Full Circle

Local News

Written by Rabbi Mordechai Kamenetzky

Wednesday, 04 October 2006 19:00

This past Shabbos I davened in Congregation Beth Sholom. I do not normally daven there; I live about two miles away. But I walked the distance for a reason.

A little history: There was a time, 50 years ago (shortly before I was born) when the only Orthodox shul in the Five Towns was Beth Sholom. In 1956, a rabbi moved to the neighborhood from Brooklyn and decided that we needed another Orthodox shul-on the other side of the tracks. A new shul with different customs was formed, and thus the diversity in Orthodoxy began.

That rabbi was my father, Rabbi Benyamin Kamenetzky.

This Shabbos, I walked to the original Five Towns Orthodox shul. However, I did not daven there as part of a yoveil celebration. I came because what was to happen there was really a microcosm of the essence of our Five Towns. What would happen there was very special, and epitomized what we are, deep down, all about.

My dear friend (and a man I consider in many aspects a rebbi) Rabbi Yaakov Reisman was the guest speaker at Congregation Beth Sholom. But I did not come only to honor Rabbi Reisman. And I did not come only to honor Rabbi Kenneth (hereafter Noach) Hain, whose entire family have been dear friends of our family for decades. I came to Beth Sholom to pay homage to this display of unity. I came there to celebrate what is so wonderful about our community. I came to Beth Sholom in celebration of all that my father did when he established the second Orthodox shul in the Five Towns-Eitz Chaim Jewish Center-the shul that eventually evolved into the Young Israel of Woodmere.

You see, Beth Sholom is a paragon of the Modern Orthodox community. The members are generally advocates and supporters of the liberal thinkers of Modern Orthodoxy.

Rabbi Reisman, the guest speaker, is the rabbi of Agudas Yisroel of Long Island. In his own words, it also has the sobriquet Beth Sholom, but that shul is better known as Beis (rhymes with ice) Shulem, named after a Chassidic Jew, Reb Shulem Fogel, of blessed memory. Rabbi Reisman and his kehillah are strongly aligned with and supportive of the chareidi community. Agudas Yisroel is an organization that does not always see eye-to-eye with Modern Orthodoxy.

The two rabbis would be the most unlikely candidates for trading pulpits (Rabbi Hain spoke at the Agudah this summer) but I was not surprised that they did. I know these leaders. And I know this community. I was born here. And I know that, despite the many differences of opinion that there have been over the years, we are a united community.

And it did not begin last Shabbos. As a youngster, back in 1963, the school I went to, Yeshiva of South Shore, had a fundraising drive for Tashbar, a collective group of Israeli schools that refused Israeli governmental funding based on ideological grounds. At that time, there were not many sources of funds within this community, and so my father introduced me to Rabbi Morris Friedman, rabbi of Temple Hillel, and told me to ask him for a check. The rabbi did better. He invited me to make an appeal at his Sunday Morning Breakfast Club. It was the first of what seems to be my long career of raising tzedakah while creating the most unlikely of partnerships. But despite major and perhaps irreconcilable differences between my father's Yiddishkeit and the congregation of Rabbi Friedman, he lent a hand to support a Torah cause.

I will never forget that as a seventh grader I represented Yeshiva of South Shore at a rally held at Hillel Country Day
School in the winter of 1969 to read a poem that I composed in protest of both the hanging of 14 Iraqi Jews and the reading of a virulently anti-Semitic poem on Julius Lester's program on WBAI radio. (How many of you remember the reading of "Hey Jewboy, with that yarmulke on your head, You pale-face Jewboy-I wish you were dead" during the public-school teacher strike?) South Shore and Hillel were the only two Jewish day schools in the Five Towns at the time, and we probably were at different ends of the hashkafic spectrum. But we joined together as a community to rally and to support each other on the issues that we both felt needed a strong display of unity.

I remember, as a young child seven or eight years of age, davening at the Young Israel of Lawrence-Cedarhurst. The rav, Rabbi Nuchem Kornmehl, was a European sage who pronounced our forebear Abraham's name in a very funny manner. He called him "Ah-vroom U-veenee." And as I squirmed ever so slightly, I was awed at how this old-timer had the ability to be the cherished rabbi of a new generation of sophisticated Jews who were educated at the most prestigious universities and were accomplished leaders in their fields. The reverence for his Torah knowledge took greater precedence than any of the letters that followed their names.

When my uncle, Rabbi Dovid Spiegel, brought the first modicum of chassidus to this town with the opening of a shteeble, I am sure there were people who had never seen a Jew with a spudik (a spudik is twice the height of the typical shtreimel people are used to seeing in Roman Vishniac's pictorials of the Old World). Rabbi Spiegel seamlessly became a vibrant part of the beautiful fabric of this community. A student of Rav Aharon Kotler, the zealous unwavering founder of the Lakewood Yeshiva, would soon be the beloved rebbi to the students of rabbis whom Rabbi Kotler had passionately disagreed with.

Some 20 years later, another burst of chassidus made a tremendous mark, the foundations again coming from a most unlikely source. Aish Kodesh was founded by the ardent members of Young Israel! And the transition was not simple. I remember that at Rabbi Weinberger's first shalosh se'udos as rav of the fledgling kehillah, he was wary that the small minyan of participants might not accept his singing of Mizmor L'David three times. Those first few Shabbosos, he only sang it once. Shabbos would have to end not a minute past the z'man; no long shalosh se'udos. Today, the packed crowd would sing Mizmor L'David ten times if so asked. And Aish Kodesh often does not start Ma'ariv on motzaei Shabbos until 72 minutes after sunset.

So it is no wonder that this would be the only town in the U.S.A. to not only have a kosher Dunkin' Donuts, but one with a sign that all the milk used in the store is chalav Yisrael. And now, someone who has never had HÃ¤agen Dazs ice cream in his life can sip a chalav Yisrael coffee while watching a microcosm of Klal Yisrael (and Latin America) stream through Dunkin's doors on a Saturday night.

The harmony of the different faces across this community that I see is in essence the harmony that is in the hearts of all of us, who love each other as we love our Creator.
Of course there will be differences of opinion. But, in the end, we are essentially united.

A few years back, our yeshiva went through some difficult times, and the weight of the burden was heavier than our school's parent body was able to bear alone. The response from the leadership and members of the entire community at large was overwhelmingly generous and supportive. I was amazed at the sensitivity and support that I received from parents of children enrolled at other schools, their administrators, and their patrons.

As you read this, Yom Kippur is over and you have probably been busy preparing for the Yom Tov of Sukkos. You will be busy putting up or maybe sitting in your sukkah-a private place of spiritual refuge for you and your family. You will also be taking the four species, each representing another type of Jew, to your shul and you will parade them in a circle around the Torah.

We now have myriad shuls and schools in our community. But there is a special feeling of achdus that I see daily and that I cherish.

At Congregation Beth Sholom, Rabbi Reisman quoted the Chofetz Chaim. The Gemara at the end of Maseches Ta'anis tells us that at the end of time, the righteous will form a circle. The Al-mighty will be in the center and all will point, saying, "This is my G-d!" The Chofetz Chaim explains that in a circle, any radius drawn from the center to any point on its circumference is equal in length to any other radius. If the radii vary in size or if the focal point is not in the center, it is no longer a circle. So, says the Chofetz Chaim, in the future a circle will be formed around the Al-mighty. One Jew will be at the extreme north, the other at the extreme south. One Jew will be at the extreme right, the other at the extreme left and they may see things differently. One may see the sun rise as the other sees it set.

Remember, however, that in a circle, everyone on the perimeter is equally close to the center. As long as we keep our Torah equally at the center and parade around the Torah, we will always be part of a circle of brothers and sisters, connected in harmony!

Rabbi Kamenetzky is the rosh yeshiva of Yeshiva of South Shore.