Humble Beginnings
Rabbi Yaakov Goldberg, Rosh HaYeshivah
I was still in Kollel and my daughter was
soon to be born. I started looking for a job, and Rabbi Jacobson came to me
with an offer. He asked if I would like to give a shiur in Hadar Hatorah. At
this time Hadar Hatorah was small and looking to become a Yeshiva. This was in
‘68. Yeshiva students could postpone their army service. A number of young
men were interested in learning and Rabbi Jacobson got an idea to build a
yeshiva for them.
When I started my first class, there were
six bocherim. At this time I didn’t speak English. I had never paid
attention to English. Rabbi Jacobson told me originally that I was not going
to have to teach in English - I never would taken such a job, because it
wasn’t my language. He told me they speak Yiddish, and when I started
teaching them, I really started in Yiddish. Two of the six spoke some Yiddish.
And then they started telling me that they didn’t understand, and they asked
me if I could use some English words -and I started using it. I changed it
from French (which I knew) words to English.
Despite the language problems, I had a very
good rapport with them, and I was friendly with them. They liked not so much
what I did, but the way I was - very friendly, young - their age, in fact I
wasn’t so much older than some of them. They took me as a friend-chaver, not
as a teacher. And we had a very good rapport, they told Rabbi Jacobson they
were happy. And I became convinced that I was speaking well.
The Yeshiva slowly built up. There was a big
movement of baalei teshuvah starting to come, and we started accepting more
bocherim in Yeshiva. There were a lot of people constantly coming. The
shluchim were sending them from all over. They just used to come, without
notice, and we had to choose who to accept - we weren’t accepting everybody.
Many of those people seemed to the community
to be abnormal -not because there was anything really wrong with them - they
were very normal people. But the community was not used to these kinds of
people being the way they were - the sincerity, the naiveness. There was a
certain naiveness that a lot of people had, a sincerity - but it came just
from ignorance because they didn’t know. And that’s why many people in the
community would look at them as strange. In the beginning, at the end of the
‘60’s, a lot of them were just like hippies - they just liked to be
different and strange - faded clothes, hair, meditating. But we got used to
them. We looked at them as normal people, just that they needed some
straightening out.
The Rebbe was very happy with Rabbi
Jacobson’s work here. He said to him, "Many of your talmidim, they came
to me, and I knew who they were and I’m seeing them now and they have
changed a kotze l’kotze (from one end to another). The Rebbe once said to me
that he knew of the great good deeds which we have accomplished. The Rebbe was
very happy with Hadar Hatorah.
