Mourning Boro Park's veteran educatorRabbi Osher Lemel Ehrenreich
The numbers climb, and the community gets a girls’ school. A young, idealistic man with an air of authority about him leads the blossoming institution, steward not just to a school, but to a concept: Bais Yaakov — Boro Park, 1955.
There is a cloud hovering over the school, though. This mechanech has to educate young, sincere girls and fill their hearts with pure, undiluted emunah against the backdrop of some of the most horrific events in our history. He has to teach them to believe, even as many of their own parents carry the scars and wounds; teach them to sing even as the sounds of muffled sobs fill their long nights.
So he taught them, and they believed. They grew older, moved on, had daughters of their own. And he taught the daughters too. He had a “shprach” with the newer generation, just as he’d had for the first one. The little school blossomed, becoming a big school, meeting the demands of the community that was burgeoning in every direction. And then a third generation came in, the children of the rebirth, children who’d never known — and couldn’t even conceive of — the suffering of their grandparents. The children of today, to whom the term survivor means something so different from what it once did.
Today, Bais Yaakov of Boro Park is the largest Bais Yaakov elementary school in North America, with over 2,000 students and hundreds of staff members. And until his passing last week, Rabbi Osher Lemel (Oscar) Ehrenreich remained at the helm, adapting age-old wisdom to changing times, knowing when to push and when to hold back, guiding with faith, humility, gentle humor, and always, with a firm, unyielding belief in the greatness of a Yiddishe tochter.
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