Stormy Soul

The graduation photo of Torah Vodaath’s class of ’49 is a slice of frum Americana. From the clean-shaven rebbi to the boys’ double-breasted gray suits and hair fashionably swept back, booming postwar America peers out in all the glory of baseball diamonds, endless possibilities — and fragile Yiddishkeit.

Among Yaakov Rosenbaum’s peer group was a boy known as “Curly” who went on to become a well-known chassidic rebbe; others became distinguished rabbanim, while still other classmates weren’t even from shomer Shabbos homes.

Fourteen-year-old Yaakov Rosenbaum gazes out of the photo with his classmates, but although an American like the rest of them, he was born into a very different environment, in mid-1930s Berlin, under the Nuremberg Laws.

“My father’s father, Reb Yisroel Rosenbaum, was from a chassidishe home in Cracow, and his mother’s parents were also Galitziyaner, living in Germany,” says Beinisch Rosenbaum, a son. Hailing from Eastern Europe and davening in Berlin’s Dombrova shtibel was a source of pride for the Rosenbaums, but marked them as “Ostjuden” — unacculturated Easterners, to the native German Jews. But despite being outsiders to Germany, no one was prepared to pick up and leave — it was only Kristallnacht in 1938 that persuaded them that it was time to flee, and not a moment too soon.

Equipped with American entry papers, the Rosenbaums were able to enter England before war broke out, but there the horror almost caught up with them as their house was destroyed in the Blitz. They finally left war-torn Europe behind via the northern port of Liverpool.

Early in the war, the Atlantic Ocean was prime hunting ground for German submarines, so the Rosenbaums and their fellow passengers were relieved to see a British warship shadowing their own vessel. Only later it became clear why: “On the same ship, along with my grandfather’s family, were Britain’s Crown Jewels, on their way to safekeeping in Canada,” says Beinisch Rosenbaum.

If it hadn’t been for a tzedakah emissary, Monsey would doubtless be missing some of its own institutional jewels today. “My grandfather settled in Boston, telling his children ‘We’re in America, but we’re not going to become Americans,’” continues Beinisch. “Reb Yisroel Kraus, the Tzelemer Gabai understood that he was a fiery chassidishe Yid, and told him, ‘If you want to have frum children, move to Williamsburg. I want to see you next week in the Tzelemer Beis Medrash.’ ”

That’s how six-year-old Yaakov joined Torah Vodaath, followed by mesivta under Rav Gedalya Schorr. And in those early years, Yaakov himself began showing the drive to build Torah that would be the engine throughout his life.

In a meticulously kept diary from the era containing highly personal writings of cheshbon hanefesh, Yaakov wrote: “I heard a shmuess from Rav Aharon Kotler, and a drive entered me ‘Le’hachzik Torah b’Yisrael — to sustain Torah among the Jewish people.’”

Impressionable, fired-up teenagers aren’t uncommon, but what marks this diary entry is that Yaakov Rosenbaum never looked back. As a Pirchei leader, he took the younger boys to the Klausenberger Rebbe’s Pirkei Avos shiur. Bothered by the fact that his contemporaries didn’t use their Jewish names, he began a program called “Shem Yisrael Kodesh,” to make names like his own, “Yankel,” a normal thing.

That leadership ideal was cemented in his high-school graduation yearbook: “My dear fellow graduates,” he wrote in the formal style of the era, “no doubt you all agree that children are the dearest possession of our religion. They are the forerunners of future generations. Let us devote our lives to the sacred cause, to keep the Torah torch eternal.”

Then as a Camp Agudah counselor, and later learning director, he would use the long, relaxed months of summer vacation to build a relationship with the campers, instill in them a love for Torah and persuade them to go to yeshivah instead of college. One notable “catch” was the future Rav Yisroel Belsky, who turned down an Ivy League scholarship because of Yankel Rosenbaum.

(Even as he experienced health problems during the last years of his life, requiring surgery and rehab, he found another outlet for his endless search to bring people closer: Discovering that Joe, his secular physical therapist, had long ago attended a yeshivah, Reb Yankel Rosenbaum was relentless. “I want Joe,” he told his son who’d accompanied him, when another therapist arrived. “We need to find a way to get him back on track.”)

If he was bursting to influence others, that was a direct result of his own hunger for growth. As a teen, Yankel Rosenbaum began a lifelong habit of visiting different gedolei Yisrael. There were many Shabbosim with the Imrei Chaim of Vizhnitz; going with his friend Moshe Lazar (now Chabad rabbi in Milan and father of Russia’s Chief Rabbi Berel Lazar) to the Lubavitcher Rebbe to discuss chinuch matters; later, in Beis Medrash Elyon, spending Friday nights with rosh yeshivah Rav Reuven Grozovsky.

Tzitzis blowing in the wind and baseball hat on his head, the Yankel Rosenbaum who is photographed in camp gear looks like a frum American kid of the 1950s. But inside was an engine that was driving him in search of something higher — a search uniquely his own.

“Although my grandfather was a fiery chassidic Jew, my father was self-made,” says his son. “His spiritual aspirations and kabbalos in the America of the 1940s and 50s would be uncommon even today. He was a nefesh soeres, a stormy soul.”

No Backing Down

Like someone trying to divine the years of sweat and toil that went into inventing the first car by stepping into a taxi, the large modern campus that is Monsey’s Beis Rochel school today belies the struggles that went into building it. In a town brimming with frum schools of all stripes, a key enabler of that revolution was Reb Yankel Rosenbaum.

Reb Yankel was newly married to Sarah Silverberg of Cleveland, a descendant of 15 generations of rabbanim in Poland and granddaughter of Rav Avrohom Binyomin Silberberg of Pittsburgh and Rav Chaim Yaakov Yisroel Berger, Rav of Ahavas Yisroel in Cleveland. The couple moved to the back of beyond in Monsey. Reb Yankel’s own idealism in going to study in kollel, still uncommon at the time, was matched by his wife’s.

“My mother was my father’s partner in everything he did,” says their son. “He used to pick up guests in shul and she was perfectly fine with it. There was never a question of having to check with her. When they had choshuve guests, it was a given that they would move out of the master bedroom.”

All that, of course, was in the future. But in the early years too, Yankel Rosenbaum would need all the backing he could get, when he pressed for the school to be separated. “The president of the school board threatened that if he didn’t back down, my father would be fired,” says Beinisch Rosenbaum. “But he was tough, he refused. And that was a big step — in those days, it was make or break for his parnassah, in addition to tarnishing his name.”

In the end, Rav Aharon Kotler stepped in, as head of Torah Umesorah, with an ultimatum to the school leadership to take back the young rebbi so that a precedent should be set that klei kodesh couldn’t be pushed around. But even after the job was secured, Rav Aharon Kotler pushed him to open a new school in line with his chinuch ideals.

“My father felt that being prepared to lose something precious for his principles was his main achievement,” says his son Shia.

Taking total responsibility was something that never changed, as school staff noticed over the years. Mrs. Devorah Goldenberg, who has been Beis Rochel’s secretary for 40 years, says that “he gave his life away for the school. One time he put away money for his son’s wedding in Eretz Yisrael, but when he had to cover the payroll and a government grant hadn’t arrived, he put aside his son’s wedding and covered payroll from the wedding funds, and then went to figure out how to cover the simchah.”

The decrepit heating system triggered more mesirus nefesh in those early days, remembered Mrs Shoshana Stefansky, the English principal of the Junior High department. It would go out during the night and when the girls came to school in the morning, the building was freezing cold. But with the school in a deficit and no prospect to replace the heating, Rabbi Rosenbaum slept in the boiler room of the building, night after night, to restart the system if it went out.

From these humble beginnings in a small house, the school grew exponentially, but someone had to take responsibility for the institution’s expensive new home. Naturally, there was an address.

“When he went to sign the contract for the building 45 years ago, it was a million-dollar project,” says Beinisch, “and my mother tells us that he couldn’t bring himself to eat supper, because he had a payment to make to the East Ramapo board of education yet had no idea where to get the money from, and he stood to lose the down payment. He was sitting at dinner, when suddenly he said ‘I have it.’ ” He’d remembered that someone had mentioned to him that they knew a special man with a warm heart who wanted to commemorate his late mother by helping a Jewish institution; indeed, Dr. Shimon and his wife Malka Shalit came through with a loan, and later dedicated the school auditorium.

Mrs. Shaindy Geldzahler , a Beis Rochel teacher for the last 40 years, remembers those early days. “My father, the Viener Dayan Rav Yechezkel Horowitz a”h was on the board of the new school,” says the Yiddish teacher, who was also an early student, “and he sat with Rabbi Rosenbaum night after night dealing with the obstacles that came up.”

In the early years, the school had no proper building, and classes were held in different basements, and then prefab trailers. Moving into the current building was a high point. “When we got the new building, which was a former public school, Rabbi Rosenbaum had such simchah, showing us round like a father shows his children a new home.”

From the vantage point of decades, Mrs. Geldzahler says that “whatever the school is today I attribute to him. It was Rabbi Rosenbaum’s school; he was like the dean. He was involved with total devotion, in everything from signing checks to hiring teachers, overseeing admissions and setting educational policy.”

It’s a common view from those who saw the unofficial dean up close. “Reb Yankel was the key to Beis Rochel’s success,” says Rabbi Mechel Chill, a long-time friend and cofounder of a camp in Monsey. “He was very smart, street smart and people smart. He was a gentleman who knew how to speak to people, when to crack a joke to lighten the atmosphere, and how to get a project done.”

Today Beis Rochel is a sought-after school, with Reb Yankel Rosenbaum’s expansive, non-sectoral view of Klal Yisrael still at its heart. Where its founder visited the Gerrer Rebbe and then continued on to Rav Chaim Shmuelevitz, or went to Klausenberg and hosted Rav Shalom Schwadron, the school is still a happy mix of chassidic and litvishe homes.

And now more than a half-century on, Beis Rochel has its own traditions, with 90 percent of its intake children of alumni. The explosive growth of the community created a problem familiar across the frum world: students struggling to get into schools that have too few places for too many children.

But according to Rabbi Chill, although much of this derives from an elitism in schools that don’t want to accept average children, his friend wouldn’t tolerate that. “His approach was to find space and sneak the kids in,” he says.

No Neat Boxes

Pioneers and builders, by their very nature, are often driven people, who don’t tolerate weakness from themselves or others in the pursuit of their goals. Reb Yankel Rosenbaum was one of those rare people, determined, fearless, and with a heart wide open to people’s needs. And discussing his lifelong chesed with anyone who knew him is a bit like striking oil: The stories gush out in a torrent.

One Monsey lady who knew the Rosenbaums for many years says she knew she could always count on Reb Yankel. “Over 20 years ago, my husband lost his business and I became the main breadwinner,” she relates. “We could no longer afford health insurance, and so we canceled the policy, and just six weeks later, my husband had a heart attack. In the hospital I found out that he needed heart surgery, and I said ‘Ribbono shel Olam! We don’t have insurance.’ So I picked up the phone to Rabbi Rosenbaum, and he was able to help arrange coverage since the policy was only recently canceled. No matter what, I knew he would help.”

Then there was the man in shul who looked distraught; it turned out he had been cheated by someone in Crown Heights, which led to Reb Yankel Rosenbaum taking a Chol Hamoed trip into the city, not giving up until the matter had been cleared.

The young man with Down Syndrome who loved singing, and found himself asked by Reb Yankel to join him for Kaddish during Reb Yankel’s powerful Yamim Noraim tefillos.

The endless stream of guests, some of whom made off-color jokes or weren’t an adornment to a Shabbos table.

While these stories sound in a way like another aspect of his public activity, his son mentions that they were his “maskil el dal,” as it says in Tehillim, “understanding the needs of the disadvantaged.” Helping those less fortunate was along the same continuum as building Beis Rochel or supporting a kollel: It was all about building Klal Yisrael.

In Reb Yankel Rosenbaum’s world, there weren’t neatly delineated boxes labeled mechanech or mekarev or askan for a person to check off like a profession. There was just one giant box to tick, labeled “doing what Hashem wants.”

Special Attention

That was how some of the Rosenbaum children, 13 in all, grew up unaware that their father was actually a businessman, having gone into real estate after he left chinuch in 1963. “He was a successful man, but that wasn’t his essence,” says Beinisch. “In fact, there was so much that we didn’t know about him for years, like the fact that he often fasted without telling anyone. He would just tell my mother, ‘I’ll eat later — I’m running.’ ”

“My father owned real estate, but at home there was zero discussion about it,” recalls his son. “As far as we were concerned, his job was to deliver the mail for Beis Rochel. He didn’t buy himself a new car, nor new clothes — it just wasn’t important to him.

“I once came home,” he continues, “and commented about another man, ‘You know, his parents are loaded.’ My father’s reaction, with a twinkle in his eye and his trademark smile, was, ‘Are you missing something? Why does that interest you?’ ”

But exchanges like that were the exception, not the rule. Because the Yankel Rosenbaum method of chinuch, as practiced in his large household, was simple: Teach by example. Beginning his day at 6:30 with daf yomi, he then went on to learn Mishnayos with his sons, completing all six Sedarim with each of them before their bar mitzvahs. When they asked him why it was so important to him, he once answered that, “I want you to learn from a young age to shoot for the stars — nothing is unattainable!”

The Rosenbaum children were taught self-confidence the best way possible — by being thrown in at the deep end. Says Reb Binyomin Rosenbaum, “My father used to drop us off outside the bank from a young age with a wad of checks, both for his business and the school. ‘When it comes your turn, just say ‘Deposits please!’ he coached us.”

But it wasn’t just his own children who got special attention. Well-known author Rabbi Zelig Pliskin, a cousin of Mrs. Rosenbaum, first met his new cousin-by-marriage at their wedding. “I was a young boy, and Reb Yankel was so friendly to me — it was the first time I’d met someone older who spoke to me as an equal. I had gotten to know him very well over the years, and everything he did, Torah, avodah, and gemilus chasadim, he did with such joy.”

“My father may have been the man who collected the mail, but at heart he remained the mechanech he’d been all the years before as a rebbi,” says Binyomin. “He saw people through the eyes of a mechanech.” That understanding of human nature enabled him to shrewdly size up what was the way to a particular young person’s heart.

His son gives an example. “I was already living in Eretz Yisrael,” he says, “when my parents said that they were coming to visit, and my father had an unusual request. ‘Please book for us the presidential suite in a particular hotel,’ he asked, much to my amazement. I couldn’t understand it, because my father didn’t care about where he stayed at all. Why was he insisting on something so expensive?”

It was only when he arrived that the secret came out. Part of Reb Yankel Rosenbaum’s trip was so that he could spend time with a relative, a young man who was on the verge of abandoning Yiddishkeit. The man who never bought himself a new car understood that this kid would appreciate affluence, that one could be frum and enjoy the finer things of life. And the tactic worked: that relative called during the shivah and told the family, “it’s because of your father that I am frum today — I owe my life to him.”

That grasp of people meant that he understood the nature of the generation and their chinuch needs. “For us, he turned all of Yiddishkeit into a tremendous experience,” says Binyomin Rosenbaum. “We were his partners in getting guests for Shabbos — it was our job to go and convince them that they were doing us a favor by coming. On Chanukah, he had us all singing outside on the steps near the front door — no one else did that. He felt that schools were focusing too much on ‘don’t’ and rules to enforce standards, and not enough on inspiring the children.

“And he used to quote his rebbi from Torah Vodaath, Rav Gedalya Schorr: “Hocheiach tochiach — there are two ways to deliver rebuke: either telling them what a big aveirah they’ve done, or ‘How did you, such a special person, come to do this?’ It should be the second, because ‘Velo sisa alav chet — , don’t make the aveirah much bigger than them.’”

And so it always went together with a genuine smile.

Because for all his fire, uncompromising Torah standards and ceaseless efforts to help Hashem’s children, it’s that warm memory which comes up unprompted, from so many who knew Reb Yankel Rosenbaum.

“He was a beloved person,” says Beis Rochel’s Mrs. Geldzahler, “always a smile on his face.”

That, and demanding more of others, as Reb Yankel Rosenbaum had known since his Pirchei days, could be the ultimate inspiration, just what thirsty neshamos needed.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 852)