Entering the Yeshiva of Staten Island feels like being transported back in time. The yeshivah was founded by Rav Moshe Feinstein together with his son Rav Reuven, yblt”a, in 1966, and Rav Chaim Mintz has served as its mashgiach since the beginning.
At the conclusion of Minchah, I go up to the second floor, where the beis midrash is located. I make my way toward the front, where I see a group of bachurim towering over the mashgiach and speaking to him in learning. As soon as he notices my unfamiliar face, he walks over to me with the bachurim in tow and greets me warmly. “I assume it is you with whom I have an appointment,” he says, as if the reality weren’t the other way around. When I nod my head in the affirmative, he apologizes, saying that he needs a few minutes to speak with his talmidim.
Rav Chaim Mintz, the longtime mashgiach of the Yeshiva of Staten Island and founder of Oorah, the world-famous kiruv organization, has learned under some of the previous generation’s most prominent gedolim, including Rav Moshe Feinstein, Rav Yaakov Yitzchok Ruderman and Rav Dovid Kronglas. It is for this reason that I find myself here today waiting to speak with him.
The fire alarm seems to have gone off somewhere in the building, so instead of going to his office, Rav Chaim leads me to the dining room, where we will be able to hear each other over the not-so-faint alarm bells ringing in the background. The mashgiach shows a keen interest in me, and instead of speaking about himself, he asks me several questions about myself. After a few minutes of giving him an abbreviated biography of my life, he asks me what exactly I have come to hear from him. As Rav Chaim often quotes and tells anecdotes from his rebbeim, I ask him to share some of his recollections.
“I learned in Ner Yisroel in Baltimore for seven years, during which I was zocheh to hear shmuessen from Rav Dovid Kronglas,” he begins. “Rav Dovid was an alter Mirrer and a great baal mussar. When he was offered the position of mashgiach in the yeshivah, he said that he needed to give shiurim as well, feeling that a mashgiach has a different relationship with the bachurim than a maggid shiur, so he gave a blatt shiur. I gained a tremendous breitkeit (breadth) in learning from him.”
Rav Chaim reminisces about the awe that Rav Dovid inspired in the bachurim. “He was a true oveid Hashem. His tefillos were something to watch. In my seven years in Ner Yisroel, I was never zocheh to wish him L’shanah Tovah, because his Shemoneh Esrei would conclude a long time after the yeshivah finished davening. He was also the baal tefillah for the Yomim Nora’im. Anywhere in the davening where kevod shamayim was mentioned, his eyes would tear up and he would cry.”
But it was the run-up to the Yomim Nora’im that stood out to him. “The eimas hadin was etched on Rav Dovid’s face; he had a palpable fear of the Day of Judgment. He would usually give only one shmuess a week. But during Elul, he would say an extra shmuess or two, and it was given with extra emotion.
