Yanky Kaufman uses his own past experiences and therapy attempts to help hundreds of stutterers 

Photos: Chaya Moskowitz

It’s nearly eight p.m., and this poorly lit cul-de-sac in Jackson Township, New Jersey is eerily quiet. But the three-car garage that’s been converted into a shul is pulsating with teenage bochurim, kollel yungeleit and middle-aged men who are gathered around the bimah for a mock Krias HaTorah session in what looks like an adult version of charades.

One participant is roleplaying the gabbai, eyeballing the crowd, hastily asking people for their names, purposely  pronouncing them half wrong so they are forced to correct him, and urging the “honorees” up to the bimah to recite the brachos. On cue, and with the hearty, drawn out “amee-en,” a pseudo baal korei belts out the Rosh Chodesh Krias HaTorah, relishing every nuance of the trop. A jovial Mi Shebeirach follows, and the scene plays itself all over again, with different participants playing the various roles that the assembled men have been denied all their lives — until now.

While the group seems varied, explains Yanky Kaufman, who’s brought the men together, their common denominator is the stuttering impediment they all suffered from before joining his program. Their stutters caused them to doggedly avoid any public speaking opportunity, including a lifelong evasion of being honored with an aliyah or davening from the amud. For one particular participant sporting a flowing rebbi’s beard, it meant passing up a much-coveted position at a prestigious yeshivah.

Now, thanks to his innovative stuttering therapy program, these men are speaking fluently and confidently, and at the last, culminating session of his methodical  regimen, they practice their newly acquired skills in front of the entire group. As a 45-year-old participant who’s never davened from the amud in his life recites Kaddish at Maariv, to the group’s resounding amen, Yanky is beaming.

Cycle of Frustration

As the men mill around engaging easily in small talk — another daily life activity  they struggled with until now — we sit down in an inconspicuous corner of the shul to talk about the program, his brainchild, borne out of his own lifelong speech struggle and eventual success.

“Let’s start from the beginning,” I prompt him. “When do you remember first starting to stutter?”

His stuttering journey doesn’t have an official start date, Yanky tells me. His speech was impeded since he started to babble his first words. “I was stuttering as far back as I can think of. All I remember from that young age was going to some big tall glass buildings, getting a snack, and playing games with a therapist.”

That initial bout of therapy lasted for years until his parents, noticing the lackluster results, decided to take a break from therapy — until the young man’s first public performance: his bar mitzvah pshetel. Even today, some 20  years later, Yanky remembers that speech — not so much for what he said, but for how he said it. “I wish I could recall the Torah I said over, but all I remember was how I stuttered throughout,” he says.

A friend of the Kaufmans suggested to his parents that they take him to a specific therapist, a well-known expert in the field. After a year with no results, Yanky wanted to move on, but the therapist insisted that they were almost at a breakthrough, and it didn’t pay to stop when they were just about there.

Another two months passed with no discernable difference, and again Yanky wanted out. The therapist was convinced though, that at this point, he was really on the cusp of achieving speech fluency. He sat through another dozen long (and expensive) sessions. Still nothing. Again, Yanky wanted to move on, and again, the therapist was insistent. (“All he needs is a few more sessions to be speaking normally. Wouldn’t it be a shame to stop working on it now, when he is so, so close?”)

This time, Yanky was done. “I was simply unwilling to go along for the ride any longer,” he remembers.