NCSY Director of Education, Rabbi Dovid Bashevkin, sits with Rabbi Hershel Schachter to discuss Rabbi Schachter’s teenage years. RABBI DOVID BASHEVKIN (RDB): We would like to thank Rebbe for joining us. It means so much to me and to NCSY. We have been discussing the teenage experience with great Jewish leaders and I was wondering if Rebbe could share what it was like for him growing up as a teenager? RAV HERSHEL SCHACHTER: My father was an Orthodox Rabbi in different communities. My father was very learned and I always thought he was the biggest talmid chacham in the world until he once took me to Rabbi Soloveitchik’s yahrtzeit drasha when I was about eleven years old and I was so disappointed - I saw there was someone who knows how to learn better than my father! It was such
a let down. I was always brought up in a home of learning and a home of shemiras ha’mitzvos and the shul was always Orthodox. I never had any challenges. By the time I was Bar Mitzvah my family had moved to New York - I was originally born in Pennsylvania. September after I became bar mitzvah, I went to MTA, Yeshiva University’s high school, and it was great! Each one of the four years I had a wonderful rebbe. I remember the summer that I turned fourteen, after the first year of high school, my rebbe was Rabbi Moshe Dovid Tendler, and he sent a group of maybe 10-15 boys to go learn in Lakewood. It was a tiny little yeshiva then, with less than 100 people, and the whole group of us who learned in Lakewood thought this was never going to succeed so we went back to YU. After the summer in Lakewood, for the next three summers I learned in Brooklyn in the Mirrer Yeshiva. My parents could never afford to send me to camp. My vacations used to be that I would spend one summer by this aunt and uncle and one summer by the other aunt and uncle. I continued to learn in Yeshiva all of my years - it was very pleasant. I had good rebbeim every year but in my third year of high school, my rebbi told me that next year I should be put in Rav Soloveitchick’s shiur. Because I was so young and Rav Soloveitchik only gave shiur on Tuesday and Wednesday, they said I had to be in a shiur that met every day, but that I should go to Rabbi Soloveitchik’s shiur on Tuesday and Wednesday. That was fantastic, and I continued by Rav Soloveitchik for ten years, until after I got married. I had a very pleasant time. RDB: Some people who grow up in the house of a rabbi find it harder for them
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because there are a lot of expectations. Why do you think you may not have had those difficulties? RHS: I don’t know. I never had any problems. They told me that Rabbi Yoel Schonfeld was once asked in public, does he find it difficult to be in the shadow of his father? He responded that he is not in the shadow of, but is in the sunshine of his father! Why does it have to be the shadow? I always got along with my father. In fact, in those years, when I was probably 16-17, my father would have me speak in shul before kerias haTorah every Shabbos morning. My father would give the drasha, but I would speak for 5-10 minutes to explain what the parsha was all about, what the Haftarah was all about.