{"id":15513,"date":"2017-06-22T14:53:22","date_gmt":"2017-06-22T14:53:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jewishaction.com\/?p=15513"},"modified":"2025-06-12T14:58:38","modified_gmt":"2025-06-12T14:58:38","slug":"limelight-children-rabbis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jewishaction.com\/religion\/limelight-children-rabbis\/","title":{"rendered":"In The Limelight"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Top: Rabbis Emanuel and Ilan Feldman. Photo: Harold Alan Photographers\/Harold Schroeder<\/em>
Bottom: The Feldman family, circa 1960. Courtesy of Ella Szczupak<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n

As soon as President Trump entered office, his son Barron became public property as \u201cFirst Boy.\u201d The media analyzed Barron\u2019s every move and rumors ran rampant. His childhood was up for grabs; his life was no longer his own.<\/p>\n

Growing up as the child of any influential person poses challenges, and the children of shul rabbis, prominent lay leaders and other important community figures are no exception. I spoke with the sons and daughters of well-known rabbis, rebbetzins<\/em> and community leaders about how their childhoods in the limelight shaped their worldview, their self-image and their lives.<\/p>\n

Rabbi Jacob J. Schacter is professor of Jewish history and Jewish thought at Yeshiva University, senior scholar at the Center for the Jewish Future at YU, and the son of the late Rabbi Herschel Schacter, a national Jewish leader and revered rabbi of Mosholu Park Jewish Center in the Bronx. He realized early on that his father was unlike other fathers. In some ways, Rabbi Schacter enjoyed his privileged status. He watched as his father stood at the synagogue bimah and spoke before hundreds of people. While the congregation sang “Adon Olam,” he got to sit on his father\u2019s lap, and he relished the special attention.<\/p>\n

But his status also meant greater expectations. When Rabbi Schacter was eight years old, his father found him playing in front of the shul after Shabbat morning davening<\/em>. He asked his son where he had been during the derashah<\/em>. He wasn\u2019t happy with the answer.<\/p>\n

Sometimes the expectations are not from the rabbi or his wife; they come from the community.<\/p>\n

\u201cDuring shul, I\u2019d be playing outside with other kids,\u201d says Esti Schwartz, twenty-three, the daughter of Rabbi Allen Schwartz, the longtime rabbi of Congregation Oheb Zedek on Manhattan\u2019s Upper West Side. \u201cPeople would come over and only yell at me and my brother, because we were the rabbi\u2019s kids.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nechemia Katz* [*pseudonym] the son of a rav<\/em> who is involved with assisting kids at risk, admits he wasn\u2019t the best behaved child, but feeling pressured to keep up a good-boy image, he played the part. He didn\u2019t want to risk embarrassing his family.<\/p>\n

But not every child of a rabbi feels the stress of having to live up to a certain image.\u00a0\u201cMy parents expected me to act a certain way, not because I was the son of the community rav<\/em>, but because they wanted me to be a mensch<\/em>,\u201d says Rabbi Ilan Feldman, the son of Rabbi Emanuel Feldman, founding rav<\/em> of Congregation Beth Jacob of Atlanta, Georgia.<\/p>\n

I felt there was no way I could possibly ever project myself as a rabbi in a world so full of my father\u2019s presence. How could I ever do anything in my life that could remotely resemble what he did?<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Similarly, Dr. Rivka Press Schwartz, the daughter of Rebbetzin Zlata Press, the noted lecturer and principal of Bnos Leah Prospect Park Yeshiva, a girls\u2019 high school in Brooklyn, claims she \u201cdidn\u2019t have the \u2018preacher\u2019s kid\u2019 problem.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think my identity was shaped by being my mother\u2019s child,\u201d she says. \u201cMy mother encouraged us to speak our minds. She would engage us in serious conversations about [consequential] topics and raise thought-provoking questions\u2014taking our responses seriously.\u201d<\/p>\n

In turn, when her mother suggested that she consider scrapping her plans to become a university professor, and that teaching high school would prove more fun and more religiously fulfilling, she took her advice. Today Dr. Schwartz is a high school administrator and popular lecturer.<\/p>\n

A Sense of \u201cOtherness\u201d<\/strong>
\nThe perception that the offspring of rabbis are a different breed leaves some with a persistent feeling of \u201cotherness.\u201d Esti found herself frequently fielding questions about kashrut<\/em> from her schoolmates. To her mind, in the same way that an accountant\u2019s child isn\u2019t necessarily good at math, being the rabbi\u2019s daughter didn\u2019t make her a better davener<\/em> than her peers or an expert on halachah.<\/p>\n

Similarly, throughout his childhood, Rabbi Feldman felt pigeonholed as the un-athletic rabbi\u2019s kid. \u201cI was always picked last for the team,\u201d says Rabbi Feldman. \u201cThere was a feeling of futility that I would never fit in,\u201d he says.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Time Management for Rabbis<\/strong>
\nMuch like a medical doctor, a rabbi is constantly on call. The time pressures make it nearly impossible to carve out quality time for his family. Dr. David Pelcovitz, professor of psychology and Jewish education at YU\u2019s Azrieli Graduate School of Jewish Education, sees this as the <\/em>major challenge facing a rabbinic family.<\/p>\n

\u201cRabbis have to be mindful about finding that exclusive family-focused, text-free, phone-free, one-on-one time with one\u2019s wife and children,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

During his early years as shul rav<\/em>, Rabbi Schwartz delighted in hosting a guest-filled Shabbat table. His eldest daughters, however, weren\u2019t so pleased; they complained that they didn\u2019t enjoy Shabbat and that they didn\u2019t feel they were in their own home. Thereafter, Rabbi Schwartz and his wife designated Friday nights as family-only time.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Left: Rabbi Herschel Schacter. Photos courtesy of Rabbi J.J. Schacter<\/em>
Right: Rabbi Herschel Schacter, Rabbi Ruwin Jona Weisbord, a\u201dh (Rabbi J. J. Schacter\u2019s late father-in-law) and Rabbi J. J. Schacter at his wedding, September 4, 1972.<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n

By the time Esti came along, her childhood included \u201cspecial Tuesdays with Abba.\u201d Every other week, she and her younger sister enjoyed exclusive time playing board games with their father. Nonetheless, certain sacrifices had to be made.<\/p>\n

\u201cI remember days when we were about to go out bowling together, and my father got an important phone call. We had to wait another twenty minutes,\u201d says Esti. \u201cIt\u2019s just something you learn to be patient about.\u201d<\/p>\n

While spending quality time with one\u2019s children is a challenge facing all parents, in a study conducted back in 1988 and written up in Tradition,<\/em> clinical psychologist Dr. Irving Levitz found that 70 percent of rabbis\u2019 children in his study believed that their fathers were \u201cover-involved with synagogue life.\u201d<\/p>\n

During the week, Nechemia\u2019s father ran Jewish educational programs. He also led several Shabbatons.<\/em> Although Nechemia appreciated his father\u2019s demanding work, he missed him.<\/p>\n

\u201cA child needs a mother and father,\u201d says Nechemia. \u201cI\u2019ve seen people involved in the kehillah <\/em>who don\u2019t make time for their families. For some, [communal work] can become an obsession. I don\u2019t think [the obsession with work is] necessarily unique to someone prominent in the community. It could be a lawyer or doctor with long hours outside the home, or the head of a major investment firm. They\u2019re not putting their families first; they\u2019re putting themselves first.\u201d<\/p>\n

One rabbi\u2019s child I spoke with tells a poignant story. \u201cTowards the end of my father\u2019s life when he was too ill to engage in conversation, my mother told me that he was sorry he didn\u2019t devote more personal attention to me while I was growing up. I [told my mother], \u2018I\u2019m sorry too.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Making Time<\/strong>
\nRabbi Schacter grew up knowing he had a world-famous and very busy father. On April 11, 1945, the senior Rabbi Schacter was the first US Army chaplain to enter the Buchenwald concentration camp to liberate the survivors. Anguished by what he saw, he remained in Buchenwald for two and a half months, comforting the broken, displaced Jews and giving them hope for the future. He also arranged for and led a Kindertransport from Buchenwald to Switzerland.<\/p>\n

After his return to the States, he went on to become president of Mizrachi of America and chairman of the\u00a0Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. He was president of Mizrachi-Hapoel Hamizrachi, founding chairman of the American Jewish Conference on Soviet Jewry, chairman of the Chaplaincy Commission of the Jewish Welfare Board, and director of rabbinic services at YU.<\/p>\n

His young son felt enormously proud of his father\u2019s accomplishments. And he cherished the opportunity to spend \u201cone-on-one\u201d time with his father. As a teen, he would learn with him for three to four hours at a clip. His father also came to visit him numerous times during the year he spent learning in Israel, taking him to meet Rabbi Shlomo Goren, the then chief rabbi of the Israel Defense Forces, the Sephardi and Ashkenazi chief rabbis and Menachem Begin.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy connection to my father was through these public experiences,\u201d says Rabbi Schacter. \u201c[I believe] he expressed his love by taking me along on those visits.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sharing the Mission<\/strong>
\nTo Slovie Jungreis Wolff, educator, author, international lecturer and daughter of the late Rebbetzin Esther Jungreis, private and public life were one and the same. Their home was abuzz with communal activity and everyone got involved.<\/p>\n

On Purim, the entire family would pile into the car; each member had a job to do. One sibling checked the list of two hundred mishloach manot<\/em> recipients; another ran from door to door to deliver Hungarian pies lovingly made by their Bubby, a Holocaust survivor, and to wish recipients a happy Purim while describing the meaning of the holiday. The family would then drive back to the house to reload the car, and then take to the road again.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy parents\u2019 mission was our mission,\u201d says Slovie. \u201cThis was our life. We were strengthening Yiddishkeit<\/em> in America, carrying the torch from the Holocaust\u2014continuing what [those who perished] could not.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dr. Pelcovitz stresses that parents who include their children in the causes they believe in are not only sending the message that this is a worthwhile way to invest one\u2019s energies\u2014they are helping the message become an integral part of their children\u2019s identity. As the son of Rabbi Raphael Pelcovitz, beloved rabbi emeritus of Congregation Kneseth Israel in Far Rockaway, New York, Dr. Pelcovitz remembers setting up the room and preparing the sefarim<\/em> for his father before he would deliver a shiur<\/em>. Over the decades, the father and son have continued to collaborate\u2014they co-wrote several articles and books on parenting and enhancing Jewish life.<\/p>\n

Rebbetzin Tehilla Jaeger, daughter of the late Rabbi Shlomo Freifeld, legendary educator and founding rosh yeshivah<\/em> of Sh\u2019or Yoshuv Institute in Lawrence, New York, is convinced that the message of working for the klal<\/em> was \u201cmixed into her baby food.\u201d She watched her parents transform the lives of hundreds of Jewish youth, products of the sixties and seventies hippie generation who were searching for a deeper meaning.<\/p>\n

As a young girl, she remembers regularly setting and cleaning up tables for their Shabbat and yom tov<\/em> guests and sharing her bedroom with the constant flow of ba\u2019alot teshuvah<\/em> sleeping over. Her father, insisted, however, on giving his hardworking rebbetzin<\/em> periodic Shabbatot off, taking the children shopping for take-out instead. \u201cThere had to be time to reenergize in order to go back into the trenches,\u201d says Rebbetzin Jaeger. \u201cThat was an important lesson for me.\u201d<\/p>\n

My Father\/ Myself<\/strong>\u2014Choosing One\u2019s Own Path<\/strong>
\nAs adulthood draws near, adolescents begin to contemplate their place in the world independent of their parents.<\/p>\n

Nechemia knew his parents expected him to go into the rabbinate. He felt pushed. He pushed back harder.<\/p>\n

\u201cBecoming a rabbi was never my path; you really have to have a certain kind of personality,\u201d he says. \u201cThe conflict put a strain on the relationship. I became a troublemaker, and was not interested in religion. I was trying to show my independence. As I matured, I came back [to religious life]. Some don\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s never wise to push a child to become something he is not,\u201d says Dr. Pelcovitz. \u201cRav Yeruchom Levovitz, the revered mashgiach <\/em>of Mir Yeshiva in Poland, taught that when Yaakov Avinu gave the berachot<\/em> to his children [the shevatim<\/em>], he did so according to their individual paths. Rav Levovitz said if you give a berachah<\/em> to a child with your<\/em> own dreams in mind, it\u2019s like watering a plot of earth that has no seeds in it. It\u2019s a berachah l\u2019vatalah<\/em>. Good parenting is about letting your child follow his own aspirations, his own potential, his unique spark.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dr. Schwartz\u2019s independent spirit was already evident in her teens when she attended the high school where her mother was the assistant principal\u2014and in charge of enforcing school discipline. Her mother maintained a clear division between her public role and her role as a parent, which didn\u2019t always work for her daughter\u2019s benefit\u2014especially during a school dress code run, when Dr. Schwartz decided to wear a top with NYPD printed across the front.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy mother pulled me out of class and sent me home to change,\u201d she says. \u201cI still have the shirt. I kept it as a valuable memento of my wayward youth.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Rebbetzin Esther Jungreis in 2004. Photo: Carol Halebian\/The New York Times\/Redux<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n

Continuing the Legacy<\/strong>
\nDespite the challenges of growing up as children of celebrated community figures, virtually every one of the sons and daughters I spoke with chose careers involving service to the klal<\/em>\u2014even though for some of them, doing communal work was initially the last thing on their minds.<\/p>\n

\u201cI felt there was no way I could possibly ever project myself as a rabbi in a world so full of my father\u2019s presence. How could I ever do anything in my life that could remotely resemble what he did?\u201d says Rabbi Schacter, who originally planned to become a Jewish historian and scholar. But while he was learning at Torah Vodaath, his father urged him to get semichah <\/em>saying, \u201cYou never know.\u201d<\/p>\n

After spending four years on a fellowship at Harvard University, earning him a PhD in Near Eastern languages, the gnawing feeling that he wasn\u2019t doing enough for the Jewish community prompted him to join the rabbinate.<\/p>\n

Rabbi Schacter became the first rabbi of\u00a0the Young Israel of Sharon in\u00a0Massachusetts, where he succeeded in creating a vibrant Torah community. He went on to serve as rabbi of The\u00a0Jewish Center\u00a0in Manhattan for nineteen years and, subsequently, dean of the\u00a0Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik Institute\u00a0in\u00a0Brookline, Massachusetts.<\/p>\n

Rabbi Feldman also had little interest in pursuing a career in the rabbinate. Like Rabbi Schacter, he set his sights strictly on Torah scholarship. When an assistant rabbi position opened up at his father\u2019s shul, the kehillah<\/em> urged him to fill it. He acquiesced and eventually succeeded his father as rav<\/em> upon his father\u2019s retirement in 1991, but not without some apprehension. \u201cThe criticism of the rabbi can be intense,\u201d he says. \u201cIt took a while for me to establish my own style.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite his initial concerns, Rabbi Feldman continues to build on his father\u2019s work, bringing a\u00a0community kollel<\/em>\u00a0to Atlanta, now known as one of the leading centers of Orthodox Jewish life in America.<\/p>\n

Both of Esti\u2019s older sisters, who promised themselves they would never marry a rabbi, did in fact marry rabbis. At the time of this writing, one of her brothers recently received semichah<\/em> and the other is in the process of doing so.<\/p>\n

Despite the expectations, visibility and sacrifice, these children of rabbis or high-profile rebbetzins<\/em> saw close-up what it means to take a community under one\u2019s wing, and to dedicate one\u2019s life to uplifting others. Rabbi Schacter saw this in the most profound way.<\/p>\n

In the summer of 1967, he was walking with his father on King George Street in Jerusalem. Suddenly, they noticed two frum<\/em> young men coming towards them. As the men approached, they stared at his father and then ran towards him, threw themselves on him and began weeping uncontrollably. Then, without saying a word, they dried their tears, pulled themselves away and continued walking.<\/p>\n

\u201cI knew exactly what that was,\u201d says Rabbi Schacter. \u201cThey had been children on the Kindertransport from Buchenwald. [That incident] was a microcosm for the intense power, the impact that my father had in saving these lives. He gave them chizuk<\/em>, a sense of hope, their Judaism. He gave them back their humanity.\u201d<\/p>\n

When Rabbi Schacter was five years old, his father went away for seven weeks as part of the first delegation of American rabbis to visit Jews trapped in the Soviet Union. He asked his mother, \u201cVi iz Tatty<\/em>?\u201d [\u201cWhere is father?\u201d] She answered with the familiar refrain. \u201cTatty iz gegangin helfen Yidden<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s huge, to be taught this as a little boy,\u201d he says. \u201cMy father went to help Jews.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bayla Sheva Brenner is an award-winning freelance writer and a regular contributor to\u00a0Jewish Action. She can be reached at baylashevabrenner@outlook.com.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Despite the expectations, visibility and sacrifice, these children of rabbis or high-profile rebbetzins saw close-up what it means to take a community under one\u2019s wing, and to dedicate one\u2019s life to uplifting others. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":15414,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"_cloudinary_featured_overwrite":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[68,26,21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15513","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-family","category-jewish-living","category-religion","issues-summer-20175777"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nIn The Limelight - Jewish Action<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Despite the expectations, visibility and sacrifice, these children of rabbis or high-profile rebbetzins saw close-up what it means to take a community under one\u2019s wing, and to dedicate one\u2019s life to uplifting others.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/jewishaction.com\/religion\/limelight-children-rabbis\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"In The Limelight - 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