It was the spring of 1976; I was teaching English at YHSQ and was the de facto assistant principal at MTJ in the afternoon. The English Chairman at YHSQ was Marvin Hirschorn, who also served as the Chairman of the Board of Education at the Hebrew Academy of Nassau County. When the then-current general studies principal, Mrs. Sally Reimer, decided to retire to Florida, Mr. Hirschorn suggested I interview for the position. By that time, HANC had already established itself as one of the elite yeshivah day schools in the country, and I approached the upcoming interview with HANC’s Dean with more than a little trepidation.
The contrast between the setting of the school on the Lower East Side with the greenery of HANC’s Mitchel Field campus was stunning. But the interview with Rabbi Fendel was pleasant and most informative. After discussing the various aspects of the position to me, we wandered into the hallway just as the class change bell was ringing. The first thing that caught my eye was the diversity of the student population – boys with white shirts, black pants, and velvet yarmulkas were walking with boys with longish hair (this was the 1970s!) and kippot that were obvious strangers to their heads. “What type of school is this that caters to such different levels of religiosity? How does it work?”
Rabbi Fendel’s answer summed up what HANC was all about: “We are a community school; we accept all those who want to attend a yeshivah to learn about their heritage and to see the beauty of the Torah. We are not concerned with the way they come in; what’s important is the way they go out. And that is one aspect of HANC’s eternal motto: “Chanoch LaNa’ar al pi Darko” – Teach a child on his own level of background and understanding. This is what HANC is and hopefully will always be.” And with these wise words ringing in my head, I became a colleague of Rabbi Fendel and part of the “HANC Family.”
The Early Beginnings
In 1952, Rabbi Fendel accepted the position of “Director of School Development” within Torah Umesorah, a job designed to develop new Jewish day schools throughout the US. At that time, Nassau County was a Torah wasteland. And although almost all the synagogues were affiliated with the Conservative and Reform movements, many were staffed by Orthodox rabbis who were interested in having a religious day school but were not ready to take the initiative. Eventually, West Hempstead was the town chosen to be the site of the fledgling school, despite the fact that there were only one or two observant families residing therein. Around that time, a small ad inserted by a man who had recently moved into the Hempstead area appeared in a local newspaper. It read, “Nine Men Wanted for a Minyan.”
Rabbi Fendel began the new school, later to be named the Hebrew Academy of Nassau County, in a building complex known as the Oppenheimer Collins Estate, located on the site of the present-day elementary school. But problems arose almost immediately when one of the occupants of the complex refused to vacate the premises. But hashgachah pratis saw Hashem’s Hand in getting the school established: The intractable occupant worked at the Brooklyn Navy Yard and was suddenly and tragically killed by a falling concrete block! Thus, the now vacant building was able to become the early home of the nascent school, which would eventually become a four-campus megalopolis with over 1,000 students. Rabbi Fendel would become the new school’s principal as well as the first rabbi of the Young Israel of West Hempstead.
The Influence of Rav Kook
Rabbi Fendel venerated Rav Avraham Yitzchak HaKohen Kook zt”l, and the educational philosophy of HANC is based on it. HANC’s official seal says it all: Chanoch LaNaar al Pi Darko: Educate the child according to his ways. Each child in HANC was deemed to be special and was to be educated accordingly. This resulted in the entire educational entity becoming one extended family: the HANC Family. The bonds between the students and their teachers became similar to those between them and their parents and grandparents.
To accomplish this, Rabbi Fendel had to become a type of “benevolent dictator.” To be assured that everyone employed at HANC was on a similar track, he hand-selected his administrators, his staff, and – most importantly – the heads and members of the Board of Education and Board of Directors, so that the entire school became a reflection of his sensitivity, personality, and vision of what Jewish education should be. It was a glorious era!
Rabbi Fendel Changed My Life
“To say that HANC changed my life is too trite a statement,” says Rabbi Dovid Orlofsky, famed rabbi, teacher, and lecturer, “How about it gave me my very life! I grew up in a home that was not shomer Shabbos. There was no reason that my family should not have quietly assimilated, just like the millions of other nominally affiliated Jews of that era. That Rabbi Fendel moved onto Long Island in the 1950s to start an Orthodox day school was nothing short of miraculous. Because of his vision, today my parents have over 37 grandchildren and almost as many great-grandchildren – all of them shomrei Torah u’mitzvos.
The New Opportunity Program (NOP)
Perhaps Rabbi Fendel’s greatest educational achievement was his establishment of HANC’s unique New Opportunities Program (NOP), designed to be able to accept students into the HANC junior or senior high school with little or no Torah background. With just a basic knowledge of Hebrew literacy, a boy or girl would be placed in special classes in the morning, teaching them the basics of Chumash, Navi, Halachah, and Jewish History, while attending mainstream general studies classes in the afternoon. Teens who received a taste of Torah from a summer’s experience with NCSY or JEP would apply for admission in late August. If this program had brought even a single person into the world of Torah-true Judaism, it would have fulfilled its mission. How much more so when it has brought hundreds into the world of Torah Judaism.
And the stories that emanate from the NOP program are electrifying. There was the odyssey of Yitzchak P. When the Shah of Iran was deposed, Jewish parents in Iran began smuggling their children out of the country through Pakistan and Vienna to the US to stay with relatives in Great Neck, Long Island, which was already morphing into New Tehran and Mashad. Yitzchak’s uncle brought him to HANC a few weeks before Pesach, asking the school to accept him. When he was asked if he knew a little Chumash, he looked bewildered. “The Bible,” we explained. “Oh, yes. I know the Quran.”
Since he had to know at least some of the basics of Hebrew and Judaism to be able to function in a class that had been in progress already for a number of months, we suggested he contact a tutor we recommended to bring him up to snuff by the end of Pesach. To our astonishment, when he returned after Pesach, not only did he know how to read Hebrew, but he had already mastered the basics of Chumash and Mishnah! What happened to him? After graduating from HANC, he went to Yehivas Ner Yisroel in Baltimore to learn full time. By the end of Sukkos, Rabbi Fendel received a call from the mashgiach of Ner Yisroel relating a “problem” they were having with Yitzchak: Yitzchak was refusing to leave the beis midrash when they wanted to close the lights at 2:00 a.m.! (PS: Yitzchak attended medical school and is now a prominent physician.)
And then there’s the story of Wade Jones. Who is Wade Jones, you ask? That’s exactly what I wanted to know when I received a phone call from NCSY Los Angeles one morning in August, asking if our school had a program that could take in an 11th grader with no yeshivah background. I said we do, but the boy would have to be able to read Hebrew. “Oh, that’s no problem. He taught himself to read Hebrew through the transliterated NCSY bencher. And he will be flying out to meet you next week. Oh, by the way, his name is Wade Jones.”
Wade Jones? A picture began forming in my mind of a 6’11” Black basketball player. “Wade Jones?” I stammered. “Don’t worry; he’s Jewish.” Thus began the legend of Wade Jones, who flew through the NOP Program on wings of determination, entered mainstream limudei kodesh shiurim in mid-year, and went on to learn in Eretz Yisrael. Upon returning to America, “Wade” became “Aharon Velvel,” and is now a well-known askan in the Five Towns. These are but two of the stories of the countless other boys and girls who can credit Rabbi Fendel’s visionary program, turning their lives around and who are now raising their own families under the umbrella of Torah.
Let My People Go!
The 1980s was a decade of protests and demonstrations against the government of the Soviet Union and its treatment of its “refuseniks,” Jews who wished to leave religion-less Russia to emigrate to Israel. For their desires to return to the land of their ancestors, they were imprisoned, tortured, and consigned to gulags in Siberia, enduring years of tortured existences.
The most famous of these refuseniks were Yosef Mendelevitch and Anatoly (Natan) Sharansky, who became the poster people for the protests held with increasing frequency in front of the UN or the Russian consulate. But HANC did more than just attend protest rallies and write letters. Every day – rain or shine, warm or cold – Rabbi Fendel assigned two cars filled with HANC students to be driven to the courthouse in Mineola, where the students and their teachers, sometimes accompanied by local rabbis, would daven Minchah and recite T’hilim under banners calling for Russia to “Let My People Go.” This went on for years until both Mendelevitch and Sharansky were able to leave the Soviet Union for Eretz Yisrael. And in hakaras ha’tov (appreciation) for what the HANC students had done for him, he stopped off at HANC on the way to JFK to thank Rabbi Fendel and the HANC students in person.
Love Your Neighbor
HANC’s Middle School and High School are located on five acres of land that once was the Mitchel Field Air Force Base during World War II. Its neighbor was an Army Reserve Base, housing MP and MASH units. As soon as the school was opened, Rabbi Fendel crossed over to the base and introduced himself, telling the base commander that the school would be there for them, if needed. And when it was announced that the units that trained there would be called up for duty in Iraq during the first Gulf War, HANC students geared up for action, as well. On the day before the reserve soldiers “bugged out,” the entire school marched to the base with signs and songs wishing them success and praying that they would all return to this base safely. It was a tremendous kiddush Hashem, and the tears in the eyes of both soldiers and students were readily visible.
“V’ha’aretz haysah tohu va’vohu”
Before Rabbi Fendel arrived on the scene, there was a void of Judaism on Long Island. Settling in West Hempstead, Rabbi Fendel spent his life planting the seeds of Torah in West Hempstead and watching them grow into the Young Israel of West Hempstead and the fledgling Hebrew Academy of Nassau County, which began its existence in an old mansion with less than 20 students. Rabbi Fendel was zocheh to see it grow and expand to four campuses (middle and high schools in Mitchel Field, elementary schools in West Hempstead and Plainview (formerly Bethpage), and an early childhood center in West Hempstead) and over a thousand students – before retiring to continue his work for Torah in Eretz Yisrael.
Y’hi Zichro Baruch.
Epilogue
During the years during which I served as the President of the Yeshiva High Schools Principals’ Council of the Board of Jewish Education, I was privileged to have had close relationships with many renowned educators from the finest yeshivah high schools in the Tri-State area. I respected them all, but they were jealous of me because I was constantly telling them that HANC was a school that functioned without politics, without machlokes. I happily explained to them that Rabbi Fendel ran the school for the benefit of its students, enacted its policies, and hired the appropriate personnel to have these policies enacted. There was a unanimity of purpose, with everyone doing his or her best to assist Rabbi Fendel in carrying out HANC’s mission of “Chanoch la’naar al pi darko.” HANC was an educational utopia, an ideal place to learn and work.
By Rabbi Schaye Schonbrun
