Brooklyn, NY – This Week Mishpacha: Bais Yaakov Elementary School Borough Park’s Man Of Principal

Brooklyn, NY – Generations come and go in New York’s Bais Yaakov of Boro Park, but one thing has remained the same: the principal. Assuming the position was a difficult decision for Rabbi Osher Lemel (Oscar) Ehrenreich, who wanted to serve as a maggid shiur teaching Torah. He took it anyway, if only as a stopgap measure. More than five decades later, he’s still at the helm of the largest Bais Yaakov elementary in North America, continuing to guide with unique wisdom and humility.

This week Mishpacha Magazine profiles Rabbi Ehrenreich. Article by Yisroel Besser. Read below

Imagine, if you will, an emerging Jewish community, so small that it doesn’t even have a girls’ school of its own. It’s in a neighborhood that seeks an identity, with first- and second-generation Irishmen and Italians slowly resigning themselves to the fact that the Jews, steadily flowing in, hold the brushes in their hands — that they will decide the color of the canvas.

So the numbers climb, and the community gets a girls’ school. The students come, slowly but surely, and the school grows. A young, idealistic man with an air of authority about him leads the blossoming institution, steward not just to a school, but to a concept: Bais Yaakov.

There is a cloud hovering over the school: he has to educate young, sincere girls and fill their hearts with pure, undiluted emunah against the backdrop of some of the most horrific events in our history. He has to teach them to believe even as many of their parents carry the scars and wounds, teach them to sing even as the sounds of muffled sobs fill their long nights.

So he taught them, and they believed. They grew older, moved on, had daughters of their own. And he taught the daughters too.

He had a “shprach” for the new generation, just as he’d had for the first one. The little school flowered, becoming a big school, meeting the demands of the community, which had not just grown, but exploded all around it.

And then a third generation came in, the children of the rebirth, children who’d never known — and couldn’t even conceive of — the suffering of their grandparents. The children of today, to whom the term survivor means something so different from what it once did.
Imagine that the same principal still leads. And imagine that the community is Boro Park.

Bais Yaakov of Boro Park is the largest Bais Yaakov elementary school in North America, with approximately 2,000 students, 350 staff members, and 75 classrooms, and it serves some 1,200 families.

There are between six and eight parallel classes for each grade. The school spreads over three interconnected buildings, stretching from the corner of Forty-Sixth Street and Fourteenth Avenue into the middle of Forty-Sixth Street. The latest addition, which houses the preschoolers and the seventh and eighth grades, is connected to the other buildings via a breathtaking glass bridge. The floors are color-coded — blue, green, red, orange, etc. — and the walls are adorned with murals painted by professional artists.

All three buildings live up to an alumna’s description: they are “welcoming and warm.”

I get my very first chinuch insight just moments after meeting Rabbi Osher Lemel (Oscar) Ehrenreich. I enter his office just as he is being served lunch (school issue: two pieces of toast with a scoop of eggs and some vegetables). He begins to eat, and excuses himself. “I would prefer to speak with you and think about you, than to speak with you and think about lunch.”

So we speak, and indeed, there is the sense that he is completely, totally focused on our conversation, as promised.

Osher Lemel Ehrenreich was born in 1928 in the Slovakian town of Brezna. By 1934, the family had immigrated to America, and he enrolled in Yeshiva Torah Vodaath.

“The lineup of rebbeim and educators there was something unique, accomplished talmidei chachamim and the most insightful, compassionate people. I learned by great men.”

Great men, it seems, form somewhat of a theme, a backdrop to the message that Rabbi Ehrenreich transmits. His office walls are adorned with pictures of Torah leaders, from the rebbes of Satmar and Lubavitch to the Chazon Ish and Rav Shach. I comment on the shalom he’s managed to attain — albeit only in pictures — and his reply is matter-of-fact. “In this school, we revere every gadol. Reb Yossie Goldstein — a Chabad chassid — was a key part of the administration here for decades. Rav Aron Kotler sent his granddaughters here. The Bobover Rebbe sent us his daughters. The Debreziner Rav sent us his daughters. It’s a charge we take seriously, to make the school a place that they would all have been comfortable with.”

He shares a story.
“Last year, a distinguished-looking rebbetzin from Eretz Yisrael came to visit my office. She introduced herself as a granddaughter of the Ponevezher Rav. It turns out that she had been a student here when her father, the Rav’s son, had lived in America, and she had fond memories of the school. She was telling me how grateful she was for the chinuch she received, so I said, ‘You know what? You can send me a picture of your grandfather. I would love to have it here.’”

He indicates a magnificent portrait on the wall. “She sent this to me.”

Like so many of the great lights of the American chinuch world of the last century, Rabbi Ehrenreich was touched by the spirit of Rav Shraga Feivel Mendlowitz.

“We weren’t particularly close, but we had a bond. We were both Hungarians — a chiddush back in the early 1930s — and he would often mention that.”
In pedagogy, Rabbi Ehrenreich was profoundly influenced by his rosh yeshivah, Rav Reuven Grozovsky, one of the first mechanchim in America to guide his talmidim in the reality of daas Torah, showing them how the timeless wisdom of Torah addresses contemporary issues.

“In 1948, when each day’s headlines brought a fresh round of questions, the rosh yeshivah would sit with a group of talmidim and explain the significance of each development, each historic breakthrough. He would ask a bochur to read for him, since he didn’t want to read from a newspaper, but he would comment on everything. It was a marvel to observe his acuity, his perception in ‘mili d’alma.’ That’s chinuch!”

After learning in Beis Medrash Elyon (an offshoot of Torah Vodaath in Monsey, New York), Rabbi Ehrenreich — committed to a career in chinuch — accepted his first administrative position as assistant principal of Yeshiva and Mesivta of Brighton. “Rabbi Issac Handler, a wonderful man, led the mossad, and he hired me.”

But after just one year, a call came from a former teacher.

“Rabbi Moshe Sherer had taught me homiletics at Torah Vodaath, and he suggested that I assume the vacant position of principal at Bais Yaakov of Boro Park. It was a small, relatively new school with about one hundred students, and he felt that I could make a difference here.

“I wasn’t thrilled, because as a Beis Medrash Elyon graduate, I was hoping for a career in boys’ chinuch so I could teach Torah. I didn’t want to teach girls, so I viewed it as a stopgap measure, a temporary job until I could go back to teaching Torah.”

“Are you still planning that?” I ask.

He peers at me over the top of his glasses. “No,” he responds finally, “I’m not.”

In June 1955, Rabbi Ehrenreich got married, presiding over his first graduation during his sheva brachos, with his young wife on hand to watch him.
And that’s where the story of Bais Yaakov of Boro Park and the man who would stand at its helm for more than a half century, bli ayin hara, begins.

On the Heels of Sarah Schenirer

“I was succeeding a remarkable man, Dr. Munk zichrono livrachah. His secret to running a successful school included taking care of both the big picture and all of the details, and I tried to follow his example. The lay leaders of the school were also very dedicated people. It was established by refugees from Vienna who arrived here in America and wanted an authentic Bais Yaakov education, similar to the one introduced by Sarah Schenirer a”h not long before. The founder was Julius Goldberger, along with Morris Rakovsky. When I came in, the president was a prominent Agudah activist, David Turkel.”

Rabbi Ehrenreich was all of twenty-eight years old, and he was the one they charged with realizing their vision: a school that would grow along with the community, that would have the resources, breadth, and philosophy that would make the steady stream of Yidden arriving from all over feel welcome.

“They believed, those balabatim, they really did. It was thrilling to work for people who had that sort of foresight, who were so certain about what they were doing. Yisroel Feigenbaum, who succeeded David Turkel as president, was probably the first to construct an institutional building in Boro Park — something that was completely unheard of at the time. His efforts and energy were instrumental in making us the girls’ school. In time, we had three buildings and we were ready to welcome as many students as necessary.”

What was the mandate in the early days, when chinuch habanos was a relatively unknown art?

“Interestingly,” says Rabbi Ehrenreich, “just today, our new s’gan menahel, Rabbi Menachem Frank, showed me a letter in which Sarah Schenirer delineates her vision for bnos Yisrael. She says that she’s going to teach them ‘ahavas haTorah and ahavas hamitzvos.’ She doesn’t say anything about learning, just about creating a strong emotional connection with Torah and mitzvos. That is the idea in the Divine instruction to speak to women belashon ‘rakah,’ a softer tone. There is a unique sense of emotion that women have, and Torah and mitzvos should be channeled through that. Sarah Schenirer made it clear that the goal isn’t learning Torah, but rather, using Torah as a tool to develop the emotional connection.

“Certainly,” he adds, “if a girl’s head is filled with stimulating secular knowledge, we need to counter that. Some girls are very sophisticated, and we need to be able to give each individual girl the knowledge that she needs in order to grow, but the rule is that Torah is a tool for them.”

Prior to meeting Rabbi Ehrenreich, I heard that he had a unique voice for that first generation, the children of survivors, stepping in with a message their own parents weren’t always equipped to deliver. I ask about it.

“Listen, they say that history is written by the last man standing. Everyone tells stories according to their viewpoint, so I can only tell you what I recall. There was a conspiracy of silence amongst that first generation, this unspoken agreement that they would shield their children from the reality of what they had endured.

“In all too many cases, the parents were emotionally stifled, unable to give their children the warmth and simchas hachayim that is so necessary. So we, at the school, tried to supplement that.

“You have to realize that we couldn’t deal with the hashkafah of it. We are dealing with elementary school children here, who see the world in very limited terms. Everything is black and white. We introduced a Holocaust studies class for our eighth graders, because they were old enough to deal with it, and I taught the class.

“The one question that seemed to consume them was, ‘Why didn’t they resist?’ That was an unexpressed confusion that they all had.”
And the young principal, ever-attuned, dealt with it.

One day, he entered the classroom and picked out ten girls at random, instructing them to stand up with their backs to the wall and remain there. Then he started to teach, leaving the girls standing miserably as he spoke to the rest of the students.

After a significant amount of time passed, he turned to the girls standing at the back of the room. “What are you doing there?” he asked.
“You told us to stand here,” they replied in confusion.

“Why did I say that?” he asked sternly.

“We don’t really know,” one of them stammered.

“So why did you listen?”

“Because we’re afraid of you.”

Then he turned back to his class, addressing all the girls at once, and thundered, “But why didn’t you resist?”

And at once, they understood how fear and respect for authority can render someone helpless, literally unable to speak up in his own defense.
And with the self-assurance that comes from many years in the business, Rabbi Ehrenreich shrugs, an elegant expression of gentle mockery.

“Today, chinuch is an industry, with ideas and books and seminars. We didn’t work that way. We taught real people. It wasn’t about concepts, it was about connecting with the people sitting across the desk and speaking straight. We spoke straight, so they understood.”

A Uniform Decision

The next generation brought with it its own nisyonos: the Jews were getting comfortable in America. The school was bursting at the seams, with a diverse student body. No one would have imagined that the school would grow to the point that recess, lunch, and dismissal would have to be done in three separate shifts, with a staff member designated to oversee dismissal each day, ensuring that the hundreds of students board the correct bus (there are twenty!) to be transported home. But grow it did. How did the principal cope with the “years of plenty” ?

“The basic hashkafah of our parent body was the same. We didn’t have many girls with televisions here, even then. The fact that the great roshei yeshivah and rebbes sent their children here gave us an identity, and the truth is, I never had to make hashkafah decisions. The school’s charter, which hangs on a wall at the entrance, states clearly that any policy questions are decided by the Moetzes Gedolei HaTorah.

“I remember,” he smiles, “that at my initial interview, I was asked by a board member what I would discuss with the girls on Yom HaAtzmaut. I replied that when the question would arise, I would ask Reb Moshe Feinstein how to proceed. That seemed to satisfy him.

“Today, we are privileged to have a unique rabbinic board, comprised of Boro Park’s most illustrious leaders: the Novominsker Rebbe; Rav Yaakov Horowitz, rosh yeshivah of Yeshivas Beis Meir and rav of the Telshe Minyan; and Rav Binyomin Eisenberger, rav of K’hal Heichal HaTefillah. They direct us in all policy decisions.”

As the financial situation of the parent body improved, competition among the girls became a factor. “In a girls’ school, where fashion is paramount, there was this inevitable competition in regard to clothing.”

With no small degree of satisfaction, the rabbi discusses one of his most important accomplishments, an innovation that he, in a sense, pioneered: uniforms for Bais Yaakov girls.

“It was a controversial decision. People felt it undermined the creativity of the girls, that they would never learn the rules of proper dress this way. Others thought that it was too reminiscent of the Catholic schools, who were the only ones with uniforms. I knew that it wasn’t a problem of being ‘goyish,’ because I had seen that the schools in Eretz Yisrael had uniforms. One of our board members, Jacob Braun, believed in the idea, and he helped me push it through.
“Today” he laughs, “there are so many girls’ schools, bli ayin hara, that the uniforms are the only way to identify which school the students are from!”

One Needs Seichel
Conversation turns to yet another Bais Yaakov innovation: as a rule, the school hires frum teachers, even for secular studies.

What precipitated the decision to hire only frum people?

“In the 1960s,” Rabbi Ehrenreich begins, “as the middle-class values of New Yorkers disappeared, it seemed like everyone had lost their boundaries. No longer could we hire a polite, respectful science teacher and expect her to be sensitive to our very particular value system. It was a problem for us, since we suddenly felt that we couldn’t trust just anyone. Today, there is no shortage of qualified general-studies’ teachers from our communities, but back then it was a challenge, and we had to make a decision to forgo academic credentials in favor of maintaining the ruach of Bais Yaakov.”

How are the girls of 2011 different from the girls of 1961? What’s changed in fifty years?

“The girls of today have maalos, there’s no question,” the principal assures me. “They have a certain sense of themselves, a self-awareness. But they are much less equipped to carry responsibility. They don’t respond as well to pressure as the girls did back then.

“Another significant change is the way today’s children relate to adults; there’s this informality, a comfort they have with their parents and even some teachers.

“Look, it’s not a good thing or a bad thing. It just changes the mandate of the mechanech.”

Do you have any regrets, anything you wish you would have done differently?

“The greatest mistake that I made, and that any mechanech can make, is to be judgmental; to lack the empathy to really understand where the other person is coming from. The most fundamental quality a mechanech needs to have is the ability to show a parent that they are being understood.”

Many former talmidos and staff I spoke with describe you as a diplomat.

“One doesn’t need diplomatic skills: one needs seichel.” Rabbi Ehrenreich declares. “If there’s a talent, it’s to be silent when speech is unnecessary. Control your emotions and don’t act impulsively. You always have to address the specific person before you. Speak in a way that’s geared to them. I still have a hard time discussing important things on the telephone. I need to size up the person I’m talking to, to see their eyes and expression and body language. The telephone makes that impossible.”

After decades of hiring, what do you consider the secret to picking “winner” teachers?

“You can watch a model lesson and see that someone is not a good teacher,” says the man who has probably attended several hundred such lessons, “but you can’t always see who is a good teacher. You have to see past the scholastic credentials and look for a person who exudes sympathy and understanding, who has the ability to enter the child’s world. And joie de vivre, simchas hachayim, is crucial.

A Community School

What are the challenges facing the school today, in an era and environment so different from the one you entered so long ago?
“The neighborhood has changed,” Rabbi Ehrenreich asserts, “and we are making adjustments to deal with those changing realities. We understand the fear that many parents have of their child being overexposed. The dangers of technology and culture today are such that a child from the most sheltered home can be profoundly impacted, in a negative way, from one encounter with the wrong friend. Classes are being arranged with a sensitivity that deals with these issues.

“Our new s’gan menahel, new rabbinic leadership, and new board are all committed to this.”

Rabbi Ehrenreich is enthusiastic about his new s’gan menahel.

“Rabbi Menachem Frank was previously the rosh kollel in Minneapolis, so he has the wisdom of a talmid chacham, and he was a member of the Vaad Hachinuch in the local mosdos there. He is a heimeshe yungerman and a Boro Parker, and a product of the yeshivah world, so he is sensitive to the particular values of each group. He brings the energy of youth, the drive, and ambition to take the school to the next level.”

Has there been a major change in the parent body?

“As housing in Boro Park has become increasingly unaffordable, the parent body has changed,” he concedes. “There was a time when Boro Park benefited from an influx of new residents, back when people flocked out of Crown Heights and Williamsburg as those neighborhoods changed, but now we are the neighborhood in transition.”

As more chassidic courts became headquartered in Boro Park, chassidim, committed to living near their rebbes and mosdos, have become the clear majority here. Does the school reflect that reality?

“We plan to start an all-Yiddish track, with a curriculum geared specifically to the chassidishe community,” Rabbi Ehrenreich reveals. “We understand the wariness of that demographic as to whom their children associate with in school. Under the guidance of our rabbanim and supervision of our new s’gan menahel, our school is being set up so that every single ehrliche Yid can feel comfortable here. We have representatives of almost all the chassidic groups, and also students from Bensonhurst and Kensington, which are yeshivah communities, and many of the students are right in between.”

Moments
The conversation veers in a more personal direction. In a career that has spanned so many years, there have surely been high moments, emotional highlights. What images does Rabbi Ehrenreich hold dear?

“I will tell you something that always amazes me: the struggle of the less-capable girls, those not as intellectually gifted as their peers. They are my inspiration.

“There was one student here who was completely blind lo aleinu, but with hard work and the caring and concern of the girls around her, she persevered. When I stood at her graduation and handed her a diploma, I broke down and cried. My tears were a mixture of pain at the tragedy of her situation, but also of awe at her heroism. Everyone has their nisayon in life, and she had overcome hers, going through a regular school system. She eventually taught in this school, so the memory of her graduation is particularly precious to me.

“Altogether, it’s a joy to see students return and I can see how they’ve grown, the successful adults they’ve turned into. I love it when problematic students, those who’ve defied the odds, come back as success stories — that’s especially humbling.”

Another memory he treasures goes back fifty years.

“It was an intensely private moment, but it underscores the tremendous personal warmth I was shown by my board of directors — a most important component in the development of the school. At the time, I had a tumor, and I needed to have it surgically removed. I informed the board that I needed to take a leave of absence for six weeks and I scheduled the operation. As they wheeled me towards the operating theater, I saw our president, Mr. Feigenbaum, standing alongside the stretcher, being mechazek me. It was a moment that I will never forget.”

His eyes rest on a picture that hangs just above me, two men sitting together at some sort of celebration. His features soften.

“That’s me with a dear friend of mine, the bus driver here at the school. We’d been classmates in cheder, and I remembered that our birthdays are the same week, so I suggested that the girls make him a surprise birthday party. They did make a surprise — for me as well, making us a joint birthday party. It was a nice moment, I landed up in this job, he in that one, and we were both doing our part. We celebrated that, the opportunity we had.”

There is something so unpretentious in the way Rabbi Ehrenreich relates the story. The way he says “I landed in this job and he landed in that job” makes it clear that he truly feels that there is no difference between the two jobs, that he doesn’t consider his role more prestigious than the other: different roles, one goal.

“This wasn’t the direction I was looking to go in back when I started,” Rabbi Ehrenreich muses, “but today, I am filled with gratitude to the Ribono shel Olam. I regret that I didn’t get to learn more [although the seforim that line the shelves all around us — a collection that seems more suited to a maggid shiur than a principal — attest that he never stopped trying], but I feel privileged at having been able to serve as a father figure to these young girls.
“Or” — again the soft laugh — “I guess more accurately, nowadays, a grandfather figure.”