What spurs two identifiably Orthodox Jewish children to spend time cleaning up a non-Jewish cemetery?
The Historic Monsey Cemetery, a small, non-Jewish war veterans’ cemetery located on the corner of Maple Avenue and North Saddle River Road, doesn’t host many Jewish visitors. But in an annual tradition (albeit an incongruous one), a week or so prior to Memorial Day, the Rubin boys from Monsey make their way through the grounds picking up any accumulated trash. What spurs two identifiably Orthodox Jewish children to spend time cleaning up a non-Jewish cemetery?
The answer goes back several years, to when Rabbi Dov Weissman, today a rebbi in Detroit’s Yeshiva Beth Yehuda, taught one of the Rubin boys. Rabbi Weissman would incorporate gedolim stories into his curriculum, and one week he shared vignettes about his saintly grandfather, Rav Mordechai Schwab. Originally from Frankfurt, Germany, Rav Schwab learned in some of the greatest Eastern European yeshivos, including Mir and Kamenitz. After the war, he settled in Monsey, where he assumed the position of mashgiach in Mesivta Bais Shraga and was renowned for his greatness in Torah and mussar.
Rav Schwab’s home was directly across from the old Historic Monsey Cemetery. One day, talmidim noticed the Mashgiach going through the cemetery, bending down from time to time. When they inquired, he explained that Memorial Day was fast approaching, and bereaved family members would be visiting the graves of soldiers who had died in battle. If they were to find the cemetery, which was located in the middle of a predominantly frum neighborhood, strewn with garbage, a great chillul Hashem would result, and Rav Schwab was determined to prevent that. And so each year before Memorial Day, he would quietly clean the cemetery.
After Rabbi Weissman shared the story with the class, one of the boys decided to perpetuate Rav Schwab’s tradition. Some 30 years after Rav Schwab’s passing, the old Historic Monsey Cemetery gets an annual cleaning, courtesy of the sensitivity of a gadol who lived a generation ago and two boys who took his message to heart.
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