“We were all raised with a sense that you take whatever talents and abilities you have and use them on behalf of the Klal” (Photos: Jeff Zorabedian)

I

t was the spring of 1991, and Avi Schick was feeling pretty good.

He’d just received his acceptance letter to Columbia Law School, and perhaps, he recalls, “I was feeling a little too proud of myself, because the school’s acceptance letter makes you feel like you’re one of the chosen few.” But the next day, when he visited his grandmother Renee Schick — founder of the eponymous Boro Park bakery — and showed her the letter, she excused herself and went to retrieve a box full of documents. She rifled through it until she found what she was looking for: a document dated April 7, 1938 — 53 years earlier — which she handed to him.

It was an eviction notice. Her husband had died three weeks prior to that, and she and her four little ones found themselves evicted from their apartment. She handed the letter to her grandson and said, “This was also done by a lawyer. If you’ll do something good with a law degree, it will be good, and if you don’t, it will be meaningless. The Ivy League degree itself doesn’t mean anything.”

“I got the message,” says Avi. “Don’t get satisfaction based on some perceived status. Either you’ll use that status to achieve good things, but if not, it’ll be wasted.”

That’s a pithy way to express the recurrent theme that has punctuated each chapter of Avi Schick’s life in the public eye. Beginning with his rise to the highest levels of New York State government, followed by prominent roles on New York City’s business and civic scene, and more recently, its legal firmament, Schick is a Jewish communal activist extraordinaire who has sought and found ways to advance the interests of both the larger Orthodox community and those of individual Jews in need.

Just this May, Avi scored his most recent high-profile win, in the five-year-old legal battle over the right of Lakewood’s Beth Medrash Govoha (BMG) to receive the proceeds of a $10.6 million economic development grant from the State of New Jersey. The ACLU sued the state, claiming the grant was unconstitutional based largely on a 1970s New Jersey Supreme Court decision in

a case known as Resnick. The lower court agreed with the ACLU, but on appeal, the New Jersey Supreme Court not only vacated the lower court’s decision but also narrowed the general applicability of Resnick.

That latter aspect of the court’s ruling, Avi points out, has important ramifications for the Jewish community beyond the narrow facts of the BMG grant because it will now enable a larger group of institutions in New Jersey’s burgeoning frum neighborhoods to benefit from a bigger slice of the government funding pie.

Avi recently joined the 700-attorney law firm to head up its New York government investigations practice, representing clients with various governmental entanglements (“The best resolutions,” he says drily, “are the ones you never read about”). As we settle down in his new digs at the firm’s midtown Manhattan office, Avi reflects on the roots of his passion for communal involvement.

Growing up, he had a front-row seat for observing the dynamic communal work of his own father. Marvin Schick’s name is virtually synonymous with a lifetime of advocacy for fellow Jews in the political, legal, and media arenas, from founding the legal advocacy group COLPA, which won the country’s first lawsuits defending the rights of observant Jews, to his presidency of Rabbi Jacob Joseph School (RJJ) and his work at the AVI CHAI educational foundation on behalf of yeshivos and day schools across the country, to using his prolific and eloquent pen to debunk the seemingly never-ending calumnious portrayals of Orthodox Jews.

“We were all raised with a sense that you take whatever talents and abilities you have and use them on behalf of the Klal,” Avi observes. “My father didn’t have to articulate that in words because it was conveyed through his everyday activities. His life isn’t about particular moments where he chose to get involved — it’s always been total immersion. The lesson to our family has always been: think about how your skills can be used for the frum community and then go and do it.” (Excerpted from Mishpacha, Issue 717)