Community Magazine March 2003

David and his growing family seem not unlike the many young SY couples who are leading upright productive lives in our community, typical…but not quite. Because David will be spending much of his day learning with a Texan named Schwartz. Frieda will discuss recipes while having her wigs fixed by a sheital macher (wig maker) who’s never even heard of lahamagin. Little Joey will pass his afternoon playing with his buddy Yitzie who spent his morning learning Aleph Bais, studying parsha, singing a niggun and listening to stories of the Chazon Ish. A typical morning? Yes! Typical for the couples who have chosen to settle—not in Flatbush, or in Deal, they’ve chosen to live in Lakewood, New Jersey. Lakewood Lakewood! The crisp, pristine ring to its name makes it sound a far cry from the color and vivacity of Aleppo. Yet, there are few today who have not heard of “Beit Midrash Gevoha,” (BMG) the Lakewood “Kollel” (Institute of advanced Talmudic study), founded in the 1940’s by Rabbi Aharon Kotler, Rosh Yeshiva in Kletsk of prewar Poland. In the wake of the demise of the great Torah centers in Eastern Europe, Rav Aharon was intent on rebuild- ing a seemingly lost world. With single-minded devotion, he literally picked up the shairit hapleita (remnants of the holocaust) from their despair, and set them to learn Torah, for the sake of Torah. An unheard of phenomena on American soil! A revolution! An anathema to a soci- ety steeped in materialism and motivated by the quest for worldly success, Rav Aharon’s vision seemed doomed to fail. Sixty years later, the now burgeoning Torah powerhouse with, mashalah over 3,000 Talmidei Hachmim (students) proves the doomsayers wrong. The heart which pumps the Torah world, Lakewood is home to the cream of Torah scholars in a sprawling institution which is, under- standably, the pride of Ashkenazim every- where. What’s a Syrian boy like David doing in a place like that? The answer has actually been many years in coming. It’s true that the elite of highly motivated individuals have always chosen Lakewood for their advanced Torah training, just as (l’havdil) top over- seas students come to Harvard or Yale to study medicine or law. There are few Sephardic educational institutions that don’t rank a Lakewood veteran among their leading luminaries. Many, though, had been discouraged by the prospect of not praying in a Sephardic shul, not sending their children to Sephardic schools and, maybe more than anything else, not being part of the tightly- knit and homogenous SY community of their youth. Faced by the anticipated risk to their heritage and the travails of living in a somewhat spiritual isolation, they remained behind, perhaps entertaining the far-off dream of one day making their con- nection with America’s Torah capital. The SYs Arrive First with a trickle gath- ering momentum, and then with a thrust, the Syrians have finally come to Lakewood. The chronology of these events is worth recording: A handful of Syrians grew to a minyan of a hundred mit- pallelim (worshippers) congregating for the high holidays in the early nineties. When six young Syrian families moved at the end of the decade to a new develop- ment called Forest Park, eight others fol- lowed, and then, even more. Largely unplanned and inexplicable, this momen- tous gathering of Syrians was surely a sign from Above. Bringing together an ener- getic corps of like-minded idealists, Hashem, in His kindness, was preparing the rich New Jersey soil for a new Syrian community to take root and grow. s ” xc ADAR II 5763 MARCH 2003 47 Mar 63 color insert.qxd 2/27/2003 3:31 PM Page 47