Rabbi Schwartz, who is now elderly and ill, was a remarkable principal, a man of integrity and warmth, and he was especially fond of Allen and me. We flourished in Toras Emes. We had some excellent teachers, both in religious and secular studies. I particularly remember with fondness Rabbi Anschel Weinhaus who had studied at the Mir Yeshiva in Poland and then in Shanghai during the Churban in Europe. Although many of the Mir students who went into chinuch in the U.S. did not do well, in part because they were teaching students on a far lower level than they were competent to teach, Rabbi Weinhaus was outstanding.
Also outstanding at Toras Emes was Mr. Holman, a legendary man who apparently was once successful and then had his life collapse around him. He was a polymath who could teach all subjects and teach them well. The students loved him and it was largely because of him that Allen and I stayed at Toras Emes after we graduated from elementary school. But Mr. Holman became critically ill when we were in the ninth grade and even as he was dying from cancer he would make the trip from the Bronx to Boro Park. I remember visiting him at his home shortly before he died.
Toras Emes’s high school soon collapsed and in 1949 Allen and I were back at RJJ, which in the postwar years had just entered a truly glorious period. Enrollment was booming, with students from throughout the metropolitan area enrolling, especially at the high school level.
There were two magnets. The religious studies faculty was rejuvenated with the addition of exceptional teachers. A stronger magnet, particularly for Orthodox parents in those years, was the strength of the secular studies department, notably at the high school level. Mr. Herman Winter, who taught math at Stuyvesant, was the principal and he brought a number of top-flight teachers to RJJ.
Our high school graduating class was small – fewer than twenty-five – but then there was an explosion in enrollment and for a number of years each graduating class had about a hundred students.
There was an interesting dualism to RJJ in that period. The yeshiva served as the major feeder to Beth Medrash Govoha, which Rav Aharon Kotler had established not many years before in Lakewood. For two generations RJJ alumni who learned in Lakewood constituted a significant proportion of the top echelon of roshei yeshiva in the United States. RJJ also produced students who were outstanding in secular studies. There were several math geniuses, including Johnny Aumann, whose distinguished career includes the Nobel Prize in Economics.
As was true of all yeshivas and remains the case, Gemara overwhelmingly dominated the religious studies curriculum. Whereas today the tendency is to require all students to be alert and active during shiurum, the profile at RJJ and in other major yeshivas was often of a small cluster of students gathering around the rebbi’s desk and being taught, while the rest of the students paid little attention. In turn, the rebbi paid little attention to them.
On the secular studies side, there were great teachers and also more than a few who were far from great, some because they no longer had the energy to teach well. We had a couple of octogenarians and it was sad to see how they struggled to maintain discipline.
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After high school, Allen and I remained at RJJ in the Beth Medrash. As was true of many yeshiva post-highschoolers in that period, we were in the yeshiva in the morning and most of the afternoon and then went to college – primarily Brooklyn College – in the evening. Learning had to compete with secular study and the former often did not win out. In our case, the story was even more complicated because on Thursday evenings and Fridays we helped out in my mother’s bakery.
