A Fitting Match

Dvorah was 17 years old and working as a bookkeeper when a prestigious shadchan brought her parents an offer they couldn’t refuse. The Rebbe himself suggested Yehuda Ackerman, a Philadelphia-born, Telz and Nitra-educated Stoliner chassid. Though the families lived near each other, their backyards adjacent, they didn’t know each other.

The chassan’s mother, who’d come from Russia with several children from her late first husband, had raised a family of passionate bnei Torah despite America’s desolate Torah landscape.

The names of the extended family are a veritable who’s who of builders of Torah in America. The Ackermans were related to the Wilhelms, who founded Torah Vodaath as well as the famous marbitzei Torah of the Krohn and Trenk families, and the legendary activist Mike Tress was Yehuda Ackerman’s brother-in-law.

Though Dvorah’s simple background was different than that of her prospective chassan, she wholeheartedly took on his lifestyle and made his goals and ideals her own.

Unlike today, when Boro Park is dotted with sheitelmachers on every corner, not many women wore sheitels back then, so ordering the kallah’s sheitel required a special trip to Wero’s workshop on Broadway, where measurements were taken for the custom-made, hand-knotted piece.

At the wedding, the young couple’s uncommon dedication to mitzvos was again apparent in the separate seating arrangement, a stringency not usually practiced at that time.

The young couple settled next door to the Rebbe, and the new Rebbetzin Ackerman continued to work as a bookkeeper while her husband undertook a daunting challenge. At the Rebbe’s behest, the 25-year-old started a cheder in Williamsburg. Simultaneously, the young Rebbetzin welcomed five or six teenage yeshivah boys into her home for three meals a day, since their school had no dining room.

Despite Rabbi Ackerman’s best efforts, though, the cheder failed to thrive, so the Rebbe advised the young couple to move it to Boro Park. At last, the new Stoliner cheder met with success and began to flourish. Rabbi Ackerman gave himself over completely to the needs of the cheder. He taught, raised funds, and even mopped the floors himself.

The couple gave of themselves in other ways, too. Family members relate fragments of incidents almost casually, as if there were too many, and too inconsequential, to record fully: the orphans whom they fostered for years, the year Reb Yehuda gave a poor man all the money they’d set aside for Pesach. What happened with Yom Tov that year? “We made Pesach; Hashem helped,” is Rebbetzin Ackerman’s vague answer, devoid of the slightest hint of self-congratulation.

To the Holy Land

In the late 1960s, Rebbetzin Ackerman’s parents wanted to move to Eretz Yisrael but hesitated to leave their only daughter behind. The Rebbe instructed the young couple to accompany her parents on their ascent to the Holy Land.

The Bnei Brak in which the Ackermans landed was then the undeveloped frontier of chareidi life. The streets were barely paved. “When it rained, they turned to mud,” Rebbetzin Ackerman remembers. You couldn’t buy sliced bread, eggs were sold individually, and toilet paper was unheard of.

Without freezers, groceries needed to be purchased on an as-needed basis. “You went to the butcher, there was a whole side of a cow hanging there, and they’d just cut off a piece,” she says.

Hardest of all, though, was the longing for the close-knit extended family she’d left behind. Because of her mother’s medical needs, the Ackermans were the only family in their building with the luxury of a telephone, which helped Rebbetzin Ackerman stay in touch with family. Still, despite becoming an integral member of her new community, the absence of family continued to pain her. “My heart was in America,” she confesses.

How did she cope with this difficult transition?

“I just made up my mind: This is how it has to be,” says Rebbetzin Ackerman matter-of-factly. This understated commitment to doing the right thing without wasting time on self-pity is an Ackerman hallmark, say her nieces. “She’s always positive, full of emunah and bitachon. Even if she’s experiencing some kind of difficulty, she remains upbeat,” says one niece. “She just puts on a smile and keeps going.”

Indefatigable as ever, Rabbi Ackerman threw himself into building a Stoliner cheder in Bnei Brak as well. Beginning with only three pupils, he soon had a single class of 75. At first, he taught the class himself while simultaneously handling the administration and fundraising, but over time, the phenomenal growth of the Stoliner institutions dictated that he leave the teaching to others and concentrate solely on providing the finances.

Today, the cheder in Bnei Brak boasts 600 students, and affiliated institutions include a kollel, a mesivta, and a yeshivah for baalei teshuvah. These are all housed in multiple magnificent buildings, their construction financed and spearheaded by Rabbi Ackerman.

“He didn’t know the meaning of the word ‘no,’” remembers Rebbetzin Ackerman. “Any money he raised went straight to the yeshivah; all expenses were paid out of our own pocket. And he always had a jolly good word for everyone.”

In addition to Rabbi Ackerman’s trademark good cheer, he was well-known for his electrifying dancing at weddings. So great was his skill, that famous director and choreographer Jerome Robbins offered Rabbi Ackerman $5,000 — an impressive sum in those days — to teach Jewish-style folk dancing to the cast of his upcoming Broadway production, Fiddler on the Roof. Rabbi Ackerman never considered the offer, of course, and Heaven had other ways to fund his efforts on behalf of the mosdos of Stolin.

One time, shortly after the Rebbe informed him that the yeshivah was $30,000 short of covering its payroll, Reb Yehuda noticed a well-known American philanthropist at the Rebbe’s tish. When he approached the man after Shabbos, the donor agreed to cover half the shortfall — if Reb Yehuda could raise the other half in 24 hours. Reb Yehuda called his wife. “I’m not coming home tonight,” he said.

By the next evening, he’d returned to the donor, his entire $15,000 share already covered. After making good on his pledge to match Reb Yehuda’s funds, the philanthropist explained his largesse.

Many years before, he’d been an impoverished chassan and had begged store owners to supply his wedding needs on credit, promising to pay them back with the gifts he anticipated receiving. Emboldened by successfully acquiring a hat and some liquor in this way, he’d run into Reb Yehuda, whom he only knew by sight, and invited him to come dance at his upcoming chasunah.

Reb Yehuda had indeed attended and brought great joy to the chassan with his dancing. In his great happiness that night, the philanthropist explained, he’d vowed to find the chance to pay Reb Yehuda back, and now his opportunity had arrived.

The Ackermans’ dedication to rebuilding the glory of Stolin wasn’t limited to fundraising, crucial though that work was. When Reb Yehuda traveled on yeshivah business, as he often did, Rebbetzin Ackerman stepped ably into the breach, single-handedly paying faculty and overseeing construction, in addition to managing the food service.

Even after leaving formal classroom teaching, Reb Yehuda continued to blaze trails in chinuch. A man ahead of his time, he was the first to introduce innovations like illustrated parshah sheets, songs, and visual aids. Sometimes, remembers a niece, he’d be so excited to buy toy animals and other hands-on learning props, that he’d return from overseas fundraising trips with a suitcase full of teaching aids, having completely forgotten to bring the items his wife had requested from the US.

In everything Reb Yehuda did, Rebbetzin Ackerman was his full partner. “She built her life around what was important to him,” says a niece. From accompanying him on exhausting fundraising trips to cooking for “their” students, Rebbetzin Ackerman made her husband’s concerns her own, and his talmidim became as precious as the children they’d never have.

In Bnei Brak, the Ackermans lived among and rubbed shoulders with Torah royalty, but due to the simpler culture of those days, or perhaps due to her unassuming humility, Rebbetzin Ackerman doesn’t see this as anything to boast about. “My husband looked a lot like Rav Chaim Kanievsky, who was our neighbor and lived around the corner from us,” she relates. “He got mistaken for Rav Chaim more than once. People used to come up and kiss his hand.”

Rav Elazar Menachem Man Shach ztz”l’s daughter, Rebbetzin Bergman, was Rebbetzin Ackerman’s assistant in managing the cheder’s school lunch program. Together, the two would prepare, heat, and serve the food, slicing the bread and chopping the vegetables (the ubiquitous cucumbers and tomatoes, which were the only available options), and washing all the dishes afterward — after all, there were no disposables.

A Life of Chesed

Rebbetzin Ackerman’s career of giving wasn’t limited to her husband’s yeshivah. “Everyone knew that the Ackermans’ home was the place to go if you wanted a great time or needed to get away a little,” says a niece. “There was always singing at the table, beautiful niggunim that Uncle Yehuda composed and wrote lyrics for.”

Their revolving door admitted a steady stream of yeshivah bochurim and seminary girls, both family and strangers. Often, the Ackermans hosted between 12 and 15 guests for a Shabbos seudah, and as many as 60 on Purim.

A niece notes that Rebbetzin Ackerman is not only a skilled cook, but a very generous one, too, cooking in bulk and distributing the results to friends and families. Predating Tomchei Shabbos, the Ackermans would leave anonymous packages of cooked food on the doorsteps of indigent people.

On one memorable weekend, Rebbetzin Ackerman was invited to the wedding of an Israeli friend’s daughter, scheduled just hours before her planned flight to America for a nephew’s wedding. When the kallah’s mother confided that she was apprehensive about preparing for Shabbos sheva brachos, Rebbetzin Ackerman had the perfect solution.

After extensive preparations, she left detailed instructions and flew off to the States, while the kallah’s grateful family hosted their sheva brachos in the Ackerman apartment, serving food prepared especially for them by Rebbetzin Ackerman prior to her departure.

“The single biggest lesson I learned from my aunt is her belief that everything is good,” says a niece. “Life has thrown her many curveballs, but she keeps on going and giving.” Her own years of challenge in this area made Rebbetzin Ackerman uniquely suited to guide couples in their quest to have children, and before organizations like Bonei Olam existed, she spent countless hours counseling couples and helping them find the right doctors and connections. “She’s been the shaliach for countless people,” says the niece.

After more than 60 years of synergic partnership, Reb Yehuda succumbed to illness in 2015. Until the very end, his Rebbetzin remained devotedly at his side, exerting prodigious effort to bring him to his beloved yeshivah whenever possible. Unfortunately, on the eve of their planned departure for medical treatment and support in the United States, Rabbi Ackerman passed away.

Rebbetzin Ackerman is now back in New York, among the beloved family she’d missed so much over the course of four decades, and is making up for lost time.

“You don’t have to be her age to be friends with her,” explains a niece. “Everyone becomes her friend, no matter the generation, because her interest in people makes them comfortable. I have a daughter who parks on her block for work and goes in to visit every day of the week. Not as an obligation, as a privilege!”

Experiencing the simple warmth, the self-effacing banter, and the inextinguishable sparkle that is Rebbetzin Dvorah Ackerman, I can see why.

(Originally Featured in Family First, Issue 639)