“This is the first concert I’m doing that I’m getting paid one dollar,” said Joey

Living Higher

ON

Chol Hamoed Succos, singer Joey Newcomb was performing at an event in Toronto when he was approached by a Chabad shaliach from Orlando. The shaliach told Joey that he runs a kiruv-oriented summer camp and that the campers love Joey’s songs, which are played over and over at camp. He asked if Joey would come down to Orlando and perform, and Joey readily agreed — but there was just one problem. The camp was running on a negative budget and had to fundraise to cover its most basic expenses. Funds to cover the cost of a proper concert were simply out of the question.

Then an idea popped into Joey’s head. “You know what?” he told the camp director, “I never had a dollar from the Rebbe. You give me a dollar from the Rebbe, I’ll come and do the concert.” The director readily agreed and got to work procuring a “Rebbe dollar” for Joey. The two exchanged numbers and promised to be in touch.

A month later, Joey got a call from his newfound friend. “Wow, this is rough,” he said. “The olam doesn’t want to give up their dollars.” But Joey was insistent, and so the director approached his own grandparents. “Zaidy” he said, “please give me the dollar. It would be a true fulfillment of the Rebbe’s shlichus — Joey’s gonna come, and it’s going to light up their whole summer.”

His grandfather acquiesced and relinquished the dollar bill so that these unaffiliated boys would enjoy a concert full of songs dedicated to ahavas Hashem and ahavas Torah. True to his word, Joey flew down to Orlando to perform for the boys, employing his trademark blend of zaniness and awesome vocals to rouse the attendees to greater heights in Yiddishkeit.

Three hours later, Joey was duly paid his fee — a wrinkled, green one-dollar bill. “This is the first concert I’m doing that I’m getting paid one dollar,” said Joey. “But in a way, I’m getting paid more than I ever did.”

Lost and Found

Mrs. Chani Gild, a visitor to Lakewood, was heading to her car when she realized to her dismay that her diamond engagement ring, many decades old, was missing. She had no idea where it had fallen off, but presumed it would have to be within the vicinity of one of the three establishments she’d visited: a clothing store, an electronics store, and an ice cream store.

Quickly, she returned to the clothing store and frantically searched, both inside and outside the store, with no success.

She then rushed to the electronics store which, to her consternation, was closed. She began scrutinizing the store’s frontage and adjacent parking lot and just about conceded defeat when a van slowed to a stop alongside her.

“Are you looking for something?” a woman asked.

Mrs. Gild nodded. “Yes, I lost my diamond ring,” she said. They spoke for a few minutes and the woman offered to call the store’s owner.

Mrs. Gild thanked the woman for her concern, but said she would first go back to the ice cream store.

Arriving at the store, she began her search, frustration mounting alongside a gnawing sense of resignation.

Some ten minutes had passed when she suddenly noticed a familiar face walking toward her. It was the woman she had just met at the electronics store. Seeing her, the woman extended her hand, proffering a small item held between her thumb and index finger.

“Is this your ring?” she asked. It was!

“Where did you find it?” Mrs. Gild asked, overcome.

“In the grass outside the clothing store,” the woman shared.

Mrs. Gild took back the precious ring thanked her new acquaintance profusely.

“You stayed to look after I left?!” she asked, stunned. “Why? What made you do that?”

The woman nodded, acknowledging the question.

“Rav Avigdor Miller says,” she explained, “that in Shamayim, a person will be held to account for three words: ‘Not my business.’

“It was this lesson,” she explained, “that encouraged me to keep looking.”

And in the obscurity of the lawnscape in which the ring was located, an even greater treasure was found as well: the knowledge that every Jew’s concern is every other Jew’s business.

From the Mountains, a Mesorah

For 58 years, Yeshiva Toras Chaim of Denver, Colorado commanded a towering presence on the American Torah scene, as imposing as the mountain range in the background. Led by Rav Yisroel Meir Kagan and Rav Yitzchok Wasserman — two of the senior talmidim of Rav Ahron Kotler — the yeshivah is one of the original, vaunted group of Lakewood style yeshivos, along with Philadelphia, Long Beach, Scranton, Passaic, and South Fallsburg. Founded in the late ’60s and early ’70s, these yeshivos set the stage for Torah growth in America.

After leading the yeshivah for more than half a century, the roshei yeshivah formally passed the torch last week in a ma’amad hachtarah held in the Lake Terrace Hall in Lakewood, New Jersey. Rav Dovid Nussbaum and Rav Yaakov Kamenetsky were installed as roshei yeshivah and Rav Aharon Yisroel Wasserman and Rav Ahron Boruch Kagan were installed as roshei mosad.

In a city nestled beneath the Rockies, a yeshivah that helped form the Torah landscape in America steps into its next chapter — guided by the same unwavering ideals, shaped by the same timeless mesorah, and carried forward by a new generation of Torah leadership.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1069)