When Sender Kaszirer was looking for a position in chinuch, he made a quick calculation: He would go where he was needed, not where others expected him to go. But Lakewood wasn’t ready for a high school with no dress code, where talmidim wear colored shirts or jeans, so he established the mesivta in nearby Eatontown, with an approach tailor-made to the individual student regardless of history or past struggles. “Somehow, as parents we give children the benefit of the doubt. And as mechanchim, we have the same responsibility”
It was 11 a.m. on Erev Yom Kippur when Rabbi Sender Kaszirer’s phone rang. “Rebbi,” said the teenager on the line, “I have nowhere to daven.”
Rabbi Kaszirer might have gulped, but he didn’t miss a beat. “Call me back in five minutes,” he told his talmid — and then proceeded to call his own rebbi. He reached the Novominsker Rebbe and shared the young man’s plea. “Should we be making our own minyan?” Rabbi Kaszirer asked, quickly recalculating in anticipation of the expected answer.
“Of course,” the Rebbe said. “If the bochurim ask, you have to provide.”
In the office-cum lounge of the Mesivta of Eatontown — a yeshivah high school for boys who for various reasons haven’t succeeded in a typical yeshivah setting — the Rosh Yeshivah and I are joined by two other rebbeim, Rabbi Mordechai (Mottchy) Kaszirer, Reb Sender’s brother, and Rabbi Avrohom Yeshaya Mermelstein, who recall that game-changing day.
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