Ben Gvir and the Third Rail   

It’s a personal response to an incident I witnessed at the Kosel on the second night of this past Chanukah, when my wife and I went there to daven and participate in the lighting. I will return to that very soon.

First, some background is in order.

In the late 1960s, I attended an elementary school in Kew Gardens, Queens, called Yeshiva Tiferes Moshe. My first few years there, the yeshivah was housed in an antiquated mansion that was way too small for the growing student body. So for three years, the yeshivah relocated to a vacant public school building in Jamaica, Queens, while the mansion was demolished and a new building was constructed in its place, where it remains to this very day. My class was the first eighth grade in the new building.

The older grades learned an hour later than the younger grades, so there were no school buses to take us home. We had to ride public transportation — two trains and a bus — back to Forest Hills each and every day.

This neighborhood did not normally have religious Jewish children walking its streets (especially on dark winter evenings), so the trek home was challenging at times. Often, our incredibly dedicated menahel, Rav Avrohom Levine z”l, would escort us in his car to ensure our safety as we walked the few blocks to the train station. When the neighborhood teenagers figured this out, they would wait until he departed and then confront us inside the train station.