San Diego — Last month, my son, Yaakov Shlomo Lederman, boarded a plane to Milwaukee so that he can learn in the Wisconsin Institute for Torah Study’s Mesivta Ateres Tzvi High School.
This is a very emotional time for me for many reasons on many levels.
I was a student of WITS Beis Midrash (post high school program) back in 1980, the first year of the yeshiva’s existence. I have the honor of being the very first student to attend the yeshiva — the first one there on the first day — and the first WITS alumnus to have a son graduate WITS high school.
I am also the second WITS alumnus to have a son in WITS Beis Midrash.
As I sent Yaakov to Milwaukee, I was flooded with memories of my own wonderful experiences there. I vividly remember stepping off the plane 26 years ago and having a young Shmuel Rennert picking me up from the airport. Everything was so fresh and new and exciting.
I mostly remember the way the rabbis and rebbetzins opened their hearts and homes to us, and the incredible camaraderie WITS engendered amongst the talmidim. And of course, the learning there was amazing.
Rabbi Eliezer Bromberg summed up what many WITS alumni feel, when he said, “The best learning of my life was at WITS.” WITS has a way of bringing out the best in you.
Indeed, WITS is celebrating a lot of firsts. For example, this year Peter Runge and Rabbi Simcha Guttman (now of Milwaukee) are sending their sons to WITS high school, making them the first WITS high school students who are sons of WITS high school graduates.
We hope this trend continues and grows, as WITS alumni send their sons. But the truth is, it is not just a quirk or ironic twist of fate — it is very understandable.
WITS offered us a sense of community, a sense of family. We always knew that we belonged to something special; so of course we alumni want to send our sons. It is logical.
Why wouldn’t we want our children to experience something that was so positive for us? We want our children to find that same loving warmth that we found there. We want our children to be part of the broader family that we all have there in the yeshiva.
The Rosh Yeshiva, Rabbi Henoch Leibowitz, shlit”a, told us in the name of the Zohar that ahava (love) is part of the fabric of the Torah. Consequently Torah can only be transmitted me’ahava (with love).
When I was in WITS Beis Midrash, we used to help the high schoolers with their learning. The rabbis asked us to do this, but they didn’t have to cajole or twist our arms to do so.
We truly cared about the high schoolers and took a great interest in working with them. We became like big brothers watching them grow and develop.
When my son Dovid became a WITS high schooler some 20 years later, I discovered that nothing had changed. That same wonderful bond between the high school and Beis Midrash still exists to this day.
Dovid had become very attached to a few Beis Midrash students, who eventually graduated WITS and continued their studies in the main branch of Chofetz Chaim in New York. They had become mentors to Dovid; and when they left (leaving him “de-mented”), he was in tears.
Now, Dovid is in the Beis Midrash himself, and is “re-mented” to new high school kids. The tradition continues from generation to generation.
We also had a strong feeling that we wanted to help the yeshiva be successful. Before WITS began, I was a student in the Chofetz Chaim main branch in New York. I was recruited to go to WITS.
When I was considering whether to leave for the “wilderness” of the Midwest, my rebbi, Rabbi Chaim Shmuel Niman, told me that someone who is involved in starting a yeshiva gets a portion of the merit of every student who learns in that yeshiva from now until the coming of the Messiah.
It was with that attitude that I went to Milwaukee. But there was a problem; the high school was very small.
It’s understandable; people don’t want to come until a school has established a reputation, but you can’t establish a reputation until you have a functioning school.
Luckily we had a secret weapon — Shmuel Kay. Shmuel had the determination and charisma to recruit a whole class of high school students for the first year of operation. To this day, I’ll never understand how he did it; but he did it.
All of us helped in recruiting new kids for the second year of the high school. Some of the young lads we “snagged” went on to become prominent rabbis. How did I know that I would be able to accomplish all this? I didn’t, but as I said before, WITS brings out the best in you.
The yeshiva has grown tremendously since those days. There are many more rabbis and students.
But some things haven’t changed. The learning is still top quality and the warmth throughout the yeshiva is still remarkable.
So where does all this leave me? It leaves me standing at an airport with my wife, putting our precious little baby on an airplane to fly thousands of miles. It leaves us with aching hearts.
It is very difficult to send a child away from home; yet at the same time, I feel like I am sending him back home.
Rabbi Baruch Lederman is the rabbi of Congregation Kehillas Torah in San Diego.
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