The Jewish Home | NOVEMBER 16, 2017 The Jewish Home | OCTOBER 29, 2015
first American-born rebbeim in the United States, Rabbi Diskind was a progressive mechanech for his times, understanding the needs of students. Certain things that he did then are only now being instituted in yeshivos. For example, he made birchas hamazon contests for his students, attempting to engage and inspire his students. Before every school year, he would call each parent. Today, we consider that a given but back then no other rebbe was calling a child’s home to speak to his parents before school started. A call in those days usually meant trouble, not a caring rebbe on the other line. Rabbi Diskind kept in touch with the parents of his students throughout the school year, and he lavished extra attention on children from single-parent homes. “Instead of potches, my father was giving out little cars and prizes,” Rebbetzin Bender recalls. Aside from the chinuch she learned at home, Rebbetzin Bender attended Crown Heights Yeshiva for elementary school. In those days, there were three large high schools for girls in the area: Esther Schoenfeld, Central of Brooklyn, and Bais Yaakov of Williamsburg. Each school had hundreds of students. Rebbetzin Bender attended Esther Schoenfeld High School on the East Side of Manhattan. She would travel for an hour each way during her high school years. Her choice of high school led to her shidduch years later. At the time, Rebbetzin Bruriah David, daughter of Rav Hutner and founder of BJJ in Yerushalayim, had a seminary attached to Esther Schoenfeld High School. This was before Rebbetzin David went to Boro Park and before she went to Eretz Yisroel. The seminary started, for students of Esther Schoenfeld, in January of twelfth grade and was a two year program. When Rebbetzin Basya Bender, Rabbi Bender’s mother, called Rebbetzin David for information about a young lady who had attended Esther Schoenfeld seminary, they both realized that the shidduch with that young woman was not a match for Rabbi Bender. Bryna Diskind’s name came up – and
Rabbi Bender as a seventh grade rebbi, his first year at Darchei, in 1978-79
that was how the shidduch came to be between Rabbi and Rebbetzin Bender. “So I have hakaras hatov to Rebbetzin David on many levels – for my chinuch, my hashkafa, and, of course, for my lifetime, basically,” Rebbetzin Bender says. When they were first married, Rabbi Bender learned in the kollel in Mirrer Yeshiva in Brooklyn. After kollel, Rabbi Bender worked part-
When the Bender family finally moved to Far Rockaway 34 years ago, it was not the Far Rockaway of today. “There was potential here,” Rebbetzin Bender explains. Even so, some people thought they were moving to the “boondocks,” she adds. There were a number of shuls and yeshivos in the community at the time. Yeshiva Darchei Torah was small – there was no Mesivta
“People should know it’s an achrayis and a zechus to be able to be there and to take care of your own children.”
time for Agudah and then became a seventh grade rebbe in Yeshiva Darchei Torah in Far Rockaway. At the end of the year he was asked to become menahel. During the first five years of being a rebbe and then menahel in Yeshiva Darchei Torah, Rabbi Bender would travel back and forth between Far Rockaway and Brooklyn, where the family and their five children lived. Although they were asked to move to Far Rockaway during those years, they took their time, deciding only after five years of traveling to move to Far Rockaway.
Chaim Shlomo, no bais medrash, and no kollel. The 878 wasn’t here. Everything was smaller. Since then the community has grown exponentially. “The yeshiva,” Rebbetzin Bender notes, “has a lot to do with it.” The Bender family couldn’t afford much but managed to buy a house for under one hundred thousand dollars. “We haven’t looked back,” the rebbetzin quips.
Teaching Young Women When the family moved to Far
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Rockaway, Rebbetzin Bender began to teach in TAG High School. She has been teaching girls for 46 years. Her first two years of teaching were in the fourth grade in Bnos Yisroel of East Flatbush. She then taught high school in Bais Yaakov of Williamsburg with her mother-in-law, Rebbetzin Basya Bender, and then spent nine years in Yeshiva of Brooklyn teaching high school. “I enjoy teaching young, intelligent adults,” she says. Hundreds of students have passed through her Chumash, Navi, and Jewish history classes in TAG High School. Her Jewish history classes are about recent movements in history through a Torah perspective. The girls learn about the Bais Yaakov movement – which Rebbetzin Bender knows a lot about from her mother-in-law, Rebbetzin Basya Bender, who was a talmidah of Sarah Schenirer. They learn about the yeshiva movement and the Reform and Conservative movements. Rebbetzin Bender covers Israeli politics and speaks about how the Knesset works. She cuts out articles from newspapers to show the girls the facts. It’s interesting and relevant for these young girls – whether or not they go to Israel for the year. Teaching young women today presents its own challenges. “Girls today are more knowledgeable about certain things in life but not necessarily about certain things in Yiddishkeit,” Rebbetzin Bender notes. “Our children have grown up in a place with a whole infrastructure of Yiddishkeit, Torah, yeshivos, etc. But the challenge for today in chinuch is that we can’t just assume that people are going to stay on the right path because they were born into that. We have to try to give over a passion, an inspiration, for Yiddishkeit.” She adds a caveat: “We can’t just do things by habit.” The questions that girls pose today are different than what they were years ago. “They are more challenging. They are questions brought out by being exposed to so many different hashkafos. There are so many different ideas today that are antithetical to our Torah values.” And our children are exposed to them too. Aside from teaching young wom-