Contemplating a Life of Pell-Hell without Mel

Without question, the persons who influenced me most in my life were Rose and Herman Karan, my mother and father. Where I was born and raised, what interests/aptitudes I showed, and what educational/acculturation experiences I had I owe all to them.

Yet aren't there surrogate parenting figures and mentors who are equally important in our upbringing? Aren’t there guardian angels who play a critical role in our careers?

I met such a person in 1965, and he completely changed the trajectory of my life. My father had died the year before, and I had already met the girl I would marry. I could only continue in graduate school and contemplate proposing to Annette if I found a part-time job. I began looking for jobs as a Hebrew school teacher in Westchester and Long Island; but I was turned down because I had no license and no experience. I was getting desperate when a friend of mine at the time mentioned that he was going for a Hebrew school interview in New Jersey and asked if I wanted to come along. That was the day that I met a man who would become a legendary educator and Young Judaea youth leader, the first informal Jewish educator to receive a teaching award from the Hebrew University. For some mysterious reason, this stranger took a liking to my friend and to me, and he hired us both, sans official licenses and certificates. That was the beginning of an 18-year association with the Fort Lee Jewish Center which provided me with some needed income while I completed my graduate studies and prepared for married life.

Who was this individual who was willing to take a chance with me? It turned out that his name was Mel Reisfield, and he was born in 1928 in the Bronx. His parents, Charles and Jenny, were from Russia but they had settled in New York City near the Grand Concourse and Yankee Stadium. Mel had an older sister named Pearl who, he would say, was a “wonderful person.” But Mel described himself as “mixed up socially and ideologically,” a “muddled child” who hung around with the gang, a Jewish gang at that. In the primary grades at PS 73 and later in Taft High School, Mel was thrown out of class repeatedly for fooling around. He graduated Taft and went to CCNY night school, but he never got his degree. Later in life, Mel did pursue a rabbinical degree at the Jewish Institute for religion .

Mel could count his involvement in Young Judaea all the way back to 1947, before the founding of the State of Israel. One day in his second year of college, he would recall, he passed Madison Square Garden on his way to a Frank Sinatra concert. He heard someone with a strong accent talking to thousands of people at a rally, and thousands more overflowed onto the street. The speaker was saying, “This is our answer to the Holocaust. We are going to make a state.” The speaker was Menahem Begin. Mel looked up “Zionist movement” in the telephone book and there were a lot of names of organizations. He moved his finger randomly on the page, and it came out on Young Judaea. That became his destiny.

To prepare for life as an Israeli pioneer, Mel attended farm training with a Young Judaea group in Poughkeepsie, New York; and, in 1948, he joined the first Young Judaea kibbutz, Hasolelim, in the Galilee. It was there that he met the love of his life, Yaffa, a battle-tested Palmach veteran, with whom he would have three children, Shai, Sharon, and Gil.

Mel immersed himself in the work of the settlers and in learning the ancient/modern language of Hebrew. But Mel was plagued with stomach problems and so his dream of remaining in the land of Israel had to be postponed due to illness.

When Mel returned to the United States, he found that he had few marketable skills and couldn’t get a job. But he had acquired a fluency in Hebrew and so he became a teacher in a large conservative synagogue in Englewood, New Jersey. Mel, always one to buck rules and battle authoritarian figures, did not get along with the Rabbi of that congregation, a nationally known scholar and preacher. But there was a Cantor by the name of Nat Enten who would go on to have a career as a prominent Jewish education innovator. Nat recognized Mel’s natural talents as a youth leader, and he mentored him and supported him to the point that Mel regarded him as his guru and the most singularly important influence in his life.

Working by day as a Hebrew school teacher and principal successively in Englewood, Fort Lee and Livingston, NJ, and by night as a Young Judaea group leader, Mel raised generations of New Jersey Jews inspired by his vision of a dynamic Jewish life in America and a strong, vibrant Israel. During the summers, Mel and Yaffa decamped to Camp Tel Yehudah, where Mel’s impact was felt by thousands of campers from across the nation for more than 50 years.  As a teacher, role model, and friend, many credit Mel for inspiring them to become educators, activists and morally-grounded leaders of their Jewish communities, both in America or Israel.

In the heydays when I worked for Mel in the 60’s and 70’s, there were 100’s of kids who attended afternoon and Sunday classes; the Fort Lee Jewish Center was so crowded that classroom space was rented in the nearby public middle school to accommodate the overflow. (Sadly, today the same Jewish Center is being sold to a Korean Church due to declining membership.) Mel’s roster of teachers in those days included the future head of the New York Board of Rabbis, the future Provost and Interim President of HUC-JIR, the future Distinguished Professor of Modern Jewish History and  Director of U. Penn’s Center for Advanced Judaic Studies, future lawyers and doctors, and me. Mel gave us leeway to teach as we saw fit, and it was one of the most productive and creative experiences of my life working under his tutelage.

Mel continued as an educator until 1983. He had at earlier times in his life gone back to Israel hoping that he would not succumb to the stomach problems that forced him to return earlier, but he was not successful. Finally, he and his wife Yaffa were able to make aliyah, to come to the promised land and make it their permanent home. That move gave Mel the opportunity to share his love of Hebrew language, honed over the decades of Ulpan classes which he began at Tel Yehudah, with new generations of Young Judaea Year Course students. Mel, as noted, received a teaching award from the Hebrew University along with other honors, such as the Young Judaea Im Tirzu award. Mel taught on Year Course until 2010 and continued to visit Camp Tel Yehudah and give his famous “Jesus sicha” and “4,000 Years of Jewish History in 40 Minutes” until the summer of 2014. In Israel, he also became a guide in the old city and partnered with a former student by the name of Ian Stern in archaeological seminars.

To be in the presence of Mel was and is to be with a charismatic and visionary mentor and speaker who reminded his chanichim (those who learned from him) of his worldview, namely, that Jews are endowed with a sense of history and caring for others, not only fellow Jews. Mel could captivate hundreds of campers and counselors for hours with lectures about history, heritage, and social justice. He would regale listeners with stories about his activism—how in 1963, he got in a car with a friend and two students and drove to D.C. for the March on Washington to hear Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.; how he led efforts to raise funds for Biafra when Africans were starving; how he had helped organize one of the very first walkathons for the March of Dimes; and how he joined in protests to support farm labor leader Césár Chavez. “If there was anything we learned from the Holocaust,” Reisfield would say, “it was never to let the world pass us by. And we didn’t just work for Jewish causes.” Mel championed the cause of Soviet Jewry before anyone was interested in Jews in Russia. He led pickets of every Russian group that came to New York and was involved in sending people on secret missions to Russia. He did the same thing for Ethiopian Jewry (even though Israeli officials and American Jewish bureaucrats told him and others ‘wait,’ the Ethiopian Jews weren’t top priority). In short, Mel raised generations of leading activists, educators and good Jewish citizens, in America and Israel, seeking to replicate his example of thinking independently and challenging societal norms.

Why, you might wonder, was Mel so captivating and relatable to teenagers? Mel succeeded in spite of – or perhaps because of - his style. He understood instinctively that the young people he worked with were still kid-like enough to enjoy being silly but sufficiently adult to engage in ideological discourse. In many ways, he always was and still is the tough, determined, scrappy, brash, hard-hitting, loud, fast-talking and even trash-talking irreverent New Yawk accented Bronx kid, full of humor, pepper, and chutzpah.  Mel could be the substantive, morally wise and endlessly entertaining pied piper, and the next moment he could shock or provoke his audience with his shtick and mischievousness.

If the only thing that Mel Reisfield did for me was bestow his blessing of encouragement by taking me under his wing and giving me my first part-time job, I could still justly proclaim, as we do on Passover night, “dayenu” (that would have been enough.) But Mel’s role in shaping who I became went further. By 1968, I had my Master’s degree in school psychology, but I needed to find a school  in which to complete the hundreds of hours of internship which were a prerequisite for graduation. I reasoned to myself, why not try the Fort Lee Middle School which was practically next door to where I taught Hebrew school? There were two full-time school psychologists in Fort Lee at that time; and one of them, Dr. Zelick Block, consented to supervise my three-month internship. As fate would have it, the other school psychologist decided to retire during the time I was an intern; and Dr. Block decided to recommend me for the other full-time position. The Superintendent of Schools, Lewis F, Cole, agreed; and my name was presented to the nine-member Board of Education for approval. The votes were cast one evening in November 1968 and my nomination was defeated 5-4, primarily on the grounds that I was too young and inexperienced for such a job. I remember going to the Fort Lee Jewish Center the next day and having to break the news to Mel and other teachers that I wouldn’t be a psychologist in Fort Lee after all. But it turned out that Mel knew somebody who was a friend of someone who just happened to be a member of the Board of Education. The next week the Board held another meeting and this time the resolution to hire me as full-time school psychologist passed by a 5-4 margin! I started work in December 1968 and continued for the next 37 years in the same school system.

In sum, I can only shudder to think how different my career, my whole life would have been without the benevolent assistance of Mel Reisfield. I am so grateful that, last year on a trip to Israel, I had the opportunity to pay a visit to his apartment on Bar Kochba Street in Jerusalem. Mel’s beloved Yaffa passed away last year; Mel, now in his 90’s, lives alone, although he has several home helpers to prepare meals, help him move around, and generally care for him. While I was with him, Mel seemed as feisty as ever, and he has books, television, newspapers and phone to keep himself busy and productive.

To the wise and wise cracking Mel, I want to express publicly my sincere thanks; besides my mother and father, I can think of no other person who has had such a profound impact on the man I was destined to become.