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Remembering Rabbi Zechariah Wallerstein, z”l
In Me M ory
Of Inspiration and Connection Remembering Rabbi Zechariah Wallerstein, z”l
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by Jenny Hershkowitz
there are 790 videos of Rabbi Zechariah Wallerstein, z”l, speaking on Torah Anytime. Many of them are over an hour long; some are just fifteen minutes. The videos start in 2007 and continue through this week. The last video, uploaded just yesterday, was of Rabbi Wallerstein’s levaya.
Watching those videos, you can get a small sense of who Rabbi Wallerstein was. You will be able to grasp his values and his ideas. You’ll hear what was important to him and learn about what he felt was essential to being a Jew. You’ll hear snippets of him exhorting his fellow Jews to rise above challenges, to become better people, to live energized, more complete lives.
But those videos don’t encapsulate wholly who Rabbi Wallerstein truly was. By listening to them, you will get to know his values and his ideals. But perhaps, if you want to truly know who Rabbi Wallerstein was, you’d have to sit down with the thousands of people – men and women – around the world who were deeply impacted by him.
Sit down with the man who admits that, if not for Rabbi Wallerstein, he would never have attended yeshiva high school.
Sit down with the mother who says that Rabbi Wallerstein is the reason she is alive today. Ribbons of scars running down her arms, now healed, are testament to the lifeforce that Rabbi Wallerstein means to her.
Sit down with the girl whose smile is whole and sincere, who remembers the way his lessons enriched her life.
Sit down with the woman who is able to sing as she rocks her child to bed at night, no longer cowering from the demons that chased her through her youth.
Those people will tell you who Rabbi Wallerstein really was.
His heart was huge; his vision was deep; his love was all-encompassing; his passion was infectious.
Rabbi Wallerstein was known as a master mechanech. And he was always teaching – in his lessons, in the way he spent his days, in the classroom and beyond.
Years ago, he taught in a boys’ yeshiva. But he never took money for teaching for decades in the school. Instead, Rabbi Wallerstein used those funds to pay for tuition for boys who would otherwise be going to public school. His heart wouldn’t allow him to put that money in his bank account, so strong was his desire to save a Jewish neshama.
Years later, his accountant would tell his family that his business would start to suffer if he didn’t stop giving tzedakah. “He gives too much tzedakah!” the accountant exclaimed. “The business can’t survive.”
But who could tell Rabbi Wallerstein to stop giving? Who could stop his soul from helping others?
It wasn’t just money that Rabbi Wallerstein expended to save Jewish neshamos. Scores of people knew that Rabbi Wallerstein’s heart would be open to hearing their tales of woe. They knew he wouldn’t just hear them; they knew his heart would hurt for them, and he would feel compelled to help them.
Rabbi Wallerstein would come to his office, in the pretense of going to work. But truthfully, the only work he was able to tackle was his avodas ha’kodesh. He would spend hours at his desk, listening to tear-filled messages, writing down notes in a black-and-white notebook, so he could call back the people back and help them.
Klal Yisroel was always on his mind. Rabbi Wallerstein would travel around the country to speak to groups, to help them become better Jews. He wanted people to love Yiddishkeit, to be inspired Jews, to be committed, thinking Yidden. He would spend his whole day on Tisha B’Av traveling, hoping to help Jews connect with the Churban and uplift themselves. Breaking his fast would have to wait until he met with everyone who needed him.
Focus on others, focus on your children and your spouse, he would tell them. And focus on Hashem, Who loves you and cares for you.
After davening, after connecting to his Creator, he would go to the aron kodesh and beseech his Master once more on behalf of his fellow Jews. He knew that Hashem was listening, but he didn’t want to leave his Creator without begging Him again for his nation.
Over the past few decades, Rabbi Wallerstein revolutionized chinuch ha’banos. He knew that much of the backbone of a Jewish home stems from the mother. And he knew that Jewish women were deserving – and needed – to be inspired and uplifted. Torah was not just given to the men on the other side of the mechitzah. It was given to a nation, a People of seekers, who desire a relationship with the Borei Olam.
What started small blossomed and bloomed into seminary, college, post-seminary, and even high school programs. “Avinu Malkeinu” became an annual event where thousands of women flocked to focus and center themselves during the Yomim Noraim. He – and his dedicated team – taught and showed women the beauty that is inherent in the Gift we received three-thousand years ago.
Rabbi Wallerstein remarkably impacted Klal Yisroel in the short time he had in this world. Never stopping, never resting, always wanting to do more to help his nation, Rabbi Wallerstein’s influence cannot be properly tallied.
But in addition to his brothers and sisters around the world that he uplifted, Rabbi Wallerstein was a loving son, husband, father, and grandfather. He delighted in his daughters, his sons-in-law and his grandchildren. Despite the myriad responsibilities and kochos expended on the Jewish nation, Rabbi Wallerstein showed us the importance of being focused on one’s family.
May Rabbi Wallerstein’s holy neshama rise up to the Kisei Ha’kavod and continue to beseech the Ribbono Shel Olam to end all suffering for Klal Yisroel.
Y’hei zichro baruch.
Can This Be Happening?
An Interview with Jewish Author Gordon Korman
By Shmuel Botnick & Yosef Zoimen
It’s impossible to sit across from Gordon Korman without trying to psychoanalyze him.
It’s a psychoanalysis that comes, not as a result of years of studying psychology, but as a result of years of studying Macdonald Hall, Slapshot League, Bugs Potter, Ungifted, Supergifted, or any of the other 99 books written by the iconic author over the past four decades.
Every move is cause for speculation. Was that a Bruno-type thing to say? Did I just sense some Rudy Miller there? But, as our interview would progress, we would realize that these speculations were largely imagined.
“My books generally are not based upon personal experience,” Gordon reveals. The wildly colorful characters that grace the thousands of pages of Gordon Korman books are the product of an insanely creative mind and razor-sharp perception of today’s children and teenagers.
Wait, back up. Did you just say sit “across”? From Gordon Korman? Like, the Gordon
Korman? Are you being serious? And he spoke to you?
We forgive your incredulity. We have a hard time believing it ourselves. But it happened. Trust us, it really happened.
The internet has its advantages and disadvantages but, on the plus side, is the ability to track the travel itinerary of famous authors. Gordon Korman, we saw, was scheduled to visit the Sycamore Community Schools on February 17. We had a few weeks to pull whatever strings we had to try to arrange an interview. The problem is, we had no strings. Just an email address. We had managed to finagle Gordon’s email address. Turns out, that’s all we needed.
In short order, the meeting was arranged, just twenty minutes away in the Embassy Suites in Blue Ash, Ohio. There, we arrived, attorney and columnist Shmulie Botnick, CJJ Publisher Yosef Zoimen, and Mesivta student Nosson Zvi Zoimen. We hung around the lobby for a few minutes until Gordon appeared, having just arrived from a full day of speeches and signing 500 books at nearby E. H. Greene Intermediate School. And that’s about the extent of the drama.
Sitting across from a childhood idol was intimidating but just for a moment. Gordon is exceptionally humble and easy to talk to. When I gargled out a “Gordon, I’ve been a huge fan of yours for, like, ever,” he seemed genuinely honored. And thus, the conversation began, an interview with a famous personality, which really felt more like four old friends, traveling together down memory lane, stopping to laugh, and to marvel, at their most favorite landmarks.
Gordon Korman was born in Montreal, Quebec, but grew up in Thornhill, Ontario, a suburban community just north of Toronto.
“There was lots of movement between Montreal and Toronto,” Gordon reflects, “especially amongst the Jewish community.”
Today, he lives in Great Neck, Long Island, and had previously lived for a number of years in Manhattan: “I’ve always lived in predominantly Jewish communities.”
The Toronto-based upbringing explains the geographical base for many of the initial Gordon Korman books. The Macdonald Hall series took place “East of Toronto just off Highway 48,” Losing Joe’s Place was in downtown Toronto, as was Who is Bugs Putter? But Gordon left Canada to attend college in 1981 and hasn’t lived there ever since. Practically all of his books authored since then take place somewhere in the U.S.
The story of Gordon’s foray into the world of writing is well-known. He was in the middle of seventh grade, and, somehow, the track and field coach wound up becoming his English teacher. Rather than teach English the conventional way, he gave the students the freedom to work on whatever they wanted for the rest of the school year. The result was This Can’t Be Happening At Macdonald Hall, the first of the legendary Macdonald Hall series. The book was submitted to Scholastic, and it had immediate success.
Scholastic demanded to meet Gordon to ensure it was this seventh grader who actually wrote the book and was not written by his father or someone else. And thus, the outrageous world of Bruno, Boots, Wilbur Hackenschleimer, and “The Fish” was born. And, along with them, a historic star of children’s literature was born as well.
“As I grew older,” Gordon admits, “there was an expectation that I would get more serious. But I didn’t. I just got crazier.”
The books are crazy indeed, outlandish, completely out of whack, but somehow, so real and so relatable. Rudy Miller feels like a best friend, and Raymond Jardine, fictitious as he is, is the kind of guy who just should have existed.
But, at a point, the books did take a turn for the serious. Series such as Dive, Island, and Everest brought out a talent in Gordon that was never before expressed: The ability to write high quality, intensely dramatic fictions that were heavy on emotions and light on humor.
Although Gordon is more than capable at writing serious literature, it doesn’t come as naturally as humor.
“While I’m not the hilarious guy in every setting,” he tells us, “I’ve always respected humor. Even as a kid, when I observed someone make a joke and everyone laughing in response, that was something that intrigued me.”
Over the years, Gordon has made many visits to cities all over the U.S. and Canada and has met with thousands of fans, young and old. Before the days of the internet and buying books with the click of a button, most books were purchased by students through the Scholastic book list sent out by schools to their parents. It was important to stay on that list to access readers in the cities that did not have a Barnes & Noble bookstore nearby. Gordon did his share of traveling for Scholastic and stopped in school after school throughout middle America, often without a traffic light in the entire town.
One very interesting thing that he noticed was how his books seemed to have a higher level of popularity within the Orthodox Jewish community – particularly in the Brooklyn, NY, neighborhood, as well as through the Mormon communities in Utah. Gordon sees a few possible explanations for this.
“Kids want to feel rebellious, and my books provide for that sense of rebellion. But it’s all done within the parameters of decency. There’s no violence or profanity. So it’s a form of rebellion that doesn’t negate basic values.”
Gordon also points to an interesting trend.
“A word I’ve heard a lot, especially from the Orthodox fans, is ‘family.’ My books have become something like family traditions. And, in communities that tend to have larger families, the books serve as a bridge, a way for the twenty-year-old to relate with the twelveyear-old.”
This is so true – at our Chanukah parties and yom tov tables, cousins would develop new wacky business venture ideas similar to the “attack jelly” sold in No Coins, Please. Treasured Apple Paperback first editions are handed from father to son as family heirlooms, to continue the tradition.
A common thread running throughout so many of Gordon’s books is a delicious form of chutzpah. Be it Artie Geller sending the FBI on a wild goose chase, Raymond Jardine pretending to be an old Canadian poet and submitting his work as part of an English project, and so many others.
“Were you that kind of kid?” we ask.
The answer is a little disappointing.
“Nah, not really,” says Gordon. “I was more of a loudmouth than a man of action.”
In other words, “I’m more the Boots than the Bruno.”
When a Jewish author has questions, who does he turn to? His mom, of course.
“I always bounce ideas off my mom. When I first started writing, I was 12 years old, so that was the obvious address to turn to. But now, she’s 84, and I’m still doing it.”
Turns out that, when it comes to needing advice on children’s books, the senior Mrs. Korman is the premier source for guidance and wrote a column for her hometown Jewish newspaper.
“My mom is one of those people who never forgot what it’s like to be a kid,” says Gordon. “Some sixth graders forget what it’s like to be in fifth grade, but my mom never forgot. To this day, she dreads the ‘Back to School’ ads on TV. I always tell her, ‘Mom, no one is sending you back to school.’ But that’s how she is. She still remembers exactly what it’s like being a kid.”
As time evolved, rapid developments in society warranted certain shifts in style and expression. But the themes remain constant.
“Times change but kids don’t,” Gordon points out. “There will always be cool kids and less cool kids. There will always be insiders and those standing on the outside.”
Acceptance is an overarching message in his books, typically in the context of school life. Whether it’s a hippie kid forced to join a typical public school (Schooled), an ungifted kid getting stuck in a school for the gifted children (Ungifted), or the super-gifted kid getting stuck in a regular school (Supergifted), Gordon tries bringing out the talents of the little guy – the one who was a little awkward, a little different. Playing on to the talents of each of these underdog characters teaches his readers acceptance and diversity.
But one book that stands out from amongst all the others is Linked, a story based in Chokecherry, Colorado. The story involves a school whose student body includes only one Jew – Dana. Suddenly, swastikas begin to appear all over the school. As part of an effort to teach tolerance and acceptance, the school creates a program where they seek to collect six million links. It’s a story of self-discovery and powerful insight into human nature.
The inspiration for this book came from the famous “Paper Clips Project,” a school-based initiative which took place in 1998, in Whitwell, Tennessee. The school had begun a Holocaust education course and quickly realized that the student could not grasp the enormity of the Holocaust until they grasped the enormity of the number six million. They set out on a mission to collect six million paper clips, drawing global attention to the project.
Inspired by the power of the “Paper Clips Project,” Gordon set out to write his own story that would attempt to bring out the horrors of the Holocaust and the timeless importance of racial acceptance and understanding.
In a classic example of Jewish geography, or Sukenko, at his son’s soccer game, Gordon met fellow Great Necker Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), at a soccer game. Their sons played on the same team. They struck up a friendship, and David served as a guide to Gordon, helping to tell this story of the Holocaust with depth and sensitivity Gordon demanded, with a realism on what the protocol would be should such an occurrence actually take place in a school today.
That Gordon should write a book focusing Holocaust education shouldn’t come as a surprise. His family orig-
Speaking with Gordon Korman inates from a town called Horodyshche. The Jews of this Ukrainian city suffered tremendous losses and pogroms and “had my family not immigrated to Canada in the 1920s,” he says, “they likely wouldn’t have survived.” This book paid homage to Gordon’s own legacy and added an extra dimension to his storytelling. Although his writing career has now spanned forty-four years, Gordon shows no signs of slowing down. He is working simultaneously on his next two books, unsure of how big of a deal to make about his upcoming one-hundredth. His long-term relationship with two different publishers keeps his timeline on par to continue to write and publish at his rapid pace, alternating between publishers, keeping curious children satiated and always waiting for the next one. With all of his success, his approachability remains the same. He genuinely appreciates fan feedback and delights in his older chevra of followers (like us) who continue to relish in his stories and the simpler times it brings us back to and who, once in a while, will still ask ourselves: “What would Bruno do?”
The authors of the article with Gordon Korman
