Words That Live On

The Novominsker Rebbe wrote poignantly of what he called an “unspoken truth”

Over the past two weeks, I’ve been reliving a small series of mental vignettes relating to the Novominsker Rebbe ztz”l, scenes that have stretched over two decades, serving as signposts along the road of my personal and professional life.

I married into a Boro Park family whose next-door neighbors were close relatives of the Rebbe, thereby giving me the good fortune to get to know his brother-in-law, Reb Yankel Landynski, who was an original: a talmid chacham of illustrious Litvish lineage whose thoroughly yeshivish appearance and demeanor gave no hint of his day job as a highly respected professor of constitutional law. My father-in-law, a mainstay of the Boro Park community, knew the Rebbe, and I recall the Rebbe reminiscing about him warmly during a shivah visit to my in-laws’ home (and about the good old days generally, including which later-renowned roshei yeshivah had played which bases in Camp Agudah).

Some fifteen years later, I began a stint of several good years assisting the national Agudath Israel in its legal and advocacy work on the special education front. This was right around the time the Rebbe had assumed the position of Rosh Agudah, which brought me into regular contact with him.

But the frequency of our interactions accelerated when the Agudah’s special education unit, Project Equal Educational Access, was instrumental in midwifing an important communal institution, the Ichud Mosdos Hachinuch of Brooklyn. This is a collaborative effort by many of Brooklyn’s leading frum boys’ and girls’ schools to ensure that children with learning disabilities receive an education tailored to their needs while remaining integrated into mainstream mosdos.