Futerfas, Reb Mendel

As a young man, R. Mendel Futerfas (1906–1995) studied in the underground network of Yeshivat Tomchei Temimim in Soviet Russia. He subsequently was given the task of obtaining the funds necessary to maintain the network of hidden classes, a mission fraugh...

Exactly seventy years after the Soviets closed his grandfather's school Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine, Shneur Zalman Futerfas married Yehudis Kaminetzky, daughter of the city's celebrated chief rabbi, in front of a flourishing Jewish school in the same city.

If I were a "rich man," I wouldn't be very valuable. A Visa card can't offer sympathy, a T-bond can't read bedtime stories and a stock option can't help make a minyan.

A weekly pre-Shabbat outing to get city residents to put on tefillin has blossomed into a generational affair.

He imparted a lesson not through speaking, but by listening to a story, a story he knew firsthand...

How do we walk this tightrope called “life” without stumbling?

While he was reciting the Musaf service and singing the hymn V'chol Maaminim, which declares how all men share in the belief in G-d, he stopped and thought: Why was he in a hard labor camp? Because there were people who did not believe...

We all have free choice. We could either ignore these people, these opportunities, these events, or we could see everything in our life as a G-d-sent opportunity.

"This was all good and well," explained the old navy diver, "when the ship had been under for a month or so. After that it would begin to rust and the hooks would bring up only huge chunks of iron, leaving the rest of the ship behind"

To my right sat my friend Berl, and to my left my friend Zalman. Yossel sat in front of me. The melamed was tall, with stern eyes, but with a warm and loving smile.