values, viewing religion as constraining while harboring a fascination for anything vaguely perceived as spiritual or mystical. Rabbi Rosenfeld, longtime outreach veteran, was ready for it.

What was it about Rabbi Rosenfeld that captured all those hearts? His penetrating mind, the brilliance of his lessons, his charismatic personality? Rabbi Rosenfeld himself didn’t view any of this as the secret to his success. He once said that he was able to make people religious because he taught them to fear G-d. Nowadays, that may not be considered an effective kiruv tool, but as Rabbi Kramer notes, it states in the Gemara that when one has yiras Shamayim, his words are heeded.

And, he says, “Rabbi Rosenfeld loved his talmidim as if they were his own children and would do anything for them. He once said that if that if ever there were a situation where he would have to make a choice between his own life and that of a talmid, he would happily give away his life to save his talmid.”

(Originally Featured in Mishpacha, Issue 735)

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