After seven years and a circuitous route consisting of two unlikely detours, the tefillin were finally home

Living Higher

Earlier this month, Shalom Mermelstein, a 12-year-old boy from Far Rockaway, New York, was riding the bus to yeshivah and mentioned his upcoming bar mitzvah to the bus driver. She perked up and told him that seven years earlier, her husband, an employee at John F. Kennedy International Airport, had found a tefillin bag in the airport. Something had prompted him to take it home, but after that, he’d forgotten about it for seven long years. Hearing Shalom mention his bar mitzvah jogged her memory and the next day, she brought the tefillin with her and gave them to Shalom.

The next day, as Shalom boarded the bus, his driver handed him an elegant tefillin bag, the initials “E.H.” spelled out in bold letters on a patch of stingray leather set on genuine cowhide. In an effort to find the owner, the Mermelsteins posted the find on Yeshiva World News, with a short explanation of how they ended up with the tefillin, and sure enough, someone reached out. A gentleman had indeed lost his tefillin in the hullabaloo of catching a flight several years earlier and recognized the bag. He contacted the family and several hours later was reunited with his tefillin. After seven years and a circuitous route consisting of two unlikely detours, the tefillin were finally home.

Jack of Hearts

Last week, Jack Ciaterelli, the New Jersey Republican gubernatorial candidate, met with the Lakewood roshei yeshivah to shore up support for his candidacy. Cameras clicked and phones recorded as Mr. Ciaterelli sat at Rav Malkiel Kotler’s dining room table, outlining his credentials: Strong supporter of Israel. Proponent of the scholarship tax credit. Longtime advocate of private school busing.

When the candidate finished his presentation, Rav Yisroel Newman had a question. “There is a lot of anti-Semitism on college campuses these days,” stated the Rosh Yeshivah. “What can the state do to help the students?”

Ciaterelli had the response ready — as the state’s executive, he’d staff the Department of Justice with officials that took hate crimes seriously — but to those in the room, the simple question from a gadol showed that a Yid regarded as today’s symbol of hasmadah also carries in his heart the needs of every Jew, including the student on a cold, secular college campus as he confronts the world’s oldest hatred.

Happening In…Elizabeth, New Jersey

For 27 years, Yeshivas Be’er Yitzchok, under the leadership of its rosh yeshivah, Rav Avrohom Shulman, has quietly left its mark on hundreds of talmidim from its modest home in Elizabeth, New Jersey, a North Jersey hamlet better known for its Modern Orthodox community. This past Sunday, over a quarter century after the yeshivah first opened its doors in the Elizabeth JEC with the encouragement of the late and illustrious Rabbi Elazar Mayer Teitz, the rav of the city, the yeshivah moved into a home of its own — a milestone that marks not just a new address, but the steady growth of a makom Torah that has earned its place in New Jersey’s yeshivah landscape.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1085)