EDUCATIONAL REVOLUTIONARY

R’ Aharon Popack was a little boy when he emigrated with his family from Russia to the United States, a fact that the Rebbe Rayatz emphasized to him in yechidus. The Russian born boy, who grew up in America, was one of the Rebbe Rayatz’s first emissaries, and was appointed to the committee of Yeshiva students for strengthening proper chinuch, a shlichus he labored in all his life until his untimely passing. * To mark his passing on 13 Tammuz 5736/1976.

DAVENING IN HIS FATHER’S “MINYAN”

The Chassid, R’ Aharon Popack, was born on 26 Tammuz 1923. His father, Avrohom, learned in Yeshivas Tomchei T’mimim in Lubavitch for five years. Despite living far from a Jewish center, he was able to instill an authentic Chassidishe chinuch in his children.

While in Lubavitch, R’ Avrohom studied sh’chita and after he married he raised funds for the yeshiva in Lubavitch. Life in Russia was very hard and in 5674, he left Russia and went to Eretz Yisroel via Turkey. He worked as a shochet on the ship which sailed the Haifa-Alexandria line. It was hard work since he had to spend most of his time on the ship. After a year, he decided to immigrate to Alexandria and fourteen months later he continued his travels and reached the US where his uncle, Mr. Wolfson, lived.

When Mr. Wolfson heard that his nephew was a shochet, he arranged a job for him in a slaughterhouse. But on the very first day, he had to leave the job. One of the many chickens he shechted was treif and when the owner saw the bird cast off to the side, he angrily asked him why he had discarded it. When R’ Avrohom said the chicken was treif, the butcher was furious and told him he was fired, saying: The previous shochet worked for him for four years and never threw away a single chicken!

Having no recourse, he walked about the streets of the Lower East Side where thousands of Jewish immigrants lived in those days. In astonishing divine providence, he met a learned person who, upon hearing that he was a shochet, told him that the Jewish community of Barre, Vermont needed a shochet. After contacting the heads of the community, he went to Barre, which was far from all centers of Jewish life, and lived there for 26 years. He sadly called this a “galus within a galus.”

Life was no picnic in Barre. When a chicken was treif, they did not fire him but did not want to pay him for it. He protested, saying that with this system he would have a bias, because he would have to decide whether a chicken is kosher or treif. The matter was brought to Rabbi Slaven, the rav in Burlington, and he paskened in favor of R’ Popack.

The Jewish community in Barre was tiny and in the early years did not even have a minyan. In order to educate his family and provide them with a Jewish atmosphere, to the best of his ability, he would gather his four sons who were not yet bar mitzva, and three daughters, and would daven like a chazan and had them respond after him.

In his free time he would tell his children Midrashim and maamarei Chazal as well as Chassidic tales, in order to instill a Jewish-Chassidic outlook in them. As a Chabad Chassid, he did not only look out for his own family but also taught the other children in the community.

REMEMBER YOU ARE CHASSIDIM FROM RUSSIA!

In Elul 5689, R’ Aharon had yechidus with the Rebbe Rayatz. This was when the Rebbe came on a visit to the United States. His father, R’ Avrohom, went to New York and took his sons, Shmuel Aizik, and Aharon with him.

They had yechidus before Rosh HaShana and the Rebbe Rayatz said to the young children: Remember, you are Chassidim from Russia, from Bobruisk (that is where R’ Avrohom was from, and in Lubavitch he was nicknamed Avrohom Bobruisker). You are mine!

THE COMMITTEE FOR PROPER CHINUCH

Immediately upon the Rebbe’s arrival in the US on 9 Adar 5700/1940, he announced that America is no different and opened a network of schools and yeshivos. The work got a tremendous boost with the arrival of Ramash in the US on 28 Sivan 5701, about a year and a half later, and the founding of Merkos L’Inyanei Chinuch and Machne Israel.

The main problem was the lack of manpower. There weren’t many Lubavitcher Chassidim living in the new world because of the Rebbe Rashab’s firm opposition to moving there. Those who moved, upon receiving the approval of the Rebbe Rayatz, were few in number and most of them did not know English. Since the Popack children lived in America since their childhood, they became top soldiers of the Rebbe on the new front.

One of the goals which the Rebbe established in the work of Merkos was, “agitating among Jewish parents so they recognize the vital need of educating their boys and girls al taharas ha’kodesh, and sending their children to schools that operate al taharas ha’kodesh.”

The Rebbe Rayatz founded “Shelah – the National Committee for the Furtherance of Jewish Education,” in 5702. It was R’ Aharon Popack who was the Rebbe’s emissary in founding this organization. On 4 Cheshvan, the Rebbe wrote him:

“I hereby urge you and your friend, the student Yitzchok Feldman and other good friends and influential people among the talmidei ha’yeshivos, to make an organization of those who will agitate – not on paper but in actual fact – to devote themselves to going from house to house to visit parents and to find out whether they are sending their children to Talmud Torah and to which Talmud Torah. Also to prepare a list of questions to ask the parents and they should write down the names of their boys and girls and their ages and the parents’ addresses, and speak to the hearts of the parents and explain to them the great necessity of learning for their children. Obviously, all in a polite and friendly manner. And explain that they are doing this out of Ahavas Yisroel, for each and every Jew needs to take an interest in the welfare of his fellow in general, and especially in matters of chinuch. Without a doubt, with Hashem’s help they will succeed and accomplish a great deal.

“The manner of their work needs to be organized, that they should choose some neighborhood, a section, and start with that, and divide the streets among them and each one should take a street to work on, and when their work is finished in this neighborhood, they should consult in order to decide what to do next.

“The rousing and agitation with the parents alone is still not enough, meaning the knowledge that on this or that street there are this number of boys and girls who are not receiving a religious education. That is still not enough because they need to be given the opportunity to learn in a proper Talmud Torah, and they also need to visit the Talmud Torah, to see which Talmud Torah – near the parents’ home – the children can attend, and where help is needed with tuition expenses, with Hashem’s help to find a source for this, and when they present the issues to Merkos L’Inyanei Chinuch, then – with Hashem’s help – to whatever extent possible I hope they will be of help.”

***

The two friends, R’ Aharon Popack and R’ Yitzchok Feldman, immediately founded the committee as the Rebbe asked of them. The work could not be built solely on the few Chabad Chassidim and so they enlisted bachurim from Yeshivas R’ Yitzchok Elchanan and Yeshivas Torah Vodaas.

The Rebbe was constantly involved, wanting to know what was going on, how many children registered at proper Talmud Torahs and how many were saved from treif Talmud Torahs, how many homes they visited and with how many parents did they speak. The Rebbe wanted to know it all.

When one of the members of the vaad wrote to the Rebbe about this work interfering with his learning, the Rebbe wrote him that the z’chus involved in this work could not be explained in words and all the angels up above and the souls of tzaddikim were jealous of them. The Rebbe said they should find ways to include additional yeshiva bachurim in this holy work.

In 5704, the members of the vaad received an unparalleled responsibility, an hour of religious instruction every Wednesday for pupils in public schools, who were allowed to leave class and learn about their religion. The Rebbe himself described their work in a letter he wrote in Sivan 5704, “Merkos L’Inyanei Chinuch printed a form, as required, and arranged a special committee – without it being known that it was founded and is being funded under the auspices of 770 – under the directorship of Y Feldman, A Popack, along with fifteen talmidim and about five girls who, on Wednesdays go to schools – currently five or six – and take the boys and girls to shuls where they give them some fruits and say brachos with them.”

Despite the additional work thrust upon them, the Rebbe did not remove the responsibility to register children in schools from the shoulders of these two young bachurim. He told them to go to all the Jewish schools and to make a precise list of the teachers, the subjects, and the teaching methods, with them saying explicitly that their purpose is to publicize the names of those schools that teach authentic Judaism as well as those drawn to Reform in which irreligious Jews teach.

Additional instructions they received throughout that year dealt with printing Jewish material for the children who attended the special lessons and the financial structure of the organization, that it should be completely independent.

THE YESHIVA IN BRIDGEPORT

On 14 Tammuz, 5704, R’ Eliezer Pinchas Weiler, shliach of the Central Yeshivas Tomchei T’mimim opened a yeshiva in Bridgeport, Connecticut. R’ Aharon Popack joined as a member of the staff. During the winter of 5705, another division of the yeshiva was opened, and during the summer a building was purchased that contained all the students. The Rebbe responded to the news of the new building in a letter to R’ Aharon: “May Hashem grant success to the distinguished vaad and to all those who help out, may they be blessed materially and spiritually.”

The Rebbe wanted to utilize what Aharon Popack had already done, and told him to start a similar program to Shelah in Bridgeport. The Rebbe told him to do this with two separate groups, for boys and for girls. 

R’ Aharon was the one who founded Beis Rivka there, for Jewish girls who wanted to learn a bit about Judaism in the afternoon after public school. In the Kovetz Lubavitch publication it reported about an innovation in the school that R’ Popack ran, a vehicle that picked up and brought home girls who lived far away.

After several years in Connecticut, he moved to Worcester, MA to run the Jewish school and from there he moved, at the Rebbe’s instruction, to found the Beis Yaakov in south Philadelphia. He and R’ Felix Friedfelder gave the classes. R’ Popack, knowing that bus transportation would help increase registration, got the state to pay for the buses even though it wasn’t a public school.

Very soon, branches of after-school programs or Sunday school opened up throughout the city. Additional branches followed with R’ Aharon providing teachers for all of them.

The hardest part was fundraising. R’ Aharon had some very frustrating moments and he decided to turn to the Rebbe. “You don’t understand your work,” declared the Rebbe. “You think it’s shadchanus, to match up a mosad that needs help with a wealthy man, and if he doesn’t give, it’s a failure. In the Gemara it says that a coin that the owner doesn’t know about, which falls into the hands of a poor person, provides the owner with the mitzva of tz’daka. By causing the rich man to think about tz’daka, you have given him more than he can give you.”

The school which was associated with the Jewish Federation was experiencing many hardships. The leadership of the Federation was comprised of wealthy, anti-Orthodox Jews, who did not like R’ Aharon’s directorship. Not only did he teach the children Jewish studies, he accepted for free those who couldn’t pay, as the Rebbe Rayatz had told him when he founded the National Committee for the Furtherance of Jewish Education.

R’ Aharon was a member of the committee for freedom in education which included, l’havdil, other religious education, and demanded strongly that the state pay for the secular studies in his school, a demand which the Rebbe MH”M repeated a number of times in his farbrengens. Newspaper accounts from that time often mention the battles for government funding for parochial education, especially following the uproar over busing when there were people who looked askance and tried to cancel state funding for non-public school transportation.

In addition to running the school, R’ Aharon was the Rebbe’s man in Philadelphia in those days. They needed a Taharas Ha’mishpacha committee? R’ Aharon and wife would do it. A Jew, a mekurav, could not get a job because of his past as a Leftist ideologue? R’ Aharon would make sure he had a job in the mosad until he made his final steps to the Chabad movement. The mikva in Philadelphia – R’ Aharon built it.

R’ Aharon’s house was open to many Jews in the area and was the headquarters for spreading the wellsprings throughout the city. He was viewed as a model of a genuine Chassid. In a talk given by Rabbi Ozer Glickman of Yeshiva University, he told his students that “I often went to R’ Aharon Popack’s shtibel in my childhood. It was a few blocks from my house. That was my first connection with the selfless piety of Chabad. I have fond memories of R’ Popack and his family.” On Yomim Tovim and the Yomim Nora’im a minyan was held in R’ Popack’s home until his passing.

Tragically, R’ Aharon passed away in the prime of his life, at the age of 53, on 13 Tammuz 1977 after suffering from the dreaded disease. His children carry on his legacy with all of them on shlichus around the world.