A Shul And A Mission - Continued
Rabbi Emanuel Feldman’s oldest son Rabbi Ilan Feldman, had been serving as the assistant rabbi for ten years. When they began working together, congregants weren’t sure what to call each of them. One member suggesting calling the younger “Rabbi Feldman,” and the older “Father Feldman.” For some reason, the idea never stuck. Instead the rabbis chose “Rabbi Emanuel” and “Rabbi Ilan.”
Rabbi Ilan Feldman spent those ten years watching his father, learning from him and trying to emulate him. So when the elder Rabbi Feldman announced he was leaving, the congregation’s board of directors voted to make Rabbi Ilan Feldman the senior rabbi.
For Rabbi Ilan Feldman it was humbling to suddenly be in his father’s shoes.
“I felt totally inhibited, totally inadequate, and totally insufficient. I was following in my father’s footsteps, and it took years to develop my own style,” Rabbi Ilan Feldman says. “My greatest asset and my greatest deficit is that I’m my father’s son.”
On meeting Rabbi Ilan Feldman, it is apparent that he is a devoted and loving father figure to his congregation, and truly cares for and loves each of his members as he does his own children. One Shabbos a year, Rabbi Feldman dedicates his Shabbos drashah to all of the things that he loves about his congregants.
And as a father must occasionally give gentle criticism, once a year on the Shabbos of parshas Va’eira he delivers a drashah with suggestions for the entire community to work on. (He chose that Shabbos because it’s the parshah of kotzer ruach, the shortness of breath that bnei Yisrael experienced during their labor under Pharaoh, which caused them to resist Moshe Rabbeinu’s call to leave Mitzrayim. If Rabbi Feldman’s congregants don’t accept his rebukes, he says he can always blame it on their kotzer ruach.)
Rabbi Feldman is noted for his own writing (including frequently writing for Family First’s Advice Line column) and his drashos. He weaves together tapestries of deep Torah lessons, personal stories, current events, humor, and psychology to reach his audience. He is a keynote speaker at the annual Association of Jewish Outreach Professionals (AJOP) convention. There he is respected for his deep ideas and strategic vision for kiruv professionals.
This past summer, the Atlanta community hosted a session of Torah Umesorah’s Zechor Yemos Olam program, which helps teach mechanchim how to approach the Holocaust in their classes. Rabbi Feldman opened the program with a discussion of several key issues of Holocaust education. ArtScroll general editor Rabbi Nosson Scherman spoke later in the program and said of Rabbi Feldman’s speech, “It was magnificent. I don’t know if I have ever heard such a profound discussion of the issues that we should be facing and that we have not faced.”
There’s a New Rabbi Feldman in Town
After taking the senior rabbi position, Rabbi Ilan Feldman set about to maintain continuity of his father’s legacy while at the same time introducing new innovations to the community. One of the first institutions he brought to the community was the Atlanta Scholars Kollel (ASK), headed by Rabbi Menachem Deutsch. It began at the end of 1988, while Rabbi Ilan was still the assistant rabbi.
Since the beginning, ASK has served as part kiruv organization and part community kollel. Its members learn together in the mornings, and focus on community outreach in the afternoons and evenings. Rabbi Feldman brought the kollel to Atlanta when he realized that the community had grown so large that it needed more teachers, to educate those already frum and reach out to those not-yet-observant. Rabbi Feldman was doing most of the work himself, but he needed assistance in both areas to help the community continue to grow.
“A rav of a shul by definition has got to be focused on serving the daily life needs of his kehillah: crisis intervention, illness, burials, organizational management, and so on and so forth. There’s no way that a kehillah can grow without the help of an army. The kollel is that army,” Rabbi Feldman states.
The kollel started on a small scale, as a summer venture. But when local families saw the value of the kollel and the learning it brought, they clamored for it to remain full time. The kollel has since grown to eleven full-time rabbis (most, but not all, from Ner Israel), as well as three part-time women’s outreach members.
“I realized early on that I will never be able to achieve my dreams if I have to do it alone. That’s where the kollel came in,” Rabbi Feldman explains. “In order for the kollel to thrive, it would do many things well that I don’t do well. I realized the success of the community depended on that.”
ASK is an independent organization with the free reins to operate as it sees necessary, but it respects Rabbi Feldman’s authority as the mora d’asra of the community, and defers to him on hashkafic and halachic matters.
“Rabbi Feldman is both the leader and the visionary of Atlanta, and he is extraordinarily gifted in both areas,” says Rabbi Doniel Pransky, the rosh kollel. “He is unique in that he encourages others to assume leadership roles in his community. Some might see this as compromising his position, but in reality it is an expression of his remarkable anivus and his conviction of what a true leader is.”
The kollel’s main location is its beis medrash, which is attached to Congregation Beth Jacob. There, kollel rabbis and other community members teach classes and learn one-on-one with balabatim. The beis medrash is full at night with balabatim learning b’chavrusa or in shiurim.
“I think we are the only synagogue in America that has such a close relationship with an institution of Torah study,
symbolized by the physical attachment of the kollel beis medrash to the shul. It’s a credit to the lay leadership of the shul. They have had the wisdom and insight to know the value of Torah in building a community,” Rabbi Feldman explains.
The community received a significant boost when Rabbi Pransky moved to Atlanta in 2006 to oversee the kollel’s learning program. He has brought a new level of learning both to the kollel members and balabatim. He has introduced several high-level Gemara, Tanach, and halachah shiurim for men and women, and has been a big part of the attraction of bnei Torah families to the community.
After learning for several years in Eretz Yisroel, I moved back to Atlanta in 2007 to become the Chief Operating Officer of ASK. I was a member of the kollel until this past summer when my family and I made aliyah.
For Rabbi Feldman, the growth of the kollel fits in perfectly with his vision for the community. “What I’m most proud of is that we’re creating a place where the most sophisticated and least sophisticated Jew can receive nurture at their level,” Rabbi Feldman says. “The kollel models adult commitment to limud haTorah and represents the love that HaKadosh Baruch Hu has for Am Yisrael.”
The presence of the kollel and its strong connections to Ner Israel dovetails with another key goal of Rabbi Feldman. He has always placed a strong emphasis on connecting his community to the larger yeshivah world and its leaders. He himself is both a close talmid and the son-in-law of the rosh yeshivah of Ner Israel, Rav Shmuel Yaakov Weinberg, ztz”l, and maintains connections with many Torah leaders. Though Atlanta is many miles from the main yeshivah centers, the city is visited often by gedolim. Even when they’re not present, Rabbi Feldman makes sure the community feels their influence.
“I’ve always emphasized to people that rabbanim are part of a chain of mesorah. I’ve always wanted my balabatim to know that their rebbi has to have a rebbi. Somebody who claims to have all the answers on his own is not really a Torah teacher,” Rabbi Feldman explains.
Taking Responsibility
Rabbi Feldman’s vision for Atlanta is a community of achrayus. A big mantra for him is the need for the members of his kehillah to take on responsibility for the larger Atlanta Jewish community. Rabbi Feldman sees two goals: making new people feel comfortable; and equally important, personally helping his members grow.
“The fabric of the community is that it is committed to newcomers. I want to resist the tendency to become so smug and insular that we don’t make a difference to anyone but the well-educated,” Rabbi Feldman explains. “I’m trying to cause people to step over the threshold of their comfort, to be involved in institutions and programs and communal projects, bringing them together with other people who are not like-minded.”
Rabbi Feldman acknowledges that this model sometimes goes against the grain of more established frum communities. He acknowledges that he is deliberately trying to create a community that other kehillos can learn from.
“I want the community to create its own model of frumkeit, to be a source of inspiration to other communities that might even be more sophisticated and developed,” Rabbi Feldman says. “I want people to have an immense sense of responsibility to other Jews. I want Atlanta to be a community of people with achrayus.”
When frum communities become independent and powerful, capable of running their own affairs, there is a tendency to abandon their connection to those Jews who are less frum. Those unaffiliated Jews lose the valuable chance to interact with frum Jews — but the frum Jews lose out as well. By severing their connection with their estranged brothers, they lose a potential asset to Klal Yisrael and the development and richness of their own frumkeit. It can be argued that the best way for frum Jews to remain passionate in their Yiddishkeit is to see how non-frum people react when given the chance to see and feel Torah. In Atlanta, that opportunity is a continuing one; the community has been built with a fabric and texture of relevance, passion, and sharing with Jews of different perspectives.
“My goal here is not to imitate the model of Monsey or Lakewood or Boro Park, or even Detroit or Los Angeles or Baltimore,” Rabbi Feldman explains. “Rather, the goal is to build a community built on shmiras Torah and mitzvos while retaining a fabric of different people coming together under one roof. When the frum community in Atlanta grew to a particular size, we did not cut our ties with non-frum people. Built into the fabric of the community is a connection with non-frum people.”
New Families Moving South
Historically the only bnei Torah families in Atlanta were those who became frum in the community, or who moved there to work in klei kodesh. However, over the last few years the community has attracted new bnei Torah families from New York, Baltimore, and other communities. There has also been a return of the children of Atlanta families to the community. Many first-generation members who became frum sent their children off to larger communities for education and marriage. Those children are now returning with more chareidi hashkafos and goals. The presence of these families has brought a significant change to the kehillah.
Such bnei Torah families are attracted to the community by its many learning opportunities, top-notch schools, and community institutions. A diverse array of job opportunities also exists in Atlanta, as the community is close to the Centers for Disease Control, large universities, research hospitals, and several major corporations.
Atlanta also boasts an inexpensive standard of living. For less than the price of a three bedroom starter home on a postage-stampsize plot of land in New York City, one can purchase a six-bedroom mansion in the heart of the Atlanta frum community on a third of an acre or more. Or more commonly, many families purchase smaller houses in the community and begin expanding as their families grow. And for single students or the newly married, there are two condominium complexes on either side of the community.
Newcomers to the community, especially those from the Northeast, are also drawn by the relaxed lifestyle and friendliness of people throughout the city. Coming from New York, where cutting off other drivers is a way of life, newcomers are often unsure of what to do when another driver lets them in. Inside the frum community, everyone wishes each other “Good Shabbos.” Beth Jacob hosts a large kiddush each week, and lunches typically last late into the afternoon. Shabbos afternoons are filled with visits from children’s friends and other families.
When we moved back to Atlanta, my wife was pleasantly surprised to not have to cook a Shabbos meal for the first four months. Such is typical of the Beth Jacob hospitality, which welcomes everyone with open arms.
Another motivation drawing many bnei Torah families to the community is the chance for average people to get involved in kiruv. After arriving, many of them find opportunities to teach, learn b’chavrusa, or host people for Shabbos.
“There are certain aspects of frum living in Atlanta which are attractive to people from the North, who perhaps identify with a certain idealism that they don’t find in a supposedly more sophisticated community,” Rabbi Feldman explains. “Many of the people who are living here are returning because they realize that a frum baal habayis is making a major contribution just by living here. He doesn’t fade into the background, but is actually a role model.”
Often, bnei Torah moving to Atlanta become connected to the kollel, and thus the close relationship between the
kollel and the synagogue helps to create achdus and cohesion in the community. In many communities, kiruv centers are maintained as separate entities from the core community, but in Atlanta a close alignment between both institutions has been created. This has happened due to the close physical proximity of the kollel and shul, but also because kollel members make it a point to be active in Beth Jacob as well as community organizations. Their participation has inspired others to become involved in these institutions, reinforcing the feeling of achdus.
“Something that’s unique about Atlanta is that yeshivah products, bnei Torah, have made a firm commitment to work with the shuls, instead of going their own way, saying the shuls are compromised,” Rabbi Feldman says.
Putting Vision into Practice
A major event recently hit the Beth Jacob community, bringing Rabbi Feldman’s vision of achrayus to the forefront. The city’s Jewish community center announced that it would open its doors on Shabbos. Feelings in Beth Jacob ranged from anger and resentment to apathy and indifference. While some Beth Jacob congregants advocated protests or other outwardly confrontational responses, Rabbi Feldman instead encouraged his community to take a different route: inward action.
“I understand the mentality of the leaders of the JCC. They have no ability to understand anything we’re saying about the beauty of Shabbos. The mistake they’re making is they only hear power. The last thing a frum person wants to be doing is using power to overwhelm ignorance. The alternative is inspiration,” Rabbi Feldman says. “I realized that this was an opportunity to strengthen ourselves.”
Rabbi Feldman led his community on a campaign to raise the level of Shabbos observance in the local kehillah, as a way to inspire the larger Jewish society in the city. He and the assistant rabbi, Rabbi Yechezkel Freundlich, began focusing more of their classes and drashos on how to increase the beauty and kedushah of Shabbos. Rabbi Feldman also launched a committee to enhance individuals’ experience of Shabbos.
“We began to ask questions: what can we do to make Shabbos in our community spectacular? Over sixty people in our shul made public commitments of how they would make their Shabbos more meaningful, ranging from saying divrei Torah and singing zmiros to inviting guests and reviewing shnayim mikra v’echad targum each week. We put the list on the shul’s website for everyone to see.”
When Rabbi Feldman speaks, he is fond of reminding his congregants just how far the community has come and how much it has grown. It is hard to believe what the community has accomplished and how many Jews it has brought back to Yiddishkeit. But it’s a lesson that Rabbi Feldman said he learned at an early age. Growing up in the shul, he learned never to take the community and its members for granted. He saw potential in the people all around him, and is now seeing the results coming to fruition in so many ways.
“My greatest teacher was the shul itself,” Rabbi Feldman notes. “I learned at an early age not to look at balabatim as what they are, but what they can become.”
For Rabbi Feldman and his father, it has been a sixty-year lesson. The seeds the elder Feldman planted years ago have continued to sprout and grow in many ways and many directions under the care of his son.
World-Class Institutions
The continuing impact of the Feldman family is reflected in the strong institutions and community resources available to Atlanta’s Jews today. Among them:
• The Torah Day School of Atlanta (TDSA), directed by Rabbi Kalman Rosenbaum, covering kindergarten to eighth grade. Last year the federal government awarded TDSA the Blue Ribbon of Excellence; Rabbi Rosenbaum was recently named one
of the best principals in America.
• Temima, the Richard and Jean Katz High School, a Bais Yaakov applying unique methods and hashkafos that Rebbetzin Miriam Feldman, the principal, inherited from her father, Rav Weinberg, ztz”l; it attracts students from across North America.
• Yeshivat Ohr Yisrael, a boy’s high school combining kadosh and chol, is also attracting students from across North America.
• The Atlanta Kashruth Commission (hechsher is AKC inside a peach). The widely respected organization is headed by Rabbi Reuven Stein.
• Many AKC-supervised kosher restaurants, including pizza, Chinese, Israeli, and bagel restaurants. Two supermarkets, Kroger and Publix, have AKC-certified bakeries, meat, and fish; chalav Yisrael products and fresh sushi are also available. There is also a locally owned kosher grocery and bakery.
• The kollel’s annual community arba minim sale. Kollel rabbis help people choose and assemble the minim, and also run a tour of Jewish Atlanta on the day of the sale for local college students.
• Two Sephardic shuls, a Bucharian shul, several Chabad shuls, and a Young Israel. Beth Jacob and the kollel also helped establish several other kiruv shuls throughout Atlanta: Congregation Ariel in the suburb of Dunwoody, headed by Rabbi Binyomin Friedman, offers introductory services, kiruv classes, a Russian outreach program, and will soon open a new mikveh.