Seidemann: Sitting in the front row

From the other side of the bench

by David Seidemann

Issue of August 28, 2010/ 18 Elul, 5770

We laid Aunt Judy to rest this past Sunday. Next to her are my mother and my late uncle. I could fill many newspapers with my aunt's accomplishments, but I will reserve those stories for personal reflection. Suffice to say she was loving and caring to all of her family and friends and we all felt her love in the deepest recesses of our hearts.

My aunt's mission in life was to educate the uneducated. From her early years until her dying days, she sought out the uneducated and taught them how to read Hebrew. It was her personal ambition to ensure that every Jew would be able to connect with the language of their people.

She sought out “problem boys” – troubled kids whom no one else had the patience to teach. She prepared them for their bar mitzvahs. Reform, Conservative, and even Orthodox, she taught them how to read the portion of the Torah for their bar mitzvah Shabbos. Men who would never have seen the inside of a shul celebrated their bar mitzvah thanks to the efforts of the lady from Washington Heights with the tall blonde sheitel, as she was affectionately known.

As I sat in the pew waiting for the funeral service to begin, I happened to sit next to one of the leading pulpit rabbis of our generation. He knew my aunt and we began to chat about her passion to teach. The rabbi mentioned how little respect Hebrew teachers receive, especially female teachers. I commented that the only people who receive less recognition for all they do are pulpit rabbis. That remark prompted the rabbi to tell me the following story.

Years ago, the son of one of his congregants was expelled from yeshiva high school. This rabbi called the principal and explained that if the yeshiva did not reverse its decision, the boy would wind up in public school and possibly be lost forever. The yeshiva administration relented and the boy was readmitted. Today, that boy is a rosh yeshiva in Israel.

Years before he became a rosh yeshiva, the boy married. The boy's father wanted that pulpit rabbi to perform the ceremony in New York but the boy wanted his rosh yeshiva, Rav Shneur Kotler zt”l, to officiate. The father insisted, reminding his son that without the pulpit rabbi's efforts years ago, the son would never have found his way back to yeshiva and perhaps would have married out of the faith. The son was just as adamant, insisting that Rav Kotler perform the ceremony.

The day of the wedding arrived and the pulpit rabbi and Rav Kotler met. Rabbi Kotler knew what the pulpit rabbi had done years earlier and, at the wedding, he insisted that the pulpit rabbi officiate.

"My opportunity to teach him arose only because of what you did years earlier, saving him from almost certain spiritual destruction,” Rav Kotler told the pulpit rabbi.

“But you made him into what he is today,” the pulpit rabbi replied, “You should perform the ceremony.”

And so the argument went back and forth until the pulpit rabbi’s stubbornness prevailed. Rav Kotler served as the mesader kiddushin. Only the boy and his parents knew that without either rabbi, the circumstances might have been a lot different.

When the rabbi finished telling me the story, I asked him why he deferred to Rav Kotler. No one would have faulted him for accepting the honor that the boy's father wanted to bestow upon him. Rav Kotler, himself, felt it would be appropriate. The rabbi‘s answer amazed me.

“If I were to officiate, this young man's mind might drift back to an uncomfortable time in his life when he was struggling for his identity,” he told me. “It would be better that on his wedding day, he focus on who he became and not on who he was.”

That boy who became a rosh yeshiva has many people to thank for bringing him to where he is now. Surely in the front row of those people sits this pulpit rabbi; the same rabbi who sat next to me in the front row at the funeral of my aunt, a special woman who brought so many others to the front row of their lives.