Rebbetzin Fruma Rochel Altusky has several claims to fame. Among them are her maternal grandparents, American Torah pioneers Rabbi Yaakov Yosef and Aidel Herman (of All for the Boss fame) and her illustrious parents, Harav Chaim Pinchas and Rebbetzin Basha Scheinberg. But if you ask her what she feels her biggest yichus is, she will tell you it is being the first girl to attend the very first Bais Yaakov high school in America.
Rebbetzin Altusky’s life spans three continents. She was born and spent her earliest years in Mir, Poland, where her father was learning in the yeshiva. Her parents moved to the Lower East Side of Manhattan in 1935, when she was four years old. She grew up in New York and married Rav Chaim Dov Altusky. After teach for many years in New York, the Altuskys moved to the Mattersdorf section of Yerushalayim in 1965, joining her parents after the relocation of her father’s yeshiva, Yeshivas Torah Ore.
I had the honor and pleasure of meeting Rebbetzin Altusky and her daughter, Rebbetzin Yehudis Finkel, on their recent visit to Baltimore, at the home of their gracious hosts, Dr. Michael and Mrs. Linda Elman. I am grateful for the time the Rebbetzin spent with me, so that I could share a glimpse of her interesting and inspiring life with my WWW readers.
Margie Pensak: Rebbetzin, please share a memory you have of your grandparents, the Hermans, when your family lived in their home on the Lower East Side after arriving in America.
Rebbetzin Altusky: My grandfather took me on an outing when I was four years old. He said, “Do you want to come with me?” I was fascinated by New York. I came from a little shtetl, Mir, with little houses and one store. He gave me a penny and told me, “We are going to go to the candy store to buy candy.” It was a child’s Gan Eden. People made three dollars a week in those days. A penny was money! In the end, I chose chocolate kisses that came in a little pull-tie bag because of the silver paper, which I could smooth out; I never saw silver paper before.
My grandfather told me to pay the penny. Then we went outside and he said, “Now make a bracha out loud, so loud that they can hear it in the Garden Cafeteria across the street!” I would have made 10 brachos to get the candy, because he held it.
I said, “Zeidy, I can’t scream so loud; I’m a little girl.”
He said, “Do you want the candy?”
I said, “Zeidy, I’m ashamed. Everyone will look at me!”
He said, “That’s just what I want! They should see that a little girl has courage to make a bracha out loud. They want to be American Jews, and not Jews living in America.”
I didn’t understand the distinction; all I knew was that it was not good, because of the tone he used to say it. I closed my eyes, because I thought that way no one would see me, and at the top of my lungs I screamed the bracha. He gave me one candy from the bag and said, “Do you know why I wanted you to do that? Because if they hear you make a bracha, maybe they will remember that once upon a time they also made a bracha, and that once upon a time they were Jews who put their yarmulkes on their heads. And now, if they hear you, they will put their hand on their head, and they will make a bracha, and then you will have a cheilek, a share, in their mitzva! And do you think that a mitzva comes easy?”
“No,” I whimpered. I was very ashamed. He said, “You should never be ashamed to do what is right! But every mitzva has a price tag. Sometimes you need ko’ach, physical strength, to do it; sometimes you need courage; sometimes you need mesiras nefesh, dedication. You should remember, it always comes with a price tag, but it is always worth it!”
MP: What was it like to live in the Hermans’ house?
RA: My Zeidy always took in the gedolim (great rabbis) who came to America. When they got off the boat, the taxi drivers would ask them, ‘Do you want to go to J.J. Herman? He’ll help you.’ My Zeidy was always doing chesed. He opened his home to people on Shabbos and during the week. He helped people who came here with nothing and found them apartments. I lived in that house for over a year, and I saw. I remember that the Ponevezher Rav was by my Zeidy; the Slabodka Rebbe was by my Zeidy; and, the Kaminetzer Rav, Rabbi Baruch Ber Leibowitz, was by my Zeidy. They slept elsewhere because he didn’t have room, but they ate by him three times a day. And, their great-great grandchildren married my Zeidy’s great- grandchildren. My daughter who is here with me is married to the great-grandson of Rav Nosson Tzvi Finkel, the Slabodka Rosh Yeshiva, from Yeshivas Chevron. Another daughter married the grandson of Rav Dovid Povarsky, the Ponevezher Rosh Yeshiva; and, my sister’s son married the great-granddaughter of Rav Baruch Ber Leibowitz. We became related to the three great gedolim that my father took into his house.
MP: How did the Rebbetzin become the first student in the first Bais Yaakov high school in America?
RA: I went to public high school, together with boys and singing Christmas carols, up until the time when Rav Boruch Kaplan came to America and opened the first Bais Yaakov. Years before, my grandparents, who had sent my parents to the Mir to learn, also paid the boat fare (there were no commercial flights back then!) for Rav Boruch Kaplan, Rav Avigdor Miller, and Rabbi Shachne Zohn, who he felt could be leaders in America, eventually.
Rav Kaplan married in Poland, and since he was an American citizen, his Polish-born wife, Rebbetzin Vichna, a talmida of Sora Schneirer, was allowed to come out of Europe. When they arrived in America, she was horrified to learn that there was not one religious school for girls; they all went to public school. Although she started giving night classes, that project didn’t take and didn’t have a future; a lot of the girls got married. The Kaplans realized they had to start educating the girls when they were younger. Rabbi Avrohom Newhouse started an elementary school, but I was already high school age when he did, and there was nothing for me. Rav Kaplan knew Abba from America – even before he left for the Mir – and begged him to let me learn in his school, which he and Rebbetzin Vichna were starting in America. I was the first student in the first Bais Yaakov in America. To me, that is my greatest “yichus”!
MP: What did the Rebbetzin do after graduating high school?
RA: I graduated high school at the age of 16. My family did not have money – they had everything but money – so I started working after graduation. I traveled an hour-and-a-half to teach in a Talmud Torah in the Bronx; the boys were 12, and I was 16; I looked 12, and the boys looked 16! What a job! I got thrown into the deep water before I learned how to swim. At night, after teaching, I attended Rebbetzin Kaplan’s seminary. Although I qualified to go to college on a full scholarship, my father refused to let me go. My father felt that the atmosphere in goyishe colleges back then was very open and free. It was very communistic, socialistic, and very hefkerdik. He was right! The atmosphere was really not good. There were no Yiddishe colleges back then. My father did let me take courses at the Young Israel Institute, in psychology and education. Only later, in Eretz Yisrael, did I get a degree in guidance.
MP: How did the Rebbetzin meet her husband?
RA: When it came time for a shidduch, my father handpicked my chassan, Rav Chaim Dov Altusky, zt”l. He learned in both the Beth Medrash Govoha in Lakewood and Yeshiva Chofetz Chaim in New York. My father-in-law, Harav Yehuda Altusky, zt”l, was a Rav in the Bronx and headed the Bronx rabbanim. My husband started out attending Yeshiva University. Although they promised him that if he stayed, he would have a very important job in the Talmud department of the university, he left because he was more interested in dedicating his time and life to Torah studies. My father, who was teaching at Yeshiva Chofetz Chaim at the time, discovered him there. My father left to found his own yeshiva, Yeshivas Torah Ore. In 1964, with the encouragement of my grandfather, my father decided to move his yeshiva from Bensonhurst, New York, to Yerushalayim. It became the first “American” yeshiva in Eretz Yisrael.
MP: Please tell us about your teaching career.
RA: I taught for 19 years in America, in Bais Yaakov of the Lower East Side, later known as Esther Schoenfeld. In 1965, my husband, family, and I followed my parents to Eretz Yisrael. It took me three or four years to get a teaching job there, because my accent was atrocious, and they already had several teachers. I didn’t start teaching in Eretz Yisrael until American seminaries began to open up. I have been teaching in Bais Yaakov Seminary, which used to be called Seminar Yerushalayim, for over 30 years; I also teach in a new seminary, Ki Tov Sachra. Before that, I taught in Migdal Oz and in Scharfman’s.
MP: What subjects does the Rebbetzin teach?
RA: I have taught Chinuch Habayit and Tehilim, but presently, I teach only Tehilim. In addition to teaching, I have been in the guidance field for many years and work with parents. I also speak in many schools, mostly about my life growing up in my grandparents’ and parents’ homes.
MP: Thank you, Rebbetzin, for so graciously sharing a glimpse of your inspiring life with my WWW readers.
RA: You are very welcome!
