Where What When

The Aaron Rosenfeld Memorial Fund

Elie Rosenfeld and I have been friends for almost 28 years now. We met through a mutual friend in our freshman year at YU and have been friends ever since.

In 1985, Elie married Debbie Fisch, and they moved to Highland Park, New Jersey, near Elie’s new job. I moved back to Baltimore and got a job in Silver Spring.

In January 1987, their first child Aaron was born. The mohel at Aaron’s bris was Cantor Arthur Shulman from Baltimore, a cousin of Debbie’s. A few weeks later, the Rosenfelds celebrated Aaron’s pidyon haben in Rabbi Hertzberg’s shul in Baltimore.

Elie had a long connection to the shul. His mother, Eve Rosenfeld, of Baltimore, is the daughter of Rabbi Hertzberg. And it was appropriate that Aaron would be redeemed in the shul of his great grandfather, for his middle name was Elimelech, in memory of Rabbi Hertzberg. The cohen at the pidyon haben was Rabbi Gedalia Anemer of Silver Spring.

Over the next four years, Elie and Debbie would be very important to me. Since I lived in Baltimore and was single, I had to travel to New York a lot. They were among the friends I could turn to when I had a date and needed a place to stay, and they never said no. It was especially convenient when I stated dating Anne, because her parents also lived in Highland Park. In fact the weekend we got engaged, I was staying with Elie and Debbie.

Some of what I remember about Aaron was how long it took him to walk. He had very thin legs but a torso that looked a body builder’s. But what he lacked in physical skills he more than made up for in his mental skills. By the age of two he talked in full sentences.

Elie and Debbie have three other children, Ben, Shalom, and Shayna. But after I got married and we had our own children, it wasn’t so easy keeping up with Elie and Debbie’s children. We’d see them when we visited Highland Park, but we didn’t really keep up with them. We did get together with Elie and Debbie occasionally, when we were in New Jersey. Our families shared simchas and, unfortunately, some sad events too. But nothing could compare to the nightmare last year.

When Anne called me in the middle of davening on the morning of May 15 last year, she told me that her father had called to inform us that Aaron was in critical condition and we should say tehilim for him. It didn’t sound right. Eighteen-year-olds don’t usually go to the hospital in critical condition.

When I got home, I heard conflicting reports as to how serious Aaron’s condition was. He had a brain tumor, but from the information we heard, we thought it was serious but treatable. What we only found out later was that, by then, the tumor had caused bleeding on Aaron’s brain and he was in a coma.

Over the next day-and-a-half we stayed in touch with the Rosenfelds either directly or through Elie’s local brother in law, Rabbi Yaakov Menken. At 9:30 the next night Yaakov called with the terrible but inevitable news that Aaron had passed away and the levaya would be the next day.

We learned a lot about Aaron through the hespedim. The week before his levaya, he had celebrated a siyum on Meseches Brachos, having learned and taught daf yomi with and to his fellow students at Rav Teitz Mesivta Academy in Elizabeth. He also was known for helping his classmates who didn’t catch on as fast as he did. And we learned that he had a sense of humor until the end.

After the levaya, Elie and Debbie wanted to do something to memorialize their son. Initially they considered setting up a fund on their own. But before Chanukah, Elie told me, their children brought home notes about a toy drive sponsored by Chai Lifeline.

Chai Lifeline is an organization dedicated to helping Jewish families with children suffering from serious illness. Whether it is providing a special treat for a sick child or helping the child’s family cope with the stresses of their situation, Chai Lifeline extends a helping hand.

Rabbi Simcha Scholar, the founder of Chai Lifeline, spoke in Baltimore a few years ago. He told a story of a sick boy whose wish was to meet a monkey. Rabbi Scholar worked hard to find a monkey for the boy to meet. After a lot of work he was able to arrange a meeting. But the boy died the day before the meeting was to take place. Rabbi Scholar called the parents to apologize for not being able to arrange things in time. The parents were grateful. Their son had died happy, they said; he had looked forward so to the day which, for him, never came.

But Chai Lifeline isn’t just about the extraordinary efforts it makes to make a sick child happy. It tries to make the everyday struggles of a family with a sick child more manageable.

Keeping in mind how Aaron helped his classmates, Elie and Debbie set up the Aaron Rosenfeld Fund to benefit the Homebound Educational Learning Program (HELP). HELP provides tutors for sick children or their siblings who are unable to keep up with schoolwork.

At the inaugural event for the Aaron Rosenfeld Fund at Congregation Ohav Emeth in Highland Park, Debbie explained the choice of tzedaka like this: “Like Aharon, Moshe’s brother, our Aaron was also a specialist in ve’ahavta lerayacha kamocha, loving his fellow man as himself or, in his case, his fellow student. He spent countless hours tutoring struggling students. Despite the potential risk to his own studies, he deeply understood that in the big picture, his grades were not the only goal.”

And this is from what Elie said: “Today you’ll hear many good words about Aaron, learn of his accomplishments, his fine traits, his devotion to Torah. These tributes are entirely fitting and proper and of great comfort to his family. But mere recollection of the child that was lost is only one part of the story. To truly memorialize Aaron, to truly honor what he stood for, we must also make provisions for the special needs of those children for whom the parental role has been allowed to remain in our hands.”

Aaron, we learned, had influenced his classmates. One was preparing to finish Pesachim as part of learning daf yomi; something he had started with Aaron a year earlier. Through the Aaron Rosenfeld Fund, a different aspect of Aaron’s fine character would live on too.

For more information on the Aaron Rosenfeld Fund, contact Chai Lifeline at 732-719-1700 or check their website at www.chailifeline.org .

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Article List - June 2006