A Rabbi For All Seasons – A Tribute to Rabbi Fabian Schonfeld, zt”l,

Pioneer of the Kew Gardens Hills Orthodox Community in Queens, on his 5th Yahrzeit, the 3rd night of Chanukah, 27 Kislev

It is difficult to encapsulate one’s thoughts and feelings for Rabbi Fabian Schonfeld, zt”l, HaRav Mordechai Shraga Feivel ben Rav Shmuel Shabtai HaLevi, with whom I had a close relationship for over 65 years, having grown up in the YI of Kew Gardens Hills (YIKGH), Queens, where I was known as “Pinky,” adopted from my Hebrew name, Pinchas Yitzchak.

My parents, Harvey and Bea Brody, z”l, had the foresight to move to KGH in 1954, three years after YIKGH was established, becoming very active members for close to 60 years.

My Dad was an Associate VP and the head of the High Holidays Seating Committee. For many years, we painstakingly attached clamps to chairs before Rosh Hashanah to keep them orderly. I cherish the letter from 1966 from Rabbi Schonfeld thanking me, as a teenager, for helping in the mitzvah of preparing the shul for the Yamim Noraim, and “the hope that you will develop your latent abilities for leadership in the Jewish Community!” A few years ago, I showed this much torn letter to his son and successor, Rabbi Yoel, and we admired his dear father’s ability to “predict the future.”

In 2011, when I brought future Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett to the U.S. before he officially entered politics, his first press briefing was under the auspices of Rabbi Schonfeld.

My first venture into activism was hatched in the shul’s beis midrash with Ira Lipsius in 1985, when we decided to smuggle Judaica into the Soviet Union and meet with refuseniks during Purim. I read Megillas Esther illegally in the Great Synagogue of Leningrad. “Better read than dead,” I declared. Rabbi Schonfeld had allowed me as a young man to read the megillah for the first time in 1973. I initiated and instructed hundreds of young men at the North Shore Hebrew Academy, in Great Neck, in megillah reading, now called the “Dr. Paul Brody Megillah Readers Program,” upon my retirement after 20 years.

Rabbi Schonfeld served as the quintessential role model with his masterful activism for Israel, American Jewry, and the Klal.

His leadership extended far beyond his Queens home. He was the President of the RCA, Yeshiva University's Rabbinical Alumni Association, led the OU kashrut division; and served as chairman of Poale Agudas Yisrael of America. He gave the invocation at the 1984 Republican National Convention in Dallas before President Ronald Reagan.

Rabbi Schonfeld established the Vaad Harabonim of Queens. He encouraged and welcomed the inclusion and expansion of many diverse shuls and yeshivas in the neighborhood, ensuring the viability of KGH.

Rabbi Yoel wrote in the Queens Jewish Link, after the petira, “My father was at home with every facet of Jewry.” Rabbi Fabian was very proud that he was a “Gerer Chassid,” which I strongly admired, since our family is direct descendants of the “Bnei Yissaschar,” my father, z”l, being named Tzvi Elimelech, after the Dinover Rebbe.

The Brody family experienced a multitude of wonderful experiences with our rabbi. He danced with his unique exuberance with us at my bar mitzvah, served as mesader kiddushin with his special sincerity and melodic voice, when I married Drora, and spoke at our son Joey’s bris in Great Neck in 1999. At the bris, he referenced my grandfather, Joseph Brody, z”l – for whom our son is named – stating that “he never made any decisions without first consulting Reb Yosef Brody!”

Rabbi Schonfeld went above and beyond in times of need. The rabbi conducted the levaya for my dear father, z”l, three days before Pesach 2000, and eulogized my dear mother, z”l, via cell phone on Tisha B’Av, 2011.

My decision to purchase karka in Eretz Yisrael as a final resting place is based on shiurim given by Rabbi Schonfeld many years ago, stressing the importance of being buried there, even trumping kever avos.

Rabbi Schonfeld drove me in 1968 to the placement bechina to enter RIETS at YU for the oral Gemara examination by Rabbi Mendel Zaks, the son-in-law of the Chofetz Chaim. Having him at my side bolstered my confidence.

Rabbi Schonfeld allowed my group of friends and me to originate the shul’s youth minyan, in the 1960s. We learned to daven at the amud, lein and deliver Divrei Torah. Many future congregational rabbis “cut their teeth” in this minyan. I had the opportunity to daven and lein in the “Big Shul.” I became a ba’al Mussaf and leined on the Yomim Noraim, utilizing Cantor Oscar Goldman’s famed tunes – perfected for me by Paul Glasser – in shuls, including the beit midrash of the Great Neck Synagogue and the Young Israel of Scarsdale.

My wife and I have maintained relationships with Rabbi Schonfeld’s children, continuing our generational ties. For example, I am in touch with Aviva Pinchuk, his bechora, regarding Israeli activism.

At the Israeli wedding of one of our daughters, Dana Aderet, to Ben Glass, who had both made aliyah individually, I mentioned to Aviva that I very much wanted to visit her dear father’s kever on Har HaMenuchot. A short time after Rabbi Fabian Schonfeld’s 1st yahrzeit, I had the zechus of being among the first nonfamily members to visit the kever of my revered rabbi.

Naturally, when a street sign at the corner of 70th Road and 150th St., by YIKGH, was unveiled as “Rabbi Fabian Schonfeld Way,” on August 21, 2022, I proudly attended to honor Rabbi Schonfeld’s memory.

Reviewing Rav Schonfeld’s seven decades as the Moreh D’Asrah of YIKGH, at a breakfast marking his 5th yahrzeit – attended by 100 people, despite a snowstorm, and many on Zoom – I mentioned that the initials of his name, Mem-Shin-Lamed (spelling mashal) were truly indicative of his name; he was a perfect “example” of how a Jewish person should act!

I was most fortunate to have Rabbi Fabian Schonfeld, zt”l, as my Moreh D’Asrah – a “Rabbi for ALL Seasons!” We will probably never see the likes of him again in our lifetime.

Yehi zichro baruch.