“It was Rabbi Mendlowitz’s practice to bring his students into contact with the religious leaders in the community. Each week he escorted a small number of students of the high school to visit the Malach. Although Rabbi Mendlowitz was not a chassid, he was learned in chassidus (chassidic philosophy) and he considered the two religious figures most influential in his life to be Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch and Rabbi Shneur Zalman, the first Lubavitcher Rebbe.
“Rabbi Mendlowitz taught a class in Tanya himself, and he welcomed the opportunity to hear the Malach’s commentary on the holy tracts for his own pleasure as well as for the education of the students. Primarily the visits provided the opportunity to introduce his students, all of whom had been born in the United States, to an example of the ‘living Torah.’ ”
Almost everyone in Torah Vodaath went to the Malach, who was considered a spiritual mentor. However, “it had not occurred to Rabbi Mendlowitz that the Malach would become a living icon” to some Torah Vodaath students. As time went on, the Malach “began to exhort them concerning their personal beings, instructing them to allow their beards and peyes to grow longer, to give up wearing ties and other frivolous and gentile attire. He convinced them of the desirability of wearing distinct dress, such as black kapotes [coats] and hats, and of forgetting about secular learning completely. They became absorbed with the requirements of kashrut (dietary laws); intense prayer and study were the primary concern of their existence. Their abrupt adherence to chassidic ways was a revolutionary turn in belief and conduct.”
He told the boys who were attracted to him that their beards would cleanse the atmosphere in the streets of New York and that their long coats and Yiddish conversations would create a holy new reality and would have reverberations for years to come.
“This radical change [in these students] left Rabbi Mendlowitz in dismay. The student followers of the Malach stood in direct opposition to his philosophy and to the standards of the yeshiva. He worried about their possible effect on the other students in the yeshiva. The members of the yeshiva governing board and most of the parents seemed to agree that the ultra-pious students set a dangerous example. They undermined the balance of secular and religious studies, and they contradicted the modern perspective of the yeshiva. Parents feared that their sons too might be influenced to return to the European manners that they on their own had so willingly discarded.”
Rabbi Mendlowitz called a meeting of the Board of Directors and “it was decided that those who insisted on continuing to go to the Malach weekly would not be permitted to attend classes. In 1933 the followers of the Malach were expelled from the yeshiva.” In 1936, the yeshiva of the Melachim, Nesivos Olam, was founded.
The Malach passed away in 1938 on the first day of Shavuos. He was laid to rest at the Riverside Cemetery in Lodi, New Jersey.