Conversation - Building Community: 25th Yahrzeit of R' Pinchas Mordechai Teitz zt"l

morning ladies and gentlemen and welcome my name is pence shapiro and i have the honor and distinct privilege and responsibility of working for the jewish educational center the flagship institution founded by rapunzel's mordecai tights nearly 80 years ago i would like to thank some of the generous sponsors for today's program including stephen and aviva singfer marjorie blendin jason kahana and shaina pinsker among others although yesterday marked the 25th yurt site of repentas mordecai tights his life and legacy continues to have an impact on jewelry worldwide today we are privileged to have two distinguished leaders of american jewry individuals whose multi-generational roots to rough tights run very deep riverfrom goldberg senior rabbi of the boca raton synagogue and rabinyamin blau rabbi of the green road synagogue though the weather difference between boca and cleveland cannot be more extreme the light of torah emanating from both of them shines bright and illuminates the world rabbi goldberg descends from the famed above family which was one of only six shaumer shabbas families in elizabeth new jersey when rapunzel's mordecai tights arrived in america and rabbi blau is a grandson of repentance mordechai taits both have been informed inspired and influenced by her of tights his life lessons and legacy without further ado i give you rabbis goldberg and blau thank you europeans for that warm introduction thank you for all the work that you do on a regular basis on behalf of the elizabeth community in particular the jc community you're doing a beautiful job of continuing my grandfather's legacy every day and we owe you a great example of a car tattoo it's really a privilege this morning to be with her vaphram who is a dear friend and as you mentioned and alluded to in your introduction our families go back three generations and going back to his grandparents and my grandparents actually for those who know well going back to my late grandmother rabbits and bessie tights and originally bessie prael who knew the abroafs prior to my grandfather coming onto the scene and of course then my grandparents together with riverfrom's grandparents were so instrumental in building the community i'd like to share with you the context and then the framework we're going to have our discussion this morning i'm going to introduce different topics different areas where my grandfather made an incredible historic mark and the nevada and i are going to discuss both the legacy of my grandfather in terms of what he accomplished but perhaps equally important how it shaped the way we frame our rabbinite and the activities we engage in i'll start with the most dramatic and that was the creation of the community it is true that they were jews and elizabeth pryor in fact my grandfather succeeded his late father-in-law my great-grandfather everlasting mayor preyell they could talk slovaka but my great-grandfather was cut down on the prime of his life and when my grandfather raping us monacai taite herzegovica married my grandmother my bubbie as she was finally known they created something new and dramatic far beyond that which had preceded them and that was the creation of a full-fledged community and the idea that a community be created outside of new york at that point in time there were few torah centers there were a few major places where the religious community had thrived in the north american area and my grandfather was determined that it was important to create communities outside and make sure that jews wherever they were throughout the country could have homes where they could raise their families in torah and yiddish guy and that's what he did and he not only did it in elizabeth he also did it in other places as well as he was happy to go to any community that was willing to start and give them personally professionally in any capacity that he could and i've always been amazed by the way he built community and i have to confess that sometimes in your younger years as you go through different stages you question he did it one way or another way i did have the privilege of working together with him for 11 years but as i got older i realized the incredible wisdom of having everything unified under one roof having all the shults and the schools everything being under one leadership his leadership and then but alec i am continuing with my uncle revelation again that model is a very unique model but i think it was a model that really transformed and allowed him to create this community and sustain it for all these years reverend your thoughts yes first of all thank you so much robert shapiro for inviting me to be part of this on the one hand i feel a tremendous insider to the elizabeth community to jec to the legacy of rabbi tyson obviously in many ways i'm an outsider so it really is an honor and a privilege for me and for my extended family to be able to recognize and memorialize and mark this significant europe side of a truly outstanding goddess person who was at the forefront of building jewry not only maintaining it but building it when many others were just trying to survive he went into thrive mode and said that there was no time to simply try to continue to exist but there's no reason that we can't expand and we can't train american jury in a vocabulary to speak a language we'll make it resonate and we'll make it continue ravini is a rabbi blau as a dear friend for many years and though you wouldn't know it from looking at the two of us he is a few years older than i am and i say that not to um not to make him feel good that he has an age or make me feel bad but i say that only to say that when i was younger and would visit elizabeth and in those years you were working with your grandfather and i listened to you without knowing it you were a passive mentor to me early on you were somebody i looked to and saw a young person who was excited to be going into the rabbinate to be making a difference and so um for me it's been a great honor it's blossomed into a friendship and we work together in so many different capacities and we compare notes and talk on a regular basis um look exactly what you're what you're describing is true i know here in boca raton where we try and we're going to get into this this morning where we try to follow that model of creating a kahila it's not a shul in isolation it's not just a shul on a block among uh countless others but we're trying to create a sense of community and when a person reflects and says who is the president upon what model can that be built who can we turn to to see where our satellite jewels with a main hub of the shule where is a community that operates with one set of minhagem where can we envision such a thing there really is one place to turn and that is elizabeth and what's really extraordinary is that is that your grandfather's rabbit satsang was invited to many prominent positions in new york and he had the opportunity to bring his talents as one would say in today's vernacular to bring his talents elsewhere to places under a much larger spotlight which are much bigger or prestigious at the time audience and yet he felt a real loyalty to his father-in-law he wanted to build that kahila and he saw on elizabeth the possibility not only to not compete from a strategic point of view but to build the kahila modeled after what he saw and lived with in europe before he got here and he took that extraordinary responsibility and early on um though it wasn't easy and a person needed that livelihood in order to provide for their family he built elizabeth so courageously i know that in 1935 i understand april 1935 he had a meeting of the community where he said i have to leave elizabeth i have to take my family we have to move and people looked at him shocking like what do you mean you have to move he said there's no mikvah there's no mikvah how could i live here they said well you could go to newark or you could go into new york to manhattan and he said that's lovely but if we're going to have a jewish community if we're going to have a future we need to have a mikvah and that night he raised the necessary funds and they built a mikvah and that that story to me really symbolizes leadership and courage and faith and being principled um but all according to who says that the mick was the most important institution within a community and he was willing to to get it done not worried what people would think or say of him but advancing the community and its interests so um i have memories as a child of visiting my grandparents you mentioned the family's connection um going back generations of which we are very very proud my great grandfather yona gadaya above who learned in kishnev became ashokheid had relatives in america he came to elizabeth to be the shockhorn by prayer and he was then the shochir under by titan about kore and and as rabbi shapiro said was one of the few early homes that were shown in the community really partners and and my grandmother ruth nolman ruth above allah shalom was one of the early primary teachers i whenever i meet people from elizabeth if they're over a certain age they say your bubby taught me to read and write every over a certain age every person who grew up or lived in elizabeth your bubby taught me to me to read and write so we feel very very connected and and my memories from the childhood of seeing the image of slobodka of seeing rabbi tights walk to the end of the bhima and he didn't have to say a word if there was someone talking in the shul he just took three steps forward looked in that direction and everybody sat up straight and nobody said a further word i have such vivid memories of seeing that the mohus the surah of what it meant to be somebody who saw the godless of them the way he carried himself and the community that he built continues to inform me so it's really a great honor to be here with you thank you rebecca i'm very humbled by your earlier words i think we're equal mentors to one another but i am older that's not going to change that is a reality i just want to develop one of the ideas you were describing and really note that my reveral wine had mentioned that when he was a young man learning in chicago and they were all the visitors after the war after the show after the holocaust and all the great figures would come and they'd all lament what had been what had been in europe would have been lost and along came this rabbi and talked about what we were going to do we were going to build and he was so struck who was this individual and that was of course my zadie because my zeta believed that we could as you mentioned not just survive in america but we could thrive we could really build torah communities and rewind said as i remember him speaking he said he used to make a lot of as a lawyer he was a very successful attorney he made more he paid more in taxes than his pr salary as thereof but he was inspired to go into the the role of a rabbinic leader based on the model he saw on my grandfather and just to develop the idea a little further even though even the way now like you were mentioning i know in boca raton synagogue you have many many names under one roof many many different expressions and my grandfather believed that as well he did that by creating multiple shulls multiple shrolds under one roof i don't think either you or i have the ability to do that in the same capacity but it's the same concept the realization that my grandfather realized different parts of the community there were different sections of the community that needed his guidance there were different sections the community did things a little differently i remember in my years together with him the the kant the the nature of the of different minyanim every you know shurim was different it was was different than basic which was different than the jc which is different than i thought israel everything had a little bit of a different feel and my grandfather loved that because that was you were appealing to each section of the population each section of the kegel was getting what they needed and it was important to him it was important even when he moved when the community shifted he still was important that each one of these schools were maintained because it was so critical that that first that area was maintained but that each brand had the same and i know when i again uh tried to create multiple vignettes under one roof is really a representation of that same concept that my grandfather embodied yeah absolutely and and i think that was it was tremendously prescient it really was a visionary whereas everybody else locks themselves down on this is my ashkaffa these are arm and hug him this is the way we do it i need everyone in my main minion right there are still shoes we have colleagues who will oppose the notion of a minion because they believe everything has to be centralized and focused in in only one place and and i think it took a lot of vision to say that not everybody fits in the same box not everybody geographically is going to live in the same location so you can expand your influence and you can expand your sense of community and you can expand those shared values and vision if you're willing to uh to share with others you're willing to create satellites you're willing to create auxiliaries and other smaller schools as you say that takes tremendous tremendous vision because people are different and we're living in a world especially today of you know everybody's on demand you order on demand and you watch on demand you listen on demand you make the playlist of what you want to listen to and you don't have to suffer like we did in our childhood when you had a record certainly but even afterwards with tapes you remember somebody you love came out with a new tape and there were three songs in the whole tape that you liked but you had to suffer through all the songs on both sides of the tape to hear the three songs that you liked because if you would forward you didn't know exactly when to stop today you know our children have no clue what we're talking about you make a playlist and you only ever have to listen to what you want so life is on demand everything is on demand in a world of on demand where people want exactly what they what they are used to and what they demand so he was really early out and saying that everybody should get um you know we have to be able to to market to people by sharing where they are and to reach them in that way again all coming back to the notion of building kahila of the community being bigger than any person being bigger than oneself but having a shared set of vision and values and i know we're going to continue to talk about this and i should say and and i said but i'll keep saying i'm grossly inadequate to be sharing these reflections you are so much better positioned than i but i think rabbi tyson's godless was he combined the traditions of the old world whether in his dress or whether in his attitude and approach whether his unwavering unequivocal commitment to torah to mesorah and at the same time his commitment to being moderate a modern torah community not modern orthodox but a modern torah community a commitment as you said to me the other day of being orthodox and you can elaborate now and being and being modern and that spoke to people that's what connected to people i remember reading that that early on in his rabbinate um when it became clear that if he spoke in yiddish nobody would understand what he was saying he would sit with your grandmother and he would write out his dress and yiddish and she would translate it into english but write it with hebrew characters the transliteration it appeared in hebrew characters the english i don't know if the family still has those those files but those must be extraordinary the english drush is written in transliteration of the hebrew characters and that story says everything right of a commitment to communicate the traditional mesorah of torah of slabka of europe of the godolam that he was connected to and to be a link in the chain he came from but to communicate it in the vocabulary in the language in a way that would resonate and that would inspire the jew in the modern world so that is exactly true as you mentioned he used to say be modern be orthodox in so many ways i know that so many of his early supporters they saw that beautiful combination that connection to europe because he was clearly the way he was rooted and i remember so fondly the many many times as a child sitting at a shabbos table sitting at his yamcha table sitting with him together in the sukkah and he was telling me the stories and i was part i felt part of that legacy part of that connection because he was my connection he was my link to those generations he was clearly to all the survivors who came to the to the community he was the link to the past but he thought like an american that's what they said all along and you're right you put it very well that combination with my bubba ella shalom freaking out the speeches in english to the point where english became so comfortable and you never knew that actually i think he was for always thinking in yiddish i always think he was really thinking in yiddish but he spoke in english although i do have to say i need to take credit or blame i think even the the shabbos of god and shabashuva dresses remained in yiddish until i was old enough to come and then he switched them to english because it was important that everyone including the grandchildren understand but there was that beautiful lake and i do want to mention just in sensitivity i mentioned the number of shulls earlier of course their moral hills many and the svardic minion that now exist all the other miniatures are really a continuation of the idea of my grandfather bashir meeting the people where they are meeting their needs can i ask you before you continue if i could ask you a question along the same thing you know i did a fair amount of research i i gave a talk in our shul because we did a series on people of the book and really great leaders of of the 20th century in america and and i spoke to you then and and members of your extended family and obviously my family but what i didn't come across and i'm curious to know whether you have an answer is given where he came from and given his education where did rabbi tights get all the knowledge the ambition that ceo mentality right the builders i know the builders we think of as the group of survivors who built a real estate empire and maybe they lent their expertise or what they learned in their partnership with him but where did this talmud of slabotka where did this talmud of godolam of the past where did this rav steeped in talmud torah where and all the aspects of of being of rabbanus but where did he get the skill set the ambition the drive the know-how to be able to build in the way that he did did he did he read did he listen did he consult experts how did he get that education that's an excellent question so i'm going to tread into uncharted waters i'm going to give you my own take and all my members of my family will correct me afterwards and perhaps if i'm making them if i'm an error but i think part of that was innate part of that really you mentioned that at the day of slovakia there was a great kite there was a breath of slovak the idea of being a leader was very important and the idea of always being creative and always thinking to do more that was really built into his una from the slovakia yeshiva it's interesting to note historically how many was a dreamer was it a similar personality the altus tobacco was in a certain sense he used your terms from a ceo he really knew how to run things so expertly and so many yeshiva so many of the great yeshivas in europe were she shiva's that he created because he sent his tamid him he sent his son to me and he sent all these different places so that idea i think again part of it was innate to who my grandfather was part of him was intellectually curious always looking to learn and very very interested in always knowing more but part of it i think came from his roots specifically came from slovakia my late great grandfather was i mean there the rabbinic genes of course go back many many generations that was a that was part of his dna but i think a lot of it was his upbringing and that sense of sobatka you had a responsibility to make a difference in the world that's where my grandfather that was steeped very much in his tradition and i think that was part of why he was so successful right when you think about his classmates in slovakia so to say classmates his fellow talmidam vrvyakov kaminetki and ravramin who was the founder of niri sural and rafitner of course berlin yacht of weinberg the three days i mean the fact that the yeshiva created that cohort of graduates of talmidim who shaped maybe not the sri deish but the who's who of america the 20th century responsible for the continuity of torah life and not only its continuity but its proliferation i think that's a great point you're making but but as we bring that to today and i know that we share this in common and some of our colleagues do that notion of the rabbi as a ceo is an unusual model i think rabbi tights really brought it here in in that way and the other names i mentioned were russia yeshiva they led yeshivas rabbi tights of course founded yeshiva's but but was the rub of a kehillah of a community of a sibor and that mentality look we have colleagues who say you know my job is i teach i preach i counsel i do my life cycle events i give my passion my blot cheer i show up at shaka's manhattan i do the shiva minion and that's it and then there are other models and as i said you and i share this and i know we're trying to bring this in in the rca to provide the opportunities for people to learn what is the skill set of the rov who's also a ceo how do you how do you expand how do you leave your comfort zone expand the possibility express the ambition how do you build community how do you talk about things like branding and marketing how do you talk about things like creativity and programming membership draw retention all kinds of things that are not normally part of the language of sure life but bring them into shula life because our product is the most sacred product there is it's torah it's being marbec for mine that's the the holiest mandate that we have so he was really early on in doing that and we stand on his shoulders in the mentality of being around who's uncompromising right it's not that we're spending all of our time reading business books and never opening a gemara or giving a shear but it's that we're saying how can the sheer i give reach the most amount of people by expanding my thinking instead of only having my head down in the classic sense of a roof so you're you're definitely 100 correct he recognized and i think the key is that he recognized that every aspect of the community every aspect of building the community is important to the way you want to shape the community even the way he built the buildings even if you look at the front steps of the jz to this day if you go to the morris shul and you see the way the steps are built and the design which is deliberate replicating the mig dash everything was done he recognized that every aspect of every facet has to be done in a certain manner to get the results that you want and i do have to say and and uh my uncle should have many many good years they were a wonderful team together and they complemented each other in their skill set but i remember different stories of things he did in the and the incredible activities he engaged in he just recognized that every component mattered to can transmit his message and that really was the underpinning you mentioned the idea let's really segue into another point since you talked about his spreading of torah i want to go to his uh daffodil and the daffodil which was groundbreaking then the idea that you were going to use technology and think about look at us right now look where we are right now look how many people are going to be watching this broadcast and this broadcast will be on youtube for generations and my grandfather was far before his time with recognizing that there was a need to spread torah to the masses and it was controversial it's so incredible the thought that teaching torah in public was controversial he had to write to us to justify it he had to get two words from other godolam of his time to justify the activities because this year he was giving in yiddish in yiddish mind you may be listened to by non-jews who knows who's going to listen and it was a controversial act but he was way before his time and the concept that just a couple of points about the dafa shavuah two things one the realization of how vast his reach was how vast at one point the estimation was because they were monitoring all broadcasts because of the communist activities the 1950s they estimated he had a quarter of a million listeners it's incredible and the other thing was his ability to use that platform to do so much more when i was giving in when i had the privilege of serving the reverend elizabeth and i gave the shabbos the afternoon gemara shir the blotchier which my grandfather had given before me so i was stepping into very large shoots so i remember one week i gave a shirt on whatever it was whatever daffy were up to and mr ellen masquerada sholem came to me and said you know i want to share with you something after shabbos and he came to my apartment and he gave me a tape of dafa shavua of my grandfather doing the same sugya and i didn't need to be humbled because i knew i wasn't my grandfather but that was an incredible experience my grandfather not only had the capacity to weave in all the mefashim seamlessly into the gemara because he knew it so well but more profoundly he was able to have talk about the events of the day he was able to do that and it flowed it emanated from the gemara it emanated from the terror perspective from the ashkaf in which he was steeped and he was able to do that and i think to myself what my grandfather would have done with today's technology i can't believe what he would have done but that was pioneering it was novel it was daring and i couldn't sparkle blessed no question no question but as you said it was rooted in the fact that he was a genuine and authentic nobody could question his credentials and while we think of him as the builder the great founder of the elizabeth or the the greater or growth of elizabeth community it all comes back to his being a genuine talmud and we have he has chuvas farm we have we have real torah that he produced and that he taught and and your uncle as you mentioned who should be well um i i believe i saw someone uh posted that he said at rabbi tyson's levaya that nobody knows the quality of torah but quantity of torah it's hard to imagine anyone taught or reached the amount of people that are by tights reached because he embraced the medium and technology of his time had he remained only in his shule closed down maybe produced a flyer and said come to my blotch here so who knows in those days and even today so there'd be a dozen people a hundred people how many would attend but a quarter of a million weekly the number is staggering so in the 20th century maybe one can say for much longer than that who has reached that many people to be able to have that impact you know you would have said then nobody ever used this word you would have said rabbi tights has gone viral his sheer his his the da fashio has gone viral had they used that word back then they would have they would have said it but absolutely how pioneering and how again the word comes back to to courage to have the confidence that you're steeped in tradition and in torah to have the confidence that you're about that and therefore to not worry about the criticism that will come and the confidence and courage to embrace the modern mediums to be able to use those platforms to teach and as you said january 17th 1953 first broadcast of the da fashion wevd radio pioneer innovator it's it's mind boggling and and as you said what's particularly you know where i can tell you exactly right now how many people are listening i'm operating this in the back end and i can tell you and and we're both humbled by how many people are tuning in and we appreciate on your on your sunday morning you're joining us he had no idea he started this on a whim he had this idea and uh and courageously began it and then letters and postcards came pouring in its farm stores said whatever he was teaching they sold out of that masaka and that's how he knew and like you said there was opposition sometimes the best way is to know that you're doing something right is that it's not embraced by 100 of the people sometimes when there's pushback it's evidence that you're doing something right and he got support ramosha the bachelorette eliza silver the srideish and and the big sumam that he held that of thousands of people attended and so strategic so brilliant to invite his colleagues and his and his friends and the golem of the time to come speak at those um which would then implicitly offer their endorsement to what he was doing rav moshe and the punavitch and ivana cutler and others at different times to happen to be here and to spread out right he became syndicated again a word maybe they didn't use in those days boston chicago detroit la miami montreal philadelphia and other places it really is mind-boggling so you know just relaying it as we're meant to do in this uh in this conversation this morning relaying it to me um it i i wasn't the earliest and maybe not even considered early but earlier on embracing social media than other abundant i don't i didn't and i don't use social media to show anyone the dessert that i had or what my children are up to or my vacation or anything like that i never have and mr shem i never will use it for that but i saw early on bashir usham again along the same theme of rabbi tights taurus is that you can reach people where they are where they're at and that's where a segment of our community a demographic that's where they are right now for the last nine months that's where we all are so those who were ready early on were ready for this and those who weren't had to first learn that tool and some still haven't adjusted to it and how much tamatota is lost out because of it so when i first started posting articles or giving shirum and using social media to do it i got pushback i got criticism what does it say about ira and you're endorsing these places that are not places that benetora should participate and and now i feel vindicated now i laugh because major rabbinic organizations and i'm not talking about the rca and major rabbinic personalities whose beards are much longer than mine are giving the shiram on these same social media platforms embracing them using them utilizing them and asking by the way how do i do it how can i reach more people how can i have it spread farther so this point about every titan's legacy particularly is poignant for me because it gives it gives hazak it gives courage a person i'm obviously no rabbi tights in in a million ways you have to have rebellion that you could turn to to ask are you doing the right thing but once you have the courage of your convictions and once you know that it's purely permissible to not worry about with the naysayers and the haters again a modern term that he had haters back in his day what they will say but but the proof is in the pudding right and the result is the ultimate vindication and a quarter of a million listeners a week just just combine the numbers combine the numbers right if he would do a charity campaign today on those numbers and be able to show on the screen right just multiply a quarter of a million a week by 52 weeks and say yeah my my my bloch here my da fashion i teach several million people a year don't you think it's worthwhile to contribute to so the numbers are staggering and mind-boggling and it's not just something to admire as something about the past but we should embrace it as something that informs our present to realize that we have the privilege with our rabbinic voices to not only reach the people in our community the people who audibly our voice literally enters their ear but using technology we could reach so much more and that's not an expression or reflection of ego or arrogance but rather it's a sense of responsibility and i think you've hit it very beautifully perfectly segue into my next uh area of next topic of conversation but again just to highlight he really we where we're doing there we're standing on his shoulders and we're asking me to do it really very very well a lot of us aspire to follow your lead um but all of us it it's it's following that model and never shying away being courageous and recognizing that you can and must use the mediums of this that same you'll see the same strands keep coming back and forth he's talked about his courage and is willing to be an activist and i think there one of the areas that he created felt the most pride in was his activities on behalf of the jews of the soviet union making more than 20 20 trips i believe 25 trips behind the iron curtain at a time when no one could get there and the realization that we do have a responsibility we do have responsibility to take care of everyone else we can't just be worried about ourselves at a time when it seemed like it was impossible like it was a don quixote task to go and try to help and save russian jewelry and it's true later on this we can mention the fact that all the various movements that happened that were so instrumental and really fighting hard for russian jewry my grandfather was there behind the scenes before any little things happened and those trips which were harrowing trips they were not easy trips uh the the really the the level of oppression and the level of watching i remember they were watched all the time the phone calls were monitored there was one individual who who connected himself to my grandfather he claimed to be a rav and he said he was going to grow up with my grandfather he'll help him out and my grandfather still had he and my grandmother lashalm had relatives still in europe and one of the relatives came over to my grandfather took him inside and said and i'll say it in yiddish and then translate there's a rebbe rebecca that person is a rabbi like i'm a robinson he's the kgb agent that's really following you and it didn't matter my grandfather was undeterred and and no matter if people liked his approach didn't like his approach he knew and i mentioned uh i remember very very vividly a story uh dave skye many of the people listening to community knew him well dave skylar shalom who ran sky hebrew bookstore for all these years used to put together the sets of dalai meena the little of him and his trogan that were sent before yantif and my grandfather would send he had the connections he'd get them the dollar medium he'd get them to see durham he'd get them the matzos and dave was sitting shiva and it was the time to prepare the dalai meena and my grandfather pascal again that courage the conviction that after he would sit shiva during the day he could go back to the store at night and put together those dalai meena and it was unheard of and people thought it was a lost cause but it didn't matter it was the right thing to do and he didn't shy away for a second to do it it it it really is extraordinary because again you have rabbanum who excel as tamid and post kim in russia yeshiva and you have rabbanim in pastoral care and you have rabbanim in and and he just combined it all so this this component first of all it makes all of us feel so grossly inadequate and inferior it's really it's really extraordinary all combined in one person so yeah that sense of activism and again you talk about revisiting these same themes so someone could say look i myself am an immigrant i came here i'm doing enough i'm building community i'm founding institutions i'm teaching torah i'm innovating using technological platforms like shine it's enough i'm doing enough but it wasn't just that he went back to russia the amount of times that he went back it was that he created this entity does russia and that he printed these calendars and almanacs and booklets and and he created a religious manual and a sitter for americans and and i've seen a copy of that sitter the title page of the sitter that he created that he printed and that he brought back also says so much about him the title page says sitter call yes elizabeth new jersey where the name of the sitter is the very name of the sinner is all jews have a responsibility to one another and so he risked his life he went back he went back early on he went back when it wasn't easy he went back when stalin died and his hotel room as you said was bugged and people were following him and it was very difficult and he developed these relationships to refuse nicks here's the amazing part he didn't just end that he printed materials and smuggled them in and risked his life and went back to a place where he put his own life in danger then when people immigrated and he was able to get refuse nicks here he helped them find departments and jobs and school and medical care and so so much more so it really really is amazing because at each step of the way you say it's not a rav who rested on his laurels it's not a rub who said what i'm doing is enough it's what more can i be doing what's the next big step what's the next big thing when i um and again i know i'm telling you what you know but i'm sharing for the sake of our audience who's listening that sense of activism goes back way before elizabeth way before he ever came to america in in your mother's amazing book she recalls all this the story and and the history but going back he worked with the frida karemba the previously bhavachireba to free a jew a member of the latvian parliament who had been imprisoned and and zev chabotinsky understood the future activism in this young budding talmud and tried to recruit him to be a spokesperson for zionism which of course he didn't accept but the very fact that jabotinsky saw that potential in him that activism means that it was evident even at a at a young age so i think this also has to inform our rabbit today and our activism may be different and we don't have a soviet jewry movement and and we're blessed that we don't have the soviet jury movement in the sense that there aren't uh millions of jews living behind the iron curtain anymore but it's also a challenge to our generation because i remember as as a young boy going to those rallies on sunday now it happens to be your grandfather was against the rallies which is also another reflection of the courage of his conviction right he put he was activist he went he was entitled to an opinion it wasn't that he sat back and said don't do that right he said here's what we're doing instead maybe because he was there and he saw the conditions he thought they would be worsened if we were doing the rallies and so on he was against the rallies and it's a fascinating debate the history of the the soviet jury movement of which both sides deservedly take some credit because it probably was a combination of it all he was against the rallies but i remember as a child going to those rallies and we had a cause we thought there was something worth fighting for and what is the cause of today and whether it's in cleveland or boca raton what can we get young people to wake up to right fighting coronavirus is not a cause unfortunately the the virus you know won't respond to to rallies so so what's the cause that we can get people excited and fired up about the way soviet jewry was that he dedicated himself to and there are other causes that i think building on his model we as rabbanum have to be activists in whether it's the people who are victims of abuse or whether it's agunas or whether it's people who are struggling with infertility or whether it's people struggling with poverty or whether it's drug whatever other areas that is rabbanam we can't put our head in the sand and say i teach torah i give my shear life cycle events i show up to minha we have to follow his model of also looking at our day what are the causes for which we need to be activists take risks show courage and recruit others to be involved as well excellent point in excellence and point you mentioned the fact that it starts in his youth so i want to highlight both his youth and his age and you can pick up whichever one of the two points you'd like to go on from there um it is well known uh my mother does related in her book but i remember hearing the story from him when he came home once from yeshiva from slovakia and he had found that the local haider had taken a different approach than he had thought was appropriate and he stayed home for a few months and created his own yeshiva he created the achieve he was a young man he couldn't have been more than in his teens but he thought it was important and he created the school called javana which originally deliberate point in that sense that you have to rise to the occasion and all of us have to find what the occasion is in our lifetimes in our and not even in our lifetimes that can change in our lifetime the different periods but he rose to the occasion and he created this school in the same way and i'm giving you a lot of material for him to to go from that friend but when he came to elizabeth and he felt there was a need for a day school and again we take for granted barak hashem how many day schools are there all across our country but that wasn't the case there were no day schools right and my late great grandfather had tried and wasn't able to be successful and he and uh they complained to my late great grandfather of prayer that he was starting the school for his daughter and he said you're right my daughters are also jewish children they also deserve an education my grandfather said he's going to see it through and that's when of course he hired your late grandmother but that was novel and creating a day school when it wasn't popular and building it and building the boys high school in a girls high school again outside of new york how many were there it's the same model you rise to the occasion is paramount one of my favorite i apologize i'll be very rabbinic one of my favorite divrei torah there are so many beautiful devetora that my late grandfather said but one that always struck with me and i've used many many times it's a discussion coming up in next week's parsha next week's parsha that's time for our amish earl to go down the shevatim the family is going down to egypt and yehudah is sent early to goshen why is he sent to goshen earlier so rashi says to start a yeshiva to start a base madrid so the question is asked but yosef has just shown yosef has just shown his father that he retained he was yoshi if it said to give it an egypt didn't afraid menasha arkham ruvain vashimon he was able to raise a beautiful family committed to the ideals of the of yaakov avinu why was there a need to start a school in egypt to start a day school so to speak and my grandfather said yehide schoola can do that but a community coming full circle back a community can't survive can't be you need that's the foundation he always felt the jc was the foundation of the community and that's that same sense of rising to the occasion and just for a fullness on the other end of his life when he was much older he had been a member of the goodness of upon him for countless years if he had felt the egoistic had changed direction and he felt the need to rebuild and he created a new urbanic organization the americas were about him and he was already not a young man he made in his 70s and easily could have rested on his laurels i've done my part for the american jewish community i've done my part of rabbinic leadership right and i was there at the first meetings i had the privilege of being with him and he was forceful there to the end and again incredible balance as a young man coming to elizabeth creating the jec and then later starting the americas or abundant never shying away when the situation demanded his voice it was there yeah and and in the case of the agonizer or the america sarah but him you know that that's actually a story not khalilah of a failure of rabbi tights but when we look at his his life his legacy and we think that everything he touched turned to gold in a sense with the with the community that he built it's not true and it's important for us for ubunam to know that too to be humbled by that and to be realistic about it it didn't fail to anything of his own it failed because other people didn't step up and as you said it was the 80s he was older or already older and at a point of life when most people were in retreat and though he recruited others he started it with raviac of kaminetsky and and it got the um it got the endorsement of shaq and the stipeler and others of schneider cutler or ruderman but in the end of the day nobody stepped up with him now what i find fascinating about that is um at least again from from my research and you were there so you could confirm this is true what he was disappointed in the agora bottom of the time was that the tone had turned negative and hypercritical it was no longer about positive and building but it was really about negative and critical of others and what they were doing wrong and he thought there needed to be established another group of rabbanim who would not simply exist to criticize condemn and and be negative about others but as he had done his whole career be positive and see the opportunities and the needs and to build so even the whole story of what precipitated his disappointment with one group of rabbanim and his desire to build another is so instructive about who he was and about who we should be that sadly too many people only identify themselves by what they're not i'm not this to the right i'm not this to the left i'm not this over there i'm not this behind me and he felt that a person shouldn't identify but what they're not but identified by what they are don't be hyper critical and don't be negative but be positive and create in a positive way and and nobody else stepped up and nobody else took the mantle with him and that's why unfortunately that is not part of his ongoing legacy not that it was a failure of his but in the sense that it didn't that it didn't continue so i'll again ask you a question when we study and we reflect and we think about rabbi tights are these traits and skills any rav can learn you know some young rub on him because while i still consider myself a young rov the color of my beard would indicate otherwise so i sometimes get called by younger abundant and they ask okay so boca's the ceo model can we learn that skill set somebody who's more of an introvert or somebody who doesn't have that creativity or that vision more naturally or more innately can you learn it can you learn that skill set can somebody study rabbi tyson's life and say i want to emulate it can can a person learn that vision can they learn that courage can they learn that activism can they learn that innovation are these skills that people can learn or are abundant just cut of different cloths and some communities need and will get rabbanim who are a little bit more limited but maybe also more focused and others will get rabbanim who come from a different model do you think these are things that people can learn i think it's an excellent question i think like in most things the answer is very nuanced i think we turn to my grandfather's life and all the various attributes that we have highlighted and there's definitely what to learn from and i think sometimes we have to push ourselves you made the reference earlier push ourselves out of our comfort zone and perhaps realize that you can take on mod i don't think he started off thinking okay plans all these various activities they were going to do he was going to engage and as they came up there was a need and he filled it and he did it very well so i think on the one hand i think there's a lesson for younger rabbanim look for the model look to the model over of type looks the model of my zeta and recognize there's so much more you can do don't sell yourself short i think the other option is really also recognizing that if the need is there then you have to build it in your rabbit and all of us recognize we have our limitations and my grandfather also recognized that he needed to work with others he needed to have partners and the partners took on different forms in different contexts and if we recognize that the areas where he was so forceful and so unique uh perhaps we can't emulate to the fullest but if we realize that that's important then we have to get it done some other way and i think that's the dual duality of the lesson pushing ourselves beyond pushing ourselves to things that perhaps you recognize okay i haven't been kept let's go back to technology i haven't been comfortable up until now doing this but i should embrace it more little by little and other areas trying to get more adept and an astute at some of these areas but when i can't but i know it's necessary my grandfather showed it's necessary to be successful it's necessary to build community claw user all needs it so maybe i can't do all those parts but i have to find others who can yeah and and i guess none of us can afford to leave out the part of titus's life where he sat and he learned where he became meaning it would be terrible if you know a 23 year old assistant rabbi were to be hearing us have this conversation and then boldly tomorrow announce some new activist and you know some new approach founding some new thing fighting some new fight you need to be a rabbi tights you need to establish yourself and your credentials and the thing that he did which is which is very interesting that is a repeating theme that comes up in in this activism and we can include the building of institutions under activism is like you just said he he engaged partners and be it the builders of elizabeth who were the financial backers and partners who shared their wisdom not only the resources but be it also fellow godolum and and colleagues that he had known from slovakia and well beyond who when he embraced innovation wanted to make sure as historically great robotim always did that it was something that other abundant would sign on to as well and i think in that way it's a it's a great precedent to learn from too i i fully agree i i was so privileged it was actually interesting growing up as his grandson everywhere we went so when i was a little boy in seventh grade in jec or eighth grade and we went for a jeb shabbaton to brooklyn they took us around the verse godolum and they would point out here the kids from elizabeth and this is rabbi tate's grandson because he knew them all and he was close to them all and while i something people asked me did you feel any pressure to go into the rabbinate 22 straight generations said no pressure was very natural it was not a big deal at all um but this was his these were his partners these were his hadith you mentioned the builders who he really valued so much for their support and their wisdom and i want to take even a step further he felt the community was his partners when he used to talk about saving russian jewry he would always turn to the committee and say we're saving russian jury and it didn't matter if we all knew all of us in the room knew that he was doing 99 of the work he made the community feel this is what we're doing he took pride he loved the community he loved the kahila and he wanted them to feel partners in all his endeavors so we're building we're building the community we're building the jec we're spreading towards through down for everyone we're saving russian jewry and all of that with that same mindset and that is such a powerful idea that we have to express to our own communities as our abundant the sense that whatever projects we're engaged in it's as a community project they should feel that pride in what their love is doing but deeper than the pride the sense of partnership with their rev that this is something we as a community are taking on and we a community are accomplishing that is such a great point um we have several uh people who live in boca who came from elizabeth and i don't think there's a community in america where people are more proud to have come from than elizabeth and in fact you know rabbi josh brodie my dear friend who grew up in elizabeth you know when he first came here and he didn't go to wayu he went to he went to neutral so whenever someone would quote the rav for a long time he thought they were talking about rabbi tights because if you grew up in elizabeth the rav was rabbi tights not rabbi salaveczyk he was the rov and everybody eats bananas as karpas and everybody does this and everybody does whatever the minha gay elizabeth are that's the world and so yeah he was able to engender not just a community or a city that deferred or bowed to him but that took pride themselves and all that they accomplished as a group and the products of elizabeth out of yomas until this very day are so proud to come from elizabeth and so proud to talk about the rov or their memories of the rover their connection to the rav and so and i just walked a young woman out of shiva this morning before we began who's whose mother was an elizabeth taught in the jc and her reflections and memories about about rabbit she's walking out of shiva is you know wanted to make sure before we did this program that she'd be able to share and and on our podcast a few months ago we had mark wilfon who was sharing his memories growing up in elizabeth you know today an owner of an nfl team and and a son of one of the builders but his the impact that rabbi tait's had on on his life and his vision and his jewish criminal work and i'll ask you this in an apolitical way because this isn't a political conversation but would your grandfather ever have believed that one of the builders his good friend's grandson would be in the white house advising shaping middie's policy and bringing peace between israel and its neighbors um would he ever believe that one of the builders with whom he built elizabeth would have such not only access would be essentially a resident of of that of that uh place and have that and have that power and i'll ask you this if rabbi tights were alive over the last four years what would he have been whispering into jared kushner's ear would be the most important things for him to be working for and fighting for on behalf of the jewish people because there's no doubt that he would not have been looking for an invitation to the hanukkah party that would not have interested him he'd be looking for how can that unusual place of of power be used to advance the needs of the jewish people what would he be telling him so that's a question a good hypothetical question that no one can give the right answer to because my grandfather would have seen the needs of the present the needs of the future and he would have tried to find a way to do both and he was you mentioned to be political he really was always concerned what was best for the jewish people for amnesty wherever they were and i remember the time when he hosted jimmy carter all those years back and he really and his and the great and the admiration the various governors both republicans and democrat governors had for my grandfather who had total admiration for him and he had their ear because they knew he had that distinct voice and that integrity and that confidence and the real concern for amie's show so hey thank you i don't think he would have been so surprised i think he would have been proud but i think more deeply than that i think he would have used looked at what are the issues that we have to deal with today and try to look 20 years ahead be planning always for the future that really was part of his greatness that was part of his uniqueness reverend we're almost at an hour so i'd like to give you a chance to have any of your last thoughts and then i'll wrap up as well i'll take the privilege the little privilege as being the grandson and having the last word if you don't mind from your last thoughts and again i thank you for this opportunity to our continuing friendship and are continuing both standing on my grandfather's shoulders from your last words and then i'll conclude well thank you and and thank rabbi shapiro and thank you to the jec for this um it really is a privilege of of all the things i think i've sent to my parents because i wanted to give them nachas when i forwarded them this flyer and i said look i'm speaking for elizabeth what would my bubby and zeta say what would it what would they have to say with such memories of sitting in the pews and in the jec and listening to your grandfather and and feeling by extension a sense of pride in elizabeth and as i alluded to earlier whenever i meet anybody connected to elizabeth being able to ask them you know did my grandmother teach them so i share in that pride um you know so look again i was very young and my memories of rabbi tights are really of of of watching him from afar and of course of the relationship that he shared with the family and it's only when i matured and i become a rabbi myself do i study his legacy to draw from it and it's not a platitude because i was invited to this program that i'm saying this it's emma's it's 100 true that whether implicitly or explicitly so much of what he did in elizabeth is what we're trying to emulate today here in boca and and all of those notions of reaching people where they are and uh extending beyond their comfort zone and engaging in the the innovative opportunities of the present to be able to have the impact go as far as they can and as you so importantly just recent just raised the notion of the we not the i that the brand is more important than the person that the community you're trying to create is more important than any individual any individual in it so i continue to be inspired by his legacy as do as do so many other people and you know there's some comments that have been coming in as where as we're teaching in and and one person you know i know from growing up iron fishman writes i remember of tights being very approachable even to a younger kid who may have a shyla that even as great as he was and all that he accomplished he wasn't distant he wasn't apart but younger kids also could approach him and can relate to him and connect him and he dedicated himself to being there so he really is he set the bar very very hard high for us to try to combine all of those skill sets and to try to achieve all those accomplishments and to try to be available to all of those demographics and to reach people in all of those in all those different ways and i can only hope and pray that the people who grow up and graduate our communities will feel that same sense of pride that same sense of mission that same set of values having very have growing with clarity of who we are what we stand for that they will be proud to have been a part of it and that his legacy on this 25th year site will continue to inspire us today and for many many years to come reverend that's such a beautiful way to close and i'm not sure if i have more to add but perhaps on a personal note really just want to end i think claustro misses his voice i think he had opportunity he would speak up at so many times in a way that some sometimes we're not always comfortable doing i think the community misses his leadership and i have to say in a personal note i miss his love he was soaked we were very very close i was very very fortunate to be with him so often i'd love to every time i come home from yeshiva he would always ask how i was doing and he wanted to know if i was growing he always wanted to see me a spot he wanted me to aspire to the same level of greatness i think all of us all of us uh have learned so much for him we're his legacy and he's incredu may his memory be a blessing and he continued to inspire all of us for many many years to come i thank you all for this pleasure the opportunity to share this memories and pay tribute to my late grandfather and i look forward to doing wonderful things together again in the future all right before you before you close i just don't want to be remiss so i'm going to ask you to say one sentence because this is so important especially in our time to acknowledge as we're reflecting on his year at site can you spend one moment in closing again by reflecting on your grandmother his rebison and her role as a partner with him in doing and doing everything that we've been talking about for the last hour so that's really wonderful from thank you it's a beautiful thing to do they were partners we talked about all the partnerships that he had had we talked about the partnerships with other abundant and we talked about the partnerships with the builders with the community with the we but the strongest we in my grandfather's life was my grandmother the two of them were a regal couple they really were they stood with dignity they were partners in everything they did you mentioned the fact that she helped him with his speeches but he was helpful in everything and they were both two wonderful powerful personalities both of them with tremendous dedication to their roots to their own misora and even so i remember as a child we would sing miros we'd sing the same zimmer half like my grandfather's negan half like my bubbies negan because both of them were fiercely loyal and and her loyalty to elizabeth was perhaps even greater than his because after all this was her father's and her mother's place and they were partners everything my grandfather did he was around saving the world changing the world well you can do that if you don't have a partner rooting you and my grandmother rooted my grandfather and while he was doing everything else particularly when it came to elizabeth she made sure that as much as he saved the world and went to russia which he she went with him all those times she went with him on those trips as much as she supported every one of his endeavors she was his partner in everything and at the last degree of course in that same vein she she kept him focused on elizabeth which was so dear to her hearts and i think that too i think of effort maybe that's the most appropriate note to end on the partnership that my grandparents had together it's my grandfather's yard site but they together did everything and both of us are privileged as well to have partners to have evidence to have wives who are our partners and all that we do because we can't accomplish anything without those partnerships and i think that is the most appropriate way to end in a beautiful tribute to both my grandparents thank you for that note that's all