The recent passing of Rabbi Pinchos Stolper, z”l, the first
full-time national director of NCSY, the youth arm of the Orthodox Union,
brought back memories of a bygone era in my life. I remember lying awake
in bed many years ago, while I was a student at the Israeli yeshiva Kerem
B’Yavne, wondering, “How in the world did I get here?” This article will answer
that question and discuss how and why NCSY awakened opportunities for me that I
never imagined existed.
The clever title of this
article is not original to me. It is the name of a book written in 1973 by
humorist Sam Levenson about his own youth in the 1920s and ’30s. Just as he
marveled at the changes in society, I too, though born in a different place and
time, have, baruch Hashem, lived to see a very changed Jewish world than
the one I grew up in.
The late Pinchos Bak, z”l,
(whom we will discuss in greater detail later), in an article written many
years ago, wrote, “Wherever the Jew has been in his long history, he has sought
to transmit to his children our ancient heritage.” This was more difficult in
times of transition, like the early and middle parts of the twentieth century. Most
Jews coming to America from the “Old Country” did not consciously seek to
exclude tradition from their lives and the lives of their children. In fact, they
often struggled to include it. Unfortunately, the older generation was unable
to interpret the traditions meaningfully to the young. When the immigrant Jew
spoke of observance, he ran directly into the American obstacle course of a new
language, new values, and a new lifestyle.
* * *
Let me now relate this to my
own life. Montgomery, Alabama, where I was born and grew up, like hundreds of
other small communities, had a congregation founded by immigrants. My parents,
Meyer and Pauline Oberstein, were married in the 1920s; theirs was the first
wedding in the then-new shul. My father was born in Tiktin, Poland and my
mother in Polona, Ukraine, and both came to the United States as teenagers.
Unlike many of the fathers of my contemporaries, my father could read fluently from
the siddur and recalled snippets of Torah that he had learned in cheder
in the Old Country. Standing next to him as a very young child on the High
Holidays, I recall vividly how the pronounced the words, “Lebachein levovas
b’yame din.” My mother came with her parents, and her father was a chasidic
Jew with a long white beard. The gentiles called him Santa Claus. She adhered
to the practices she learned from her mother, such as having a blech on
the stove on Shabbos.
Our family was considered one
of the more religious ones in Congregation Agudath Israel. In fact my mother’s
brother Joe, who brought his parents and siblings over after World War I, was
one of only three strictly shomer Shabbos men in town: They were the shochet,
Reverend Merenstein; the rabbi; and Uncle Joe.
I was always observant, but
our definition of frum was not what they called frum in the big
city. You see, in the 1950s, our shul followed the trend all over North America
and turned Conservative. I do not think those whose origins are in the very frum
enclaves really understand what that entailed. It had nothing to do with
rebelling against halacha or Torah MiSinai. It was being practical: Half a loaf
is better than none. We didn’t want to be like Temple Beth Or, with a
non-Jewish choir, an organ, and a rabbi who performed intermarriages. The shul
wanted to maintain tradition but adapt to reality, as they saw it in those
days.
Orthodoxy was passé, not a
viable option in the 1950s, and Conservative Judaism’s motto was “Tradition and
Change.” I remember how large an attendance there was on Friday night for the
8:00 p.m. service when we hired the first Conservative rabbi. Of course, Shabbos
morning was not so well attended. For me, the biggest change was the Conservative
youth group, USY, United Synagogue Youth. We had a vibrant chapter and met
every Sunday afternoon. We went to conventions in Birmingham, Columbus, Georgia,
and elsewhere. On the application to go to the Shabbaton, one question was
whether we needed to be walking distance from the synagogue. I was the only
person in the entire region who requested that option.
But USY did not try to make us
more observant; that wasn’t the goal at all. Our advisors were themselves not
observers of kashrus or Shabbos. It did instill Jewish identity and some
Hebrew songs. And of course, we met other Jewish kids, which was very
important. Had things continued that way, I would probably have attended Sidney
Lanier High School and the University of Alabama, and who knows what that would
have led to.
Our shul did not keep rabbis
for long periods; they came and went. One day, my father came home from a shul
meeting and said that the Jewish Theological Seminary would send us a rabbi for
$12,000 and Yeshiva University for $8,000. So Rabbi Aaron Borow came to
Montgomery and changed my life forever. He had just received semicha,
and he came with his wife Pearl (Karalitzky) and their baby daughter Rivka. We
still had mixed seating, but Rabbi Borow turned off the microphone. We were now
“traditional.”
Rabbi Borow was popular. As
one woman said, “He is so nice that we like him, even though he is Orthodox.” One
day, Rabbi Borow made me an offer that I am glad I did not refuse. He was
going to drive up to New York, where his wife’s family lived, and said he would
take me to the national convention of a new organization for Orthodox youth called
NCSY. My older brother Herman was engaged, and my mother was planning to come
up a little later to meet the bride and her family; I would meet her after the convention.
We set off on our road trip up north. This was my first time in New York, and I
was not surprised when I saw a woman standing on the sidewalk crying and everyone
ignoring her and walking past. That is what they told us Yankees were like.
The convention was held in the
Monsey Park Hotel in Spring Valley, New York. I did not know a single person
there. So I went up to the first person I saw and introduced myself. “I am
Leonard, and I don’t know anyone here.” The boy answered, “I am Arthur, and I
don’t know anyone here, either.” We became friends.
* * *
Rabbi Pinchos Stolper became
the first fulltime head of NCSY in 1959, and I attended his first national convention.
NCSY blew me away, I was always very “Jewish,” but now I was not the only one.
The boys wore yarmulkes on their heads, and if it fell off, they bent down and
put it back on. You Northerners may not begin to understand what a chiddush
(novely) that was for me. The dancing was in circles, no social dancing, like
in Montgomery. And boys and girls danced in separate circles. There were
interesting sessions and leibedike davening, and I was making so many
new friends.
There was a young, unknown
singer there for the whole convention who contributed a lot to the ru’ch.
His name was Shlomo Carlebach. First of all, I had never seen or heard anyone
singing that kind of heart-touching music and getting everyone to join in. Then
something that had a major impact on my life: Shlomo was strumming on his
guitar, and he said, “Boys and girls, if I could be the richest man on earth
and live in a palace but not be a Jew…strum…or
so poor that I was sleeping in the gutter and had nothing to eat…strum…but a Jew….” Then he yelled out, “I’d
be a Jew.” The music was loud and the words penetrated my innermost being. I
had always felt that way inside, but he said it out loud.
Rabbi Stolper was developing
the idea of NCSY, which was designed for kids in public school like me. He was
one of the first to realize that you could inspire teenagers to define
themselves as frum. He took the natural rebelliousness of teens and
turned it towards becoming frum. He created a teen culture, where you
had peers just like you. Maybe not in your town, but at the convention, and you
were part of something greater than yourself. As he wrote, “Adolescence is the
age of turmoil, challenge, and potential danger. There is no other stage in
life where the possibilities of finding one’s self and the threat of losing
one’s self loom so large. This is the age when boys and girls define themselves
vis a vis their environment, religion, and society – a time for developing a
self-image, a time to answer the all-important questions: Who am I? What am I?
What will I be?” (Rabbi Pinchos Stolper, Jewish Life 1963.)
I returned to Montgomery, and
Rabbi Borow helped me apply and get accepted to Yeshiva University High School
in Manhattan. They had just started a special class for boys transferring from
public school. It was taught by Rabbi Yitzchok Sladowsky. I continued on in
Yeshiva University for one year and was very active in NCSY on a national level
that year. But after one year of YU, I convinced my mother to let me go to
Israel and study at Yeshiva Kerem B’Yavne, which she did reluctantly. She was
worried that it wasn’t safe. I went 1965/66. Had I gone 1966/67, I would have
been there during the Six Day War, and I think my mother would have been very
worried.
* * *
In the interest of not making
this article too long, I will gloss over a lot that happened in the ensuing
years because I want to get to Vancouver and Pinky Bak.
After learning in Ner Yisrael
and getting semicha and marrying Feigi, the two of us set off for
Israel. Our year there was crowned by the birth of our bas bechora Chaya
Sora. When she was a month old, we returned to America. Feigi went to her
parents in Baltimore, and I stayed in New York to go to the offices of Torah
Umesorah. It was August, and they presented me with at least three or four
possible day school positions. Rabbi Bernard Goldenberg, one of the heads of
Torah Umesorah had previously been rabbi in Vancouver, British Columbia, and he
encouraged me to take that offer. He described an amazing vibrancy that the
principal there had instilled in the school and encouraged me to be part of a
Torah revolution.
We went to Vancouver where I
discovered kiruv so successful that I have never seen it duplicated in
all my years. I will never forget my first Simchas Torah in Vancouver, when the
shul emptied out onto the street, and hundreds of people, young and old, joined
in singing “Shmelkie’s Niggun.” Who would have thought that this scene
was taking place in far-off British Columbia and that most of these people had
been experiencing a true Simchas Torah for only a few years, at most, and many
for the first time. Pinky Bak, z”l, succeeded in bringing large numbers
of young Jews close to true commitment to Torah and mitzvos. His success was
legendary. Why did scores of teenagers begin observing Shabbos, kashrus,
and learning in depth due to his influence?
Pinchos Zelig Bak, the son of
Rabbi and Mrs. Binyamin Bak, after graduation from YU was studying for a master’s
degree in English literature in Berkeley, California. He was advising the local
youth group, when Rabbi Marvin Hier of Congregation Schara Zedek in Vancouver
saw him and convinced him to drop everything and become the principal of the
Vancouver Talmud Torah, a day school, which was by no means an Orthodox school.
Pinky came in, and he was very successful. He was a great teacher and great
administrator and had rapport with the kids and the adults. Hardly any of the
students came from shomer Shabbos homes, maybe a handful at most. Rabbi
Hier wanted Pinky to organize NCSY and be the advisor, for no remuneration, on
top of his busy job at the school. It is hard to quantify in words
something that, in all my life, I have never seen before or after, but I will
try.
Yes, Pinky could sing and get
others to join in; he could inspire and motivate teens to aspire to a Torah-committed
life. He was a phenomenal teacher. As one student, Howie Steele, put it, “In
Rabbi Bak’s class, you were so busy paying attention that you had no time to
daydream.” He was also “one of the guys.” He could drive a baseball further
than anyone else. Pinky was a true lover of Torah; his belief was so complete
that he could wage war with the forces destroying Jewish life and succeed. But
there was something more: What appealed to his talmidim and talmidos
was his sincere concern for them as human beings. He won them over with his
love for them. It was so sincere – how could they not reciprocate? In short,
Pinky put into play everything that Rabbi Stolper and others described. He was
indeed a “pied piper,” a charismatic and brilliant exemplar of what he was
preaching.
* * *
By the time I arrived in
Vancouver, the revolution was in its heyday. I wrote to Dr. Joseph Kaminetzky
of Torah Umesorah that I was teaching a Gemara shiur to 15 eighth graders,
and 12 were shomer Shabbos but only two came from shomer Shabbos homes.
He wrote back questioning whether I was exaggerating. In the beginning, Pinky and
his aishes chayil Karen packed their
small dining room with large numbers of teens, who came for lunch after shul on
Shabbos. It became too much for one person, so Rabbi Hier arranged for the shul
to host a complete Shabbos lunch every week for as many youth as wanted to
come, at no charge.
One time, Pinky asked me to
host Irving Stone, of Cleveland, for lunch. He was in town for the Canadian
branch of his greeting card company’s convention. Friday night he ate with the
Baks, and he came to us for lunch. After the meal, as was normal, many
teenagers came over, and I introduced them to this titan of Jewish
philanthropy. He was amazed and found it hard to believe it when I told him
that not one of these kids came from a shomer
Shabbos home. That Sunday morning, Pinky arranged for Mr. Stone to meet the
board of directors of the school. He wanted them to see for themselves that
someone could be very successful and be frum.
We went to NCSY conventions
from California to Western Canada – it was a big region – but it never occurred
to me or to Pinky to ask to be paid for our extracurricular activities. For
Heaven’s sake, that was why we were there. Most of the NCSYers were students or
alumni of the day school, but the kiruv
came out of Congregation Schara Zedek, and Rabbi Hier made sure that funds were
made available.
I earlier mentioned the
one-time spark of inspiration that I derived from Shlomo Carlebach. That was
nothing compared to the impact Pinky had on so many teens. Today, the fruits of
his labor can be found in many places. When I go to Toronto to visit our
children there, I always meet students of mine from Vancouver who are leaders in
the community.
My point is that Rabbi Stolper
devised a system and Pinky developed it into a renaissance in that community at
that time. He showed that the right person with the right backing can do
wonders.
I now want to close with a
synopsis of an essay written by Pinky Bak describing why our generation is able
to have this success, something that had not happened for a long time. The
title is “The Revitalization of Traditional Life among Jewish Youth.” He boiled
it down to four factors:
1) The destruction of old dreams: The times
we live in have shattered many assumptions and beliefs. Can man harness nature
without destroying our planet? Can Israel be accepted by the nations of the
world? Is justice triumphing over the planet? Have many of our hopes and dreams
been shown overly optimistic?
2) The age of ethnicity: We live in an age
of ethnic self-awareness. Intellectually aware Jewish students feel that they
too must find the roots of their identity. They sense that that these roots lie
in the traditional observances, rather than in social or recreational groups.
3) Future shock: Alvin Toffler, in his now famous
book Future Shock, describes the
frantic pace of our civilization and its rate of change, which threatens to
disorient all of us. The student knows that his courses of study may be
obsolete tomorrow. Instinctively, the young person seeks opportunities to
identify with more basic and less transitory terms of existence.
4) The global village: Television (and,
now, the internet) expanded our awareness of the world about us to the extent
that we have become, “a global village.” The young Jew of today feels a kinship
with his brothers and sisters in Russia, in Israel, and elsewhere. He does not
feel he must suppress his Jewish identity but, rather, he seeks opportunities
to enlarge it.
Pinky concludes his
trenchant essay like this: “Young people are turning to us in search of an
answer. If we have nothing meaningful to say, they will turn elsewhere. If we
respond intelligently and demonstrate the beauty and value of a Torah-oriented
life, we may well witness a true renaissance of Jewish observance and
learning.”
* * *
Our world is built on the
foundations of those who came before us. We owe much to them. According to
Rabbi Stolper, his rebbe, Rav Yitzchok Hutner, zt”l, said that, historically, it takes a few generations from the
time that Jews arrive in a new country until the community produces homegrown gedolim. “We don’t have time to wait in
America – we have to produce them straight away,” Rav Hutner said, explaining
why he was pouring all of his giant abilities into a relatively small number of
talmidim and not seeking to build a
larger movement.
The spirit of emergency
activity and rebuilding with which he imbued the postwar yeshiva world is everywhere.
Rav Hutner’s insight explains why the Torah world now numbers in the hundreds
of thousands. We are no longer operating on emergency footing, with a third
generation that has only experienced the Torah boom years. But whatever the
numbers, the challenges involved in building the next generation of Torah life are
going to be totally different from when the Ponevezher Rav and Rav Aharon
Kotler, zt”l, struggled to fill their
first modest batei medrash.
We live in a new era. Let’s hope we can meet them with the same
idealism and dedication as our forebears.
* * *
Postscript: Pinky left Vancouver to start a new high school in
New York. In its second year, he died on Purim night at the mesiba (party) from a brain aneurism.
The funeral was on Purim in the Lincoln Square Synagogue. He was
32. Several months later, Feigi gave birth to a son. We named him Eliezer
Pinchos, after my grandfather, the chasid
with the long white beard who lived into his 90s and for Pinchos Bak.
