During these years I became active in communal work, primarily in Zeirei Agudath Israel and Torah Schools for Israel. Looking back, I am at times astounded by how hectic our schedule was. Allen and I were determined to finish Brooklyn College at night in four years, which usually meant four nights in college and one or two summer sessions. Typically, we would come home from college at about 11 p.m., have supper, and then do our college work until 2 or 3 in the morning.
Somehow we managed to navigate our religious studies at RJJ, I think largely because we had, in the main, exceptionally good teachers. In truth, Allen far surpassed me. We had several outstanding roshei yeshiva or advanced Talmudic teachers. I especially remember with enormous fondness Rabbi Zeidel Epstein of blessed memory, a saintly man with whom I maintained a special relationship until his death in Jerusalem at the age of ninety-nine.
At RJJ in those years, Beth Medrash study generally culminated either in the best students transferring to Beth Medrash Govoha in Lakewood, where they became students of Rav Aharon Kotler, or receiving semichah. I continued on the latter path, although I need to confess that my knowledge of the required subjects was not sufficient for me to be deserving of ordination. I never had any intention of serving as a rabbi and that was also true of most of my fellow students who were ordained. Immediately after leaving RJJ, I enrolled in NYU’s graduate school and ultimately received my doctorate in political science.
By the time I left RJJ it was with anything but good feelings about the yeshiva. There was an excess of discord among senior religious faculty members, a phenomenon that has afflicted and seriously harmed too many yeshivas for too many generations. Yeshivas are generally small institutions with little or no buffer zones to cushion against discord. RJJ was severely hurt by internal conflict and Allen and I were dismayed.
When I walked away from RJJ in 1957, I would have bet the whole house that I would never play an active role in the institution. But as mentioned earlier, Iultimately became its president and have been for nearly forty-two years.
That’s another story,which I hope to tell at some future date.
