For Love of the Land 

(excerpt of Schaye Schonbrun’s diary)

Rabbi Schaye Schonbrun has the verve and spring in his step of a much younger man, buoyed by his passion for his vocation and his many interests. Clean-shaven, wearing rimless glasses and a kippah serugah, he spent 38 years as a principal and teacher at the Hebrew Academy of Nassau County (HANC). But back in 1964, when this diary account was written, he was a 23-year-old visiting Eretz Yisrael for the first time as a Zeirei Agudah delegate to the 1964 Knessiah Gedolah of Agudath Israel. A recent graduate of the City College of New York and a talmid of Rav Moshe Feinstein, his parents were deeply involved with Agudath Israel, and he’d inherited their passion.

His infatuation with the Land led to many trips back over the years. While he was surprised by the absolute lack of formality that characterized religious Israeli politics, he was overwhelmed by the beauty of the country and the valor of its simple people, mostly Sephardim, struggling valiantly to hang onto their emunah despite poverty and hostile opposition.

The overflow crowd at the July 1964 Knessiah Gedolah in Binyanei Haumah (left); the Gerrer Rebbe entering the convention center (right)

Reporter on the Scene

Rabbi Schonbrun poses for Mishpacha’s photographer in a black mesh fedora from Australia (“my hole-y hat,” he jokes), not the standard yeshivish Borsalino. But he’s definitely the product of an Agudath Israel childhood; his father was extremely active in Agudath Israel in his childhood shul, Zeirei Agudath Israel of the East Bronx. “I grew up in Pirchei, then Zeirei, and eventually became part of the national executive board,” he says. “I was brought to every Agudah convention by my parents from the time I was three years old.”