Supporting Role 

Purim 1938. A day of great joy turned abruptly into one of devastation for Renee Schick, with the sudden death of her husband, Rabbi Joseph Schick, a Romanian émigré who served as rabbi of the West Side Jewish Center on Manhattan’s 34th Street. The young mother of four children, including three-year-old twins Marvin and Allen, was left with no means of support and, when the Schicks were evicted from their apartment just weeks later, without even a roof over their heads.

The next years were excruciatingly difficult ones; young Marvin was hospitalized with diphtheria, then Allen with pneumonia, and all throughout, their mother struggled mightily to provide for her children. Eventually, she’d go on to open the famed Schick’s Kosher Bakery on Boro Park’s 16th Avenue, above which she and her children made their home.

Those early years of tears and travail became the crucible out of which Marvin Schick became the peerless paradigm of a Torah lay leader. But to truly appreciate the magnificence of his achievement-packed life — and the profound loss the Jewish world suffered with his recent passing at age 85 — one must know not only who he was but also what he was not.

He was not a lawyer — yet he was a pioneer in securing legal rights for frum Jews in the workplace and in pursuing government aid for yeshivos. He was neither a rebbi nor rosh yeshivah — yet he founded and funded multiple Torah mosdos and was a seminal figure in the flourishing of chinuch across the country. He wasn’t a wealthy magnate — he didn’t own his own home or even a car — yet he was responsible for tens of millions of dollars flowing into day school and yeshivah coffers throughout North America. He wasn’t a marbitz Torah — yet hundreds now study the works of great marbitzei Torah that he published. Nor was he a “kiruv professional” — yet untold numbers of Jews are observant today due to his efforts.