One Big Tent

This child had stomach issues, which had resulted in the hospital stay. Since hospitalizations push off the 30-day countdown, it behooved OHEL to keep the child in the hospital in order to give them more time to find a Jewish home. “In the end, the child came back to OHEL, and the clock started ticking,” Moishe says. “We took an ad in the Jewish Press, which was the only frum newspaper back then. We showed a picture of a child with Down syndrome with the caption: ‘My name is Chaim. It may soon be Christopher…. Can you help me?’ A family who had their own child with Down syndrome came forward. They wanted their child to have a companion, and they adopted the boy.”

Moishe feels compelled to add that “St. Mary’s was incredibly respectful of Jewish customs. Once, when a child lost the bobby pin for his yarmulke, they called to ask if they could replace it with one of their own.”

When OHEL opened up shelters for victims of domestic abuse in the year 2000, some community members voiced their opposition.

“They told us we were encouraging divorce,” Moishe says. “Now, what really happens is that we allow women and their children to leave an abusive home and stay for up to four months to sort out their lives, and think about whether they really want or need to leave their marriages. We discuss how she would be able to manage on her own if she chooses to leave.”

He notes that the facilities are kept so secret that even he, who served as president, doesn’t know where they’re located; in the end, many women return to their homes.

Since the state funds many of OHEL’s programs, many people don’t understand its constant need to fundraise. But government funding can’t cover all the needs of Jewish families. It won’t cover tefillin for a bar mitzvah boy, yeshivah tuition, extra therapy, or new programs.

“We have a budget of $73 million,” Moishe explains, “but only 87 percent of that is funded. We have to find the other $8 million or so, but unlike yeshivos, we don’t have alumni to support us, so we have to turn to the community.

“The Ponevezher Rav, who was a great fundraiser, was once asked what he thought about when he’d go knocking on doors. He famously said, ‘I’m hoping they’re not home!’ ”

As ombudsman, Moishe handles flak from all sides, even complaints within the agency. He has a reassuring, compassionate manner that lends itself to soothing frayed nerves, and he doesn’t take any of it personally.

“When Chanah came to Eli HaKohein to pray for a child, he thought she was drunk — not from wine, but from tzaar. For me, when someone who is otherwise an ehrliche Yid says hurtful things, I see it as if they’re drunk from tzaar as well.” His eyes grow teary with emotion. “I have the ability to hear someone and feel his situation. It comes naturally to me; I learned it from my parents. I see them all as acheinu beis Yisrael.”

In the beginning, OHEL had no greater ambitions than to be a foster care agency that included preventive care services (family therapy and support to avoid the extreme of removing children from a home). But when a facility in Far Rockaway by the name of Maimonides Institute closed down, the state asked OHEL to take over.

“They put pressure on us,” Moishe remembers. “We had no experience in residential care, but we finally agreed.”

OHEL has since opened many residences. The homes for adults with mental illness began 25 years ago when New York state funded 48 beds for men and women. Many of these consumers had previously been hospitalized. OHEL began with 36 men and 12 women, reasoning that parents would be more reluctant to allow young women to live away from home.

“We should have split it more evenly,” Moishe now admits. “But today we have over 500 residents. There’s a residence near my house in Boro Park, and I visit often. I even take donors there. Once I took a man there, and he recognized one of his old classmates. He told me, ‘I always wondered what happened to that guy!’ He has since become a member of our board.”

Early on, there was a home on Westminster Road in Ditmas Park, Brooklyn, that housed foster children, mainly teens who needed more independence than a foster home could provide, or who had other issues that made adapting to a foster home difficult. One day, out of the blue, Moishe received a call from Rav Shlomo Zalman Auerbach ztz”l advocating that he take a child.

“At first I thought it was a prank call,” he says. “Why would the gadol hador be calling me?”

Rav Shlomo Zalman had gotten Moishe’s number from Max Wasser, his predecessor as president of the board, who’d gone to Rav Shlomo Zalman for a brachah. The Rav had been involved in the case of an 11-year-old child who had mental disabilities and was also deaf and mute. The parents had divorced, and the mother, who was originally from the US, was remarrying a man who didn’t feel able to assume care of the child. Rav Shlomo Zalman asked Moishe to accept the child into the Westminster Road residence.

“We weren’t prepared for this, but we really wanted to help the mother and the child,” Moishe says. “Rav Shlomo Zalman showered us with so many brachos, and before we knew it the child was on our doorstep. We had to take him and work with the situation, and knew Hashem would help.”

It was a big challenge. The boys in the Ditmas Park residence had different issues, but none of them were deaf-mute or developmentally disabled. OHEL had to pay for extra care. One night, when his counselor fell asleep, the boy managed to climb onto the fire escape. The director of the home protested, “I can’t take responsibility for this!”

Moishe offered to spend a night there to keep an eye on things and see if he could come up with any ideas. He positioned his bed across the door so there could be no more escapes. “If I hadn’t gone to see the situation with my own eyes, I wouldn’t have known how to deal with it,” he says.

The child was later given a roommate, and OHEL hired someone to teach sign language to everyone in the residence. The boy was cared for until he was niftar several years later.

“Some cases, you just don’t see the end,” Moishe sighs, “but I always think, What if it were my child?”

OHEL has been fortunate to have had many close friends over the years who have given support and assistance.

“Rose Halpern, who manufactured Barbie dolls and later sold the brand to Mattel, read about us in a Jewish newspaper and offered to fund our Lifetime Care Foundation, a division of OHEL that cares for the needs of the elderly while allowing them to live independently,” Moishe says. “After Rose’s death, the Lifetime Care Foundation assisted Rose’s husband Maurice until his death at age 104.”

OHEL found another friend when Mr. Harvey Kaylie a”h and his wife Gloria, who lived in the Hamptons, noticed that their friends Bernie and Elaine Schickman had been showing up to shul with five extra children. The Schickmans had agreed to take a group of five siblings into foster care, and the Kaylies were so taken with OHEL’s mission that they became supporters.

Fast-forward a couple of years later, when Moishe accompanied a friend visiting his child in a camp for children with disabilities.

“It tore my heart out,” he recounts. “The kids looked happy, but surely the parents wished their children could have more of a regular camp experience. Then it occurred to me: Why can’t we run a camp for kids with disabilities that could be integrated with a typical kids’ camp? It would teach the other kids that life isn’t just about bikes and ice cream, but giving back.”

He brought the idea up to the board, but they flinched at the price tag. Moishe didn’t give up. Over the next few years he visited many camps, receiving advice from Meir Frischman of Camp Agudah, Shmiel Kahn of Camp HASC, Shlomo Pfeiffer of Camp Romimu, and Irv Beider of Camp Seneca.

Moishe and the Kaylies had become friends, and he and Mel Zachter shared their dream with Mr. Kaylie. “He told us how much funding he could give,” Moishe says. “We found a site for the camp, but it fell through. We were looking for three years, with Mr. Kaylie asking us, ‘Nu?’ He was anxious for it to be up and running, and in the end we offered to name the camp for him and his wife.”

Every year Mr. and Mrs. Kaylie would visit the camp and speak to the children in the dining hall — once to the girls’ session, once to the boys’ session. Even toward the end of his life, after he had lost both legs due to illness, he used it as an opportunity to give chizuk to the children.

“Kids,” he addressed them, “for the past six years I always spoke to you standing in this same place, on my own legs. Today, I’m standing on prostheses. But I’m still the same person! We all have our issues — we just have to deal with whatever challenges Hashem has chosen to give us.”

OHEL has been a big part of Moishe’s life for close to 50 years. “Even when I went on vacation, I often ended up spending several hours a day on the phone for OHEL,” he says. But he felt ready to pass the baton. “It’s not often a president agrees to step down,” he points out. “It’s a sign of the strength of the organization. But I think it’s time for new blood. I’m getting older, and a new broom sweeps better.” Like Miriam Haneviah, who kept an eye on baby Moshe as he floated in his basket, he says he’ll keep an eye on things from a distance.

Mr. David Mandel, the CEO of OHEL, comes to join us in the conference room. “OHEL has always had good professionals, but we thrived because of the vision of our board of directors,” he says. “Their leadership set the tone.” As for Moishe, he describes their relationship as “magical.”

Mr. Mandel comments that in every generation, Hashem sends the refuah before the makkah. “When OHEL was created in 1969, no one dreamed we would see this proliferation of mental health issues,” he says. “Who back then could have anticipated Internet addictions? High-conflict divorce? The number of people on the autism spectrum? Our community has seen a huge regeneration after the Shoah, but even if percentages of mental illness remain the same, the actual caseloads are much bigger.”

Beyond that, there’s probably a greater percentage of children living with disabilities today, because medical advances allow more of them to survive infancy.

Moishe is confident that Jay Kestenbaum, working with Mel Zachter, will do a fine job taking over the reins. Moishe’s youngest son Ruvey also serves on the board of trustees, so there will still be a Hellman on the board.

And what happens when those co-presidents retire? David Mandel fixes me with his gaze. He asks, “Where is the next generation of Moishe Hellmans? Where are the 30-year-olds ready to dedicate themselves the way he did?”

Millennials, it looks like you’ve been issued a challenge.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 771)