Lindenthal, Haskel_1981/04/9, Oral History, April 9, 1981

Good evening ladies and gentlemen. Tonight is Thursday, April 9, 1981. This is the Annual Holocaust Memorial Meeting of the Greater Hartford Jewish Historical Society. Our subject tonight, our program, deals with history, and specifically it deals with two historical people, and specifically it deals with Teferes Israel Synagogue. The Teferes Israel Synagogue is really a part of history of the Jewish community that originates way back in 1903, and Rabbi Haskel Lindenthal, who is an old friend, when I started to think of the years that have gone by since he joined our Greater Hartford Jewish Community, it really amounts to a quarter of a century. And when you say it in terms of centuries, it sounds much more important and much more seriously involved in the Jewish community than 25 years. The interviewer this evening is Dr. Irving Waltman, who is not only by reputation and by his deeds an eminent surgeon in the Greater Hartford area, but he and his charming wife Frances have been involved with the Greater Hartford Jewish Historical Society since its inception, and it is really a period of ten years, and they were amongst the founders of the Society. Dr. Waltman is indeed the appropriate person to interview Rabbi Haskel Lindenthal.

IW: Rabbi Lindenthal, we’re grateful to you for coming tonight, and for your willingness to share some of your personal experiences with us. It’s fitting that we do this interview in your synagogue, the Teferes Israel, where you have been the spiritual leader since 1956. I think perhaps most of us feel that you represent the epitome of what a rabbi should be, not only a scholar, teacher, but a warm, good friend to many of the people here, always interested in the problems of your fellow man, and not to say the least, a foreskin surgeon par excellence, well known in the community as the morning walker, your accomplishments are many. And we would like to start by finding out some of the vital statistics. That means when, and where, and under whose auspices did you come into this universe?

HL: Well, the first credits I would give to my father and mother. Before I begin to tell you a little bit about my life, and frankly I don’t know why you have chosen me, I would like to say that the real heroes of my life, first of all, I give credit to my wife. She was the one who pushed me, who urged me to take a position as a rabbi. Although I was an ordained rabbi I was reluctant whether to assume a position or not. I always felt sorry for rabbis, but after 25 years I don’t. Second, I would like to give credit to my children, who helped me a great deal coming to Hartford, helping me to teach, organize a Hebrew school, and so forth. The real, real heroes in my life are those who have left this world, made the supreme sacrifice for the Jewish people, those who have died in the ghettos, in the gas chambers, in the concentration camps. And above all my sisters, who could have saved themselves from being exterminated by the Nazis, but they did not want to leave my father alone, so they chose to die together with him. These are the real heroes in my life, and to them I give the fullest credit.

Yours truly was born in a little, little village called Wizan, near the city of Suwalk. Now if I say Suwalk, perhaps to many of you it doesn’t mean anything, but Sapir, one of the great leaders of Judaism in Israel, came from Suwalk. Also, Abraham Stern, we used to call the Stern Gang, which I don’t like the name, he also came from Suwalk, and Stern and I studied together in Suwalk Talmud Torah. We sat together on one bench. So my little town is called Wizan, it’s still on the map like a little small dot, near the city of Suwalk. I was born in a large family, my father, my mother. My father had a father living, my mother had a mother. All told we were 7 children in 3 small little rooms with a roof from straw. No hot water, no cold water, no wooden floor, it was a dirt floor. My father was a baker and there was no bread in the house, and if not for the help from America, from my wonderful cousins and aunts and uncles, we would have starved, like many other people who really died for a piece of bread.

In 1925, when I was approximately 9 years old, a fire burned down almost completely the entire little village, and my large family - I say my large family because I’m the only one who is alive – were separated into 3 different places, and for 6 or 7 months that’s the way we lived, in 3 different places. When I was 10 years old, my father said it was time for you to go to Suwalk, because Suwalk was know to have one of the nicest Talmud Torahs in Poland. Now I say one of the nicest because many Talmud Torahs only concentrated on Talmud, on chumash. The Talmud Torah in Suwalk concentrated on a wide scope of learning, such as Hebrew poetry, history, geography. In Suwalk was one the finest Talmud Torahs we had. In one year I made two classes, and the principal told me that I should go to Grodno. Grodno was known as one of the finest yeshivas in the world. The dean of the yeshiva was one of the great luminaries in Judaism, his name was Rav Shimon Szkop. So I went to Grodno, and my father did not have any money to hire a place for me to stay, so I ate days, meaning Sunday at Mr. Goldberg, Monday at Mr. Rabinowitz, Tuesday at Mr. Kleinman, Wednesday at Mr. Stoltz, and so forth, and if Mrs. Stoltz was sick, so we skipped a day. And if the balabosteh was out of town or somewhere else, then the yeshiva supplied a kich, a kitchen, you know, and where did they take the food? If a butcher did not have no refrigeration, and the butcher had some meat left over and it got spoiled, well, he said, the yeshiva bocherim have a good stomach, so we ate it. If somebody had potatoes that got sour, or frosted, they gave it to the yeshiva bocherim.

In Grodno, I spent approximately 9 years. Grodno really was the place where Yavno years ago was in Judaism. Yeshiva bocherim from all over the world came to Grodno because of this great luminary Shimon Szkop. By the way, his grandson who is a principal in Brooklyn, at one of the high schools, he and I studied at the same time. During the 9 years I was in Grodno, I had to go for a short while in the Mir yeshiva. The Mir was like the Harvard of all the yeshivas in the world. And so for a while I went to the Mir yeshiva. In 1932 or 33, the Bundt became very powerful in Poland, and so they organized their own schools, which was contrary to religious thinking. The Chofetz Chaim, one of the great sages in the 20th century, organized a teacher seminar called the Chorav, and they selected those boys who had a pretty good knowledge, not only in Talmud, but Hebrew literature, poetry and so forth, and I was also selected. So from 8 in the morning until 7 in the evening we stayed in the yeshiva, we concentrated on Talmud and all the commentaries, from 7 to 11 in the evening we went to the Chorav seminar and there we learned to be Hebrew school teachers. But it was very beneficial, and I say beneficial because I had the training in Suwalk that came to my aid and I was accepted and also became ordained as a full-fledged teacher to be able to teach all over the world.

IW: You make it very easy for the interviewer, because you answer the questions before I ask them, which is good. Can you tell us just a little bit more about life in Poland for the Jew during your time?

HL: Life in Poland for the Jewish people was really unbearable, absolutely unbearable. Any anti-Semite, and most of them were, if he felt like having a little fun, and there were no telavisions or theaters, he came up to a Jewish person and beat him up. I’ll never forget one picture which is so vivid in my mind. I was going home from school and there were a bunch of hooligans standing, they surrounded a elderly man with a long beard and they started to tear out his beard piece by piece, and this I can never forget. Now, all kinds of restrictions were applied upon the Jewish people. For instance, in my little town, because it was so close to the German and Lithuanian border, after sunset we were not allowed to move away more than 200 or 300 yards from our homes. We were restricted to go out. They took away the permit for butchers to slaughter the amount of cattle that was needed for the Jewish population. It really was very terrible. For instance, they always advocated that a Polish person should buy only from a Polish merchant, and ignore the Jewish merchants.

Many times, and I even have a little scar on my skull, when Hitler came to power that was the most crucial time – no, excuse me – the most crucial time was really when Tuzutski died, Josef Tuzutski was a Polish hero. He was not a friend of the Jews but a Jewish person saved his life during the first World War and he won the independence of Poland, he was more or less obligated to reciprocate to the Jewish people. So while he was alive, it was mediocre, but when he died, right away they performed pogroms, in Grodno, in Vilna, in Bialystok, and a Jew, if he walked by himself and he met up with a bunch of non-Jewish boys or girls or men, you know, when he came back alive he had to bentch gomel. You know what gomel, means, meaning thank God, he went through and came home safely. So it was a very unfortunate period. They did not have to wait for Hitler to come, they were prepared. The only thing Hitler gave them the clue that now, you can do as much as you want, and when Hitler came to power, I can’t begin to tell you really. Every young man in Poland had only one idea – how do we escape from Poland, how do we run away? As Hitler and the Germans were bad, the Polish people were even worse, because there were stupid hooligans, if I may use this kind of expression. Maybe this should not be recorded, but this is the way we feel about it. So it was not a picnic.

In Grodno, we spent 9 years, for a while in Vilna, in Mir, and at the end we were ordained, myself, my friends, and we started to think, how do we go to Israel? I ran away from Poland because Poland wanted me to go into the army, to serve the army, and I felt, they don’t deserve it, so I made plans to run away from Poland. I still have my false passport which the government said I should remain in Poland, and for 4 weeks I was hiding myself. If I would have been caught I would not have been alive today, and in 1936 I said goodbye to Poland in a very quiet way, with 5 dollars in my pocket, that’s all my father could give me. And after traveling to many different countries, I came to Israel.

IW: How did your parents feel about your leaving them in Poland?

HL: My mother was dead already, but my father and my sisters and brothers, they felt very bad that I’m parting from them, however, they were extremely happy that at least one member of the family would have a chance to remain alive. The last goodbye to my father I don’t have the strength to describe to you.

We came to Israel in 1936, a day after Pesach. The day I came to Israel, the Arabs killed 36 people, if you recall, in Jaffa, in 1936. My first place was in Gedera. I thought I’ll become a religious chalutz, there was a religious kibbutz from Agudas Israel. I stayed there for a couple of days but because of the troubles the Arabs caused, they could not find any material to build, so I decided to go to Jerusalem. After being there two months in Gedera, I came to Jerusalem, I went back to yeshiva which was until 1929 in Hebron, and in 1929. In 1929 they made a pogrom, the Arabs, where the city is now, so they removed the yeshiva back to Jerusalem. I was in the yeshiva during the day, and at night I went to the Hagganah. The Hagganah was for 3 and ½ years and I must say, if I ever felt elated in my life, that was the time when I was given the chance for the first time to stand shmira, guard. It was in a little village not far from Jerusalem, and I was in the wandering brigade that helped to build Chanita, and the last place I was, was in the Dead Sea. Now today, to get from Jerusalem to the Dead Sea takes less than an hour, for my time it took 3, 4, 5 hours. Some of us never made it, because it was a very winding road around, around, you know, the mountains, plus the Arabs used to be among the rocks and shoot at us. So I was there for a number of months, and when they broke the bridges, destroyed the bridges, they dropped us food by airplane because no communication was able to reach us. There I witnessed one of the saddest experiences of my life in the Hagganah. We stood guard, four or five of us, in one place called Feshcha. It was near the potash factories. We were supposed to guard the factories, and I must confess I guess two of us who were supposed to stand guard fell asleep. And the Arabs threw a hand grenade. Two were killed immediately, one died later, and I was given the honor to take them for burial in Tel Aviv. My wife will verify coming back from burying them, I couldn’t go back any more that same evening to the Dead Sea, so I stayed in her house with ammunition, with rifles and so forth, and that was the saddest part.

A happy event took place in the Hagganah when I was assigned to guard in a place in Jerusalem, Eliance Shule, a place where they taught children who came from Sephardic origin. It was in 1938, I was standing guard, it was approximately 4 in the morning, and the place was surrounded by a wall, not a wall actually, a fence, a stone fence. And lo and behold from nowhere, I see a man dressed as an Arab, trying to climb over the fence. Now this Eliance Shule was not only a place for children to get their education, but now I can tell you the secret, that was the place where the Hagganah kept all the little ammunition that was brought into Jerusalem. And I guarded it, and I see the Arab tried to jump over the fence, so according to the Hagganah rules, I took the rifle from my shoulder, and I said Amod – stand. He doesn’t answer, macht er nisht kein tzimmes, you know. Once again Amod – he doesn’t answer, he keeps on running towards me. And the third time, well, this time I’m supposed to shoot him, but I don’t know, from nowhere, God was with me, I said once again, Amod, and the fourth time I said it, he fell into my face and he said in Hebrew, do not shoot, I am a father of 5 children. Well I guess he was stoned and I was stoned from shock, and after we recuperated I said, Meshuggenah, what were you doing, you heard me shouting to you Amod, why didn’t you stand? He said, he go confused, he really thought someone is going to shoot him. So I said to him, what are you doing here? To make the story short, he was the shammes of the shul, and he went to make the lights and prepare so people could come at 6 o’clock to davven. Anyhow, it was a very happy ending because I could have been a murderer of a father of 5 children.

IW: Were there people trying to get into Israel all the time, during this period, and were the Hagganah instrumental in saving and promoting their entrance?

HL: I’m so glad you asked me that question. During the period of being in the Hagganah, there were a lot of things that until the state of Israel came into being, we would not dare say, because nobody knew each other by name, I only knew 12 people in the Hagganah, because of secrecy, because we had a double war to fight. It wasn’t just the Arabs that we had to fight, but rather the English as well, the democratic England who were so brutal. Instead of helping us to defend ourselves, every time a settlement was attacked, they protected the attackers instead of us. And so when the illegal immigration started, the Hagganah was deeply involved in bringing people into Israel. How did we do it? Well, we got a sign that this particular day and hour all of us must be in Natanya at the beach. Well, it’s nice to take a swim, Natanya’s very nice, but that was not the purpose. The purpose was that little boats came 200 or 300 or 500 yards away from shore. Let’s say 1000 – 2000 members of the Hagganah boys and girls came, with bathing suits, and we all jumped in the water. The illegal immigrants were unloaded from the little boats, they were mixed up with the rest of us, and even the chochonim, the English people, really did not know who is illegal and who is legal. We told them we came here to bathe, so they overlooked it. So this was part of the illegal immigration, and thousands of young men and young women came to the shores thanks to the Hagganah.

And there was another big problem, if I may tell you, was how to get the little ammunition from the shore towns to inside Israel. For instance, in Tel Aviv, Natanya, Haifa, it was easy. Little boats came, you know, disguised. But how do you bring over the ammunition from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem? The roads were thickly patrolled by the English, and every time they caught a Jewish person carrying ammunition, they sent them to the gallows. Shlomo ben Yosef, I visited him in the prison three days before he was hung. He took blood from his veins and wrote on the wall, “to die, or to conquer the mountain”. So it was so terrible to bring the ammunition to the proper places. But you know, here you buy a fish, the biggest fish you buy is 5 pounds, 10 pounds. Not in Israel – they buy a fish, iz gezunterheit, each one weighs 25, 50, 100 pounds. We took out the insides, the bellies, and we stuffed in the real McCoy, you know, real gefilte fish we made, and that’s how we had provided the Hagganah with the proper ammunition. Let’s say a Polish rifle, it was taken apart, wrapped nicely, protected, and that’s how we brought the ammunition into Jerusalem and many other places. IW: Was the Hagganah a well-disciplined group?

HL: Tremendously disciplined. But I must say that not all the members of the Hagganah agreed with the policies of the Sochanut. Because the policy was to overlook, to overlook, to overlook, and I don’t have to tell you that young people don’t want to overlook, and then I was a little bit younger than today, and the blood was boiling for all the injustices that were done against the Jewish people. The Avrum Stern, Avrum Stern that I had the greatest privilege in my life, I consider, to have known in person and studied together on the same bench. He was the greatest patriot you have ever seen in your life. I would compare him to Judah Maccabee, or Eliezar ben Yair, that you saw yesterday, you know, the Masada. They really didn’t care for their lives at all, they did not care, and I believe that all three groups did a tremendous job, that today we have the state of Israel because of them. As far as discipline was concerned, the greatest discipline was in the Stern group.

IW: During this period, you were very busy, you were actively involved in many different things, but you had time for a little romance in your life, I think.

HL: In 1938 Toscanini came to Jerusalem to conduct the Philharmonic Orchestra where the great Uberman organized the symphony, and by the way he used to come for vacation to the Dead Sea and we stood guard at the hotel there.

IW: You were talking about Toscanini and the fact that you didn’t have a radio.

HL: Right. Well, I would say that Toscanini was my shadchen. How, because we did not have no radio. Anyhow, a friend of ours had a radio, so a bunch of young boys and young girls congregated in his 2 x 4 room, you know, to listen to Toscanini and one of the girls was my wife, and I was as far from getting married as I am now from the moon. I couldn’t support myself, much less a wife also. Anyhow, in 1939 we got married.

IW: Who proposed?

HL: My wife proposed. Anyhow, at that time I wasn’t in the Dead Sea, really, I was in the Hagganah. And over there we suffered a great deal because we couldn’t get water to drink and food to eat, so every so often she used to send me a packalet. On Friday, hundreds of trucks came. No truck would travel by himself in the dead sea. In 1939 we got married and in 1940 I came to America. She went to America 9 days after we got married.

IW: Now how could you leave Israel and go to America? You weren’t a citizen. How did you get a visa?

HL: Because of my wife. She was an American citizen through her father. So she went to America 9 days later, and she left me on my honeymoon for 15 months alone, and in 1940 I came to this country, and that was the last boat that sailed from Israel to the United States. The name of the boat was Mer Helas. It was a Greek boat, it was not a luxurious boat but going back she was sunk, because the war was in full force, the Mediterranean especially, and I was 7 weeks on the boat until I came to these shores.

In 1940 I came here, April 2nd, and I was looking for a job, although there was an opening in Hartford but that is another history. My first position was Roanoke, Virginia.

IW: You came here, you didn’t know the language, you had no family here.

HL: I had a sister.

IW: Your wife had her family here, and how did you land in Roanoke?

HL: After traveling around looking for a position, for instance I heard there was a position opening in Newport, Rhode Island, the Touro Synagogue, so Shavuos 1940 I went down there for Shabbas, Sunday, Monday, and I preached in Yiddish, and they liked me, and I would have liked them even more, but they wouldn’t take me because I didn’t speak English. So September 14, 1940 my sister said, there’s a little town called Roanoke, Virginia, and they have two synagogues, a Reform synagogue and Orthodox synagogue. The Orthodox synagogue has 65 families and they’re looking for an Orthodox rabbi. Well, I went down there, and my salary was 11 dollars a week. I was very happy to get it, but I must say that my wife and I have a tremendous amount of gratitude in our hearts, because they have been extremely wonderful to us. Suddenly they forgot Yiddish, they wanted me to learn English. They introduced me as a mohel, there was a Dr. Jacobson, there was a man by name of Mr. Brenner who was partly retired. He had a car and he traveled with me in all the little towns to introduce me as a mohel. Forever and forever we’ll be grateful to them. Our first two children, Jacob and Rachel were born there, and the younger one was born already in Middletown. But we stayed there for 4 years, I learned a little bit of English, I was introduced to many organizations and I was able to speak.

The first speech I made in English was “A year of being in America”. At that time, 1941, Dr. Menachem Mendel Ussishkin, one of the great Jewish pioneers, passed away, and I knew him personally from the Hagganah. So Dr. Jacobson was the president of the Zionist organization, and said to me, why don’t you speak about this man, we’ll have a memorial service. But I said, I can’t talk English. We came to the place, everybody was there, and introduced me, and he says, Well, this man knew Menachem Mendel Ussishkin personally, he’s going to speak, but the greatest thing will be that he’s going to speak in English. Ladies and gentleman, if a grave would have opened up, I would have dropped in right there and then. However, I also passed this crisis in my life too, I think that my hands spoke more than my mouth and I felt sorry for Menachem Mendel Ussishkin not only for dying, but for having had such a poor person to speak about them.

Anyhow, 4 years later, my wife was longing to be closer to her family. We came to Middletown. I jumped a little the gun, as we say it. When I met my wife and we got married and was 15 months alone in Israel – not alone, in Israel you’re not alone, but without her – she wrote me a letter that in America, unless you know the language, to take a position as a rabbi is very difficult. So then I learned to be a shochet, and I also learned to be mohel in Haddassah Hospital. Professor Zondig was one of the lecturers. Rabbi Halker was my teacher. I worked in Haddassah and also Koholem Hospital, and the Sharit Tzedik, that’s where I learned to do a little bit of circumcision on adults, because there was Balach, a very religious man, a doctor and he also was a mohel. I’m very grateful for these two things that I learned, they came in very, very handy.

Now, coming to Middletown I was second in command over there, and we stayed there for 12 years, and our youngest son was born, and we were very happy, we left as very good friends. One day somebody told me that they would like to change to become Conservative. Well, I didn’t want to be in their way, and from nowhere I got a telephone call from Mr. Arthur Stolt, that they built a little synagogue on Blue Hills Avenue, and they’re looking for somebody to be the leader. Well, without any questions, I took the position for 35 dollars a week. And the membership was listed, I believe 39 members, half of them were in the Hebrew Home for the Aged, another half of the leftover were ready to make applications, and that’s how I became associated with Teferes Israel.

But later on in a short while, Teferes Israel started to grow. We organized a cheder, at first with 19 children, we had no classrooms on Blue Hills Avenue. We taught in the kitchen, on the stairs, in the hallway, but the children did very well and 4 years later we added a new addition on Blue Hills Avenue, December 4, 1960 was the dedication. Ten years later, because of changing sections of support, we came to this place in Bloomfield and I must tell you, ladies and gentlemen, I’m completing in August 25 very rewarding years. If I would be younger and just to take a position, I could not ask for a better congregation, more friendlier people, more congenial people, than I have now. There’s always a prayer in my heart for all of them because, frankly, they have been very nice to me. If they can cope with me, they must be angels.

I would like to tell you that I was very fortunate in my life to have known personally, David Ben Gurion, Zeev Jabotinsky, Ben-Zvi, and by the way, Rachel Yanait, she was the superviser of four hundred German infants who were brought over, and I used to stand guard. I also stand guard at Weitzman’s house near Rehovot. And if I may share a little joke with you, and I will never forget it, I was walking around with my friend, guarding this place near Rehovot, and the old lady’s mother was still alive. She comes out, she couldn’t speak Hebrew, she spoke Yiddish, from Pinsk, you know? She says to us, kinderlach cumt arein, nemt a glessele tea, varmt zich ohn. It was during the winter. So I said to her Mrs. Weitzman, we’re not allowed to, we’re on guard.

I knew Menachim Mendel Ussishkin, Avrum Stern, Sapir came from Sewalk. Begin I met once coming from Brisk, he stopped in Grodno, we had a chat. He doesn’t remember, it was many years ago. One of the greatest teachers I had in my life was the dean of Grodno Yeshiva. I knew personally Wasserman, Rubenstein the chief rabbi of Vilna. I knew Dr. Zaminoff, the originator of Esperanto, the international language. These are the people I cherish that I had the opportunity to know them.

I traveled quite a bit, not as a tourist but as a necessity. I wouldn’t say traveled. Ich bin geloffen. You ran for your life. And many places in Poland, in Sewalk, in Grodno, in Bialystok, Warsaw, Lvov, Lemberg, and in 17 different countries until I came to this country. In Roanoke, Virginia, in 1941 when the war broke out, although I knew my English was limited, I wanted to do right away something for this country. So I went and I tried to enlist in the Army as a chaplain. They looked over my credentials, everything was kosher. But my feet were not kosher, I had flat feet, so they rejected me. I was dying to do something, so I enlisted as a civilian chaplain, and while being in Roanoke they gave me permission to travel to Ashford General Hospital in White Sulphur Springs. So I served two places, Roanoke, but I was so happy and so proud, I also went once a week, for a day or two to Ashford General Hospital and I took care of 3000 soldiers who came wounded from across. Now they had other chaplains as well but many times I was alone, but anyhow that was also very gratifying because there were some boys who were blinded. I used to write letters, especially in Yiddish, to their parents. It was a very gratifying years, being a chaplain for the United States.

I’m now a member of a number of organizations. First, I’m a member of Igud haRabbonim, the Rabbinical Alliance of the U.S., a membership of 650 or 700 rabbis all over the world. The Chief Rabbi of Israel is also a member. I’ve served in many capacities in the organization – as treasurer, secretary, and now I’m the national vice-president. I’m a member of the Massachusetts rabbis, Hartford, Connecticut and a number of other things as well.

IW: As a rabbi, you seem to have a joy that’s readily recognized. All rabbis don’t seem to ejoy their work as thoroughly as you do. What is it about you and your work that projects this kind of joy and happiness, and feeling of fulfillment?

HL: I don’t know. First of all, I love people and I seek my brethren. If I will not do for my people, nobody else cares, and I have seen that in my lifetime. The English did not care to do anything for the Jewish people. The world does not care, I do care. To me, whether you’re a real brother or not it doesn’t matter, I love people. Second, the reward of doing good things is the greatest reward. In other words, you’re highly compensated if you can lift a downcast face, if you can bring a smile to a sad face, this is tremendous. And above all, ladies and gentlemen, I was not better off than my brother and my sisters – not at all. They were perhaps much superior than I. They were learned, they were honest, they were Jews. How come that they are not alive and I’m alive? I don’t know why. What have I done? But because I cannot bring them back to life, I feel that I owe my people something, and therefore, I feel that no task is too great, and I really and truly enjoy doing it. And let me tell you, ladies and gentlemen, is when I can do something not to get paid. You know, being a mohel for a number of years, the greatest joy I have is when I’m called in to do a Russian child, all ages. This is really a thrill in my life. I feel elated; I feel inspired, bringing a child into the Covenant of Abraham, making one of us, and we do it for the sake of having another full-fledged member in our fold.

IW: I think we know that you have been one of the most active mohels in this area, for many years. Would you venture to say how many circumcisions you’ve done in the course of your life?

HL: I would say close to 7000.

IW: There are always a few questions that I think people would like to ask a rabbi but they never dare. One is, what does a rabbi do for recreation?

HL: The same as what a mailman does on a day that he has off. He takes a walk. A rabbi takes a book to read. This is the greatest joy. I would like to go back for one minute about the circumcisions. Now 7000’s a great number. I want you to know, ladies and gentlemen, that it was not published, it really was not necessary to publish it. When the war ended, and thousands of children came to the United States with their parents and from the concentration camps, they were uncircumcised. There was a Dr. Friedman in Colchester, Ct. He had a convalescent home. He and I have circumcised hundreds and hundreds of children. I had to have a doctor, and a place. He offered his specialty and his place, and so we did hundreds of circumcisions for the children who came from the concentration camps. That had to be taboo for a number of years, but now I think it’s 25 years later we can reveal the secret.

IW: What kind of reading do you do, Rabbi? Is it primarily scholarly reading, related to your profession?

HL: I enjoy mostly related to my profession. So many things coming up, that years ago when I assumed the rabbinate I would never think of the kind of questions and problems we have today. When I came to the US and one of my uncles was a very learned man, he was on the Board of Directors of Yeshiva University. He looked over my credentials and said, Haskel, I’m so proud of you, and then he goes over and takes out a pocket calendar and puts it in my pocket. I said, What is that, Uncle? He says listen to me – a woman will come to you and say Rabbi, what time do we bentsh licht Friday, and you don’t know, you might as well pack up and go away, you better have a calendar with you. So he gave me a calendar. That was the problem, when do we bentsh licht. A woman had to have a kosher chicken, was it kosher or not? Today we have problems that we have to be familiar with medicine, with psychiatry, you know I always say that the police station is open for me, even the jail is open, because in the middle of the night I would be woken up and say a nice Jewish boy was arrested. Years ago, we didn’t have these problems, so we have to know what really goes on in the world. But the most important book that I study is the Bible and the Talmud. I find great joy in it. My wife will verify that every Saturday, although we don’t start services until 9 o’clock, I get up at 5. I can sleep until 8, but I enjoy the study of Talmud for 2 or 3 hours. It brings back wonderful memories. We call it the Yam haTalmud, the sea of the Talmud, so I enjoy it.

IW: What do you feel about the future of Judaism in this country? There must be many disappointments – to see so much intermarriage, to see so many young Jewish people leave the faith. How do you react, and how do you encourage those who want to stay?

HL: I would say I’m one of the very few rabbis who is faced with this problem almost daily, because to tell you statistics, every third child that we do a circumcision today will be mixed up in one way or the other. How do we look upon it? A week a go Sunday I gave a lecture to our newly-formed young Mr. and Mrs. Club, and the subject was, the bal tshuva – those who return to Judaism. There are people who have been disappointed in life, who engage in all kinds of drugs, in all kinds of mischievousness, and they found out that this was not satisfying to them and they return to Judaism. Now to answer your question briefly, I would say the American Jewry is at a crossroads, and to give you a parable, I would say there are two trains. One train is bringing in new immigrants, and one train is pulling away from us. The train that’s pulling away is intermarriages and so forth, the one train that brings in is the bal tshuvah phenomenon. Thousands of young boys and girls suddenly are returning to authentic Judaism, and they would not deviate one iota from the halacha type life.

IW: I think our time has just about been concluded. We thank you very much. Perhaps there will be some questions afterwards that members of the audience would like to direct to you.