BROOKLYN (VINnews/SandyEller) – Two weeks after his passing at 78 years of age, Rav Shmiel Shmelka Leifer, the Chuster Rebbe, is being remembered as a devoted rov and a visionary rosh yeshiva who dedicated himself to enriching the lives of others in every possible way.
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Known to his followers as Rav Shmelke, Rabbi Leifer was working in the diamond business when Rav Shlomo Halberstam, the third Bobover rebbe, suggested a career change, advising him to go into chinuch.
After working briefly as an eighth grade rebbe at yeshiva Yagdil torah, Rav Shmelke worked briefly as an eighth grade rebbe at Yeshiva Yagdil Torah, the Bobover Rebbe urged him to go out on his own, and he opened up Yeshiva Toras Chesed in Borough Park where he devoted himself to maximizing each student’s potential.
“It was a Chasidishe cheder and people had the mistaken perception that it was for weaker students, a reputation that bothered the Rosh Yeshiva very much,” alumnus Gershy Moskowitz, a music and event producer, told VIN News. “The yeshiva produced the best of the best and I don’t think that outcome would have been possible if it were a yeshiva for shvache bochurim.”
Rav Shmelke’s care and dedication were the lifeblood of Yeshiva Tors Chesed. He would routinely check up on students, inquiring whether they had done their homework, or had eaten breakfast and lunch. Although not a man of means, Rav Shmelke would open up his own wallet for a boy who came from a home where money was tight so that he, like his friends, could buy something to eat at nearby Solomon’s grocery.
Similarly, when a boy who had little in the way of financial support would be penalized with a five dollar fine, Rav Shmelke would reach into his own pocket to pay the penalty for mischievous behavior. Students who came into school looking sad would be buzzed into the office to have a heart to heart with Rav Shmelke, who was known to lovingly place his hands on talmidims’ shoulders as he learned next to them in the beis medrash, making sure that all was well in their lives.
“There is no rosh yeshiva like Rav Shmelke,” said Moskowitz. “He was a father figure for every single talmid and if a father wasn’t feeling well, or things were tough in the house financially, he would call the administrator and tell him to just forget about the tuition.”
Rav Shmelke’s legendary warmth carried over to the admissions process as well. Nervous students coming in for a farher would have to answer just one question – “Are you a yarei shomayim?” – before being welcomed wholeheartedly into the Yeshiva Toras Chaim family.
“Rav Shemelke brought kids in with love, never throwing anyone out,” said Moskowitz. “Everything was love, love, love, love – that was his recipe. He started out polishing diamonds, but as a rosh yeshiva, he polished human diamonds, and his students still shine today.”
Yeshiva Toras Chesed had a summer camp located on Woodbourne’s Budd Road, where Rav Shmelke was personally involved in every detail of the summer experience, assigning campers their beds and making it a point to dance with each one every Motzei Shabbos.
When it was time for the boys to head to the baseball field for a sports activity, Rav Shmelke came along as well, sitting in the bleachers to watch his campers play.
“He would take off his hat and have someone explain what was going on on the field,” said Moskowitz. “What more does a bochur need than having his rosh yeshiva smiling and cheering him on?”
Moskowitz still has a $100 check he received from Rav Shmelke, an incentive given to students who learned for 10 hours straight.
“I told Rav Shmelke that I didn’t want a check – I wanted a segula to become a rich man,” said Moskowitz. “He wrote on the check that it was ‘a segula for ashirus’ and I still have it in my wallet.”
As his talmidim got older, Rav Shmelke attended their simchos, coming to each one dressed like a member of the family in his shtreimel, bekeshe and white socks, staying from the very beginning and not leaving until after the first mitzvah tantz. His smile was ever-present, particularly when his students would visit him with their own children, who he lovingly referred to as his “einiklach.”
Even after Yeshiva Toras Chesed closed its doors, Rav Shmelke still felt the imprint that a quality education had on a child deep in his bones.
Daughter Yocheved Youngworth recalled how her father would take a car service to her home each year on the first day of school and would wait, sometimes for hours, with his grandchildren for the school bus, lovingly stroking their cheeks, wishing them a good year in school and telling them that they should have good friends.
“In his later years, he lived down the block from the Bobover yeshiva and he would have tears running down his face as he watched the children going to school, appreciating what a zechus it is to see yiddishe children learning Torah,” noted Mrs. Youngworth.
A noted orator who was flown around the world to speak about chinuch, Rav Shmelke believed strongly in providing children with a high-quality education, and he led the way in implementing Regents examinations in Chasidic schools.
His heart overflowed with love for both children and adults, and after yeshiva ended for the day, he would spend his evenings speaking to couples who were experiencing marital difficulties, offering help in his inimitable way.
“He would tell me that most people don’t want to hear criticism, so he would listen to them and cry with them, but he would never take money,” observed Mrs. Youngworth. “He would say he couldn’t earn money from yiddishe tzaros and if the husband insisted on giving him something, he would tell him to buy his wife something nice instead.”
Rav Shmelke was also well known for his brachos that brought yeshuos. Mrs. Youngworth remembered how, two years ago, a father came to Rav Shmelke’s shul, Ohr Yisroel Yaakov Chust, located on 16th Avenue at 55th Street, to ask for a bracha. Rav Shmelke was already deteriorating physically but he sat up and his chair and told the man “tzis nisht eis – it’s not this.”
Confused by the response to a situation that he hadn’t even explained, the man asked someone to show him where the rebbetzin lived, telling her how he had just gotten off a train after getting confirmation from a doctor that his wife had a serious medical issue.
“He was so lost and didn’t want to go home, so he came to the shul for Maariv and didn’t know who my father was, and didn’t understand what my father was telling him,” said Mrs. Youngworth. “My mother told him that if this was what my father was saying, then he shouldn’t scare his wife – instead he should ask the doctor to go back and re-test. Baruch Hashem, the tests came back negative and everything was okay.”
Knowing how much children need love and warmth to thrive, Rav Shmelke would beg parents to open their hearts to their kids and to stay focused and patient. As Pesach drew near, he would tell mothers that instead of obsessing about cleaning, they should throw out their chometz and sweep their floors, saving their children from living a stress-filled environment.
“My father felt that most of the tzaros in Klal Yisroel came from distracted parents,” noted Mrs. Youngworth.
Even as he radiated a regal air and an aura of refinement, Rav Shmelke felt personally responsible for carrying the Jewish community’s hardships on his shoulders. He declined his students’ many offers over the years to shower him with gifts and conveniences, believing in living a life of simplicity. Rav Shmelke slept in a recliner, instead of a bed, telling his family that it was good for his back, but after developing sciatica so severe that he was confined to a wheelchair, a doctor told the rebbetzin that it was critical for him to sleep on a good mattress.
“I told him that my mother had said he should please sleep in a real bed, but my father refused, telling me ‘My zaidies were mikabel tzaar for Klal Yisroel all the years and I want to do the same,’” recalled Mrs. Youngworth.
In his later life, Rav Shmelke experienced the joy of seeing true nachas from his students as they matured into vital members of Klal Yisroel. A rosh yeshiva who came to visit him on Hoshana Raba was one such example, arriving at Yeshiva Toras Chesed after being inexplicably dismissed from a high-profile yeshiva in Europe, without being told the reason for his ouster.
“He was embarrassed to come to yeshiva,” said Mrs. Youngworth. “But after Shachris, my father put his arm around him and told everyone there that he was the best boy from a European yeshiva and what a zechus it was to have him in his yeshiva.”
Mrs. Youngworth was planning her son’s bar mitzvah when she found herself face to face with another example of how her father’s chinuch had been transformational for one of his students.
After discovering that she was Rav Shmelke’s daughter, the vendor identified himself as a former talmid and offered his services at no cost, explaining that he had gone through a rebellious stage at one point in this childhood, and decided to spend a night at a friend’s house instead of going home. His panic-stricken mother called Rav Shmelke, who lit a candle, and while it wasn’t his normal custom, spent the entire night saying Tehillim.
“He told me how he had tried sneaking into his house to get his clothing in the morning and his mother sent him straight to the rosh yeshiva,” said Mrs. Youngworth. “He came to my father shaking, humiliated, and feeling like he was being sent to the slaughterhouse.”
The vendor shared that seeing the Tehillim and the candle, he understood that the Rosh Yeshiva had spent the night davening for him. Instead of the expected rebuke, Rav Shmelke said simply, “Baruch Hashem, you’re gezunt – let’s go daven.”
“He told me that at that moment he decided he wanted to be just like my father and he turned his life completely around,” said Mrs. Youngworth. “My father was a passionate person and he would have had it in him to rebuke the kid, but instead, he just treated him with love.”
Rav Shmelke passed away on the 28th day of Shevat and, according to Mrs. Youngworth, he was just the second person laid to rest in the new Har Shalom cemetery in Airmont, New York.
“There is a child there whose shloshim came out on the day they buried my father, and they were worried about getting a minyan together for him, but hundreds of cars came,” said Mrs. Youngworth.
Mrs. Youngworth noted that an ohel is being constructed at her father’s gravesite, which she has no doubt will draw many visitors.
“I am sure it will be a place of yeshuos,” said Mrs. Youngworth.
How lovely that you mention his daughter and her importance in his life !
Some of them are potatoes
I’m confused about the “schvache” bochorim story. Such a great person in chessed and sensitivity , it seems .
Schvache bochorim were a problem ?
Article is incorrect. He was the 9th grade rebbe in Yagdil Torah. This was before they started the Gerer Mesivta on 16th Avenue. They learned in a Bais Medresh across the street from Yagdil Torah.
I never learned in his yeshiva but have a few friends that did. I knew Reb Shmelke very well as my father and grandfather were close to his family. He once asked me to do something that was way out of my comfort zone. I wouldn’t have agreed to do it for anyone else. But seeing the work he put in to his yeshiva and the results he accomplished, I couldn’t say no.