If your travels to Israel between the 1970s and the early 2000s included a visit to the Kotel, chances are you saw – or at least heard of – the legendary Rabbi Meir Schuster, z”l. He was the tall, lanky, black-hatted bearded fellow in the dark suit, who dedicated himself to frequenting the Kotel, day in and day out, no matter what. A man on a mission, he loved his fellow Jews so much that he wanted to share his enthusiasm for Judaism with them, out of pure compassion. Indeed, he received no monetary compensation for his work.
A Small Tap, a Giant Leap in Faith
Rabbi Schuster’s signature gentle tap on the shoulder and inquiry, “Are you Jewish? Can I introduce you to learning some more about Judaism?” began when he and his friend Chaim Kass were yeshiva students in their early twenties. They had just finished davening (praying) at the Kotel when they noticed their secular contemporaries’ emotionally charged reactions after their encounters with the Kotel. It led to their simultaneous conclusion: Someone needs to connect to these people who have nowhere to go with all their feelings and bring them closer to their heritage.
Young Meir and Chaim became those connectors, introducing these young people to Torah classes; introducing them to various rabbis; finding them places to stay; and arranging for warm, inviting homes for Shabbos meals. The two went back every afternoon during their yeshiva breaks to speak with dozens more young people. Eventually, Rabbi Schuster took over completely. Actually, he continued for the next 40 years, until 2012, when he began to develop Lewy Body Disease, a rare degenerative disorder, from which he passed away in 2014.
Yet even when Rabbi Schuster was barely able to walk, he wanted to travel to England to fundraise for his beloved Heritage House, which he founded in the Old City in the 1980s. It was there that young Jewish men and women could explore Judaism in a warm, relaxed environment. When tourism declined substantially, starting in 2000, because of terrorist attacks, Rabbi Schuster encouraged young men and women to explore Judaism at the Shorashim Heritage Centers throughout Israel, where over 50,000 young Israelis have attended classes.
Local Ties
Rabbi Schuster grew up in Milwaukee, the son of nonobservant Holocaust survivors. It was his grandmother who influenced young Meir to leave public school and attend Rabbi Avraham Yehoshua Twerski’s new Talmud Torah. (He later became known as Rabbi Dr. Abraham J. Twerski, prolific author, psychiatrist and founder of Gateway Rehabilitation Center in Pittsburgh.) Rabbi Twerski took Meir under his wing, helping him catch up in his Hebrew studies. When he was 14, his parents allowed him to learn at the Skokie yeshiva. From there, he moved on to Yeshivas Ner Yisrael in Baltimore, in 1960, where he studied for seven years, and received semicha.
In 1967, Meir married Esther Garfinkel. The shidduch was made by Esther’s first cousin, Eli Gibber, brother of Baltimorean Allan Gibber, who was also learning at Ner Yisrael. After the wedding, the newlyweds arrived in Israel with just three suitcases, planning to live in Yerushalyaim for a year so that Meir could attend the Mirrer kollel. They never left.
Married to a Tzadik
“My husband had an ahavas Yisrael that was unbelievable. We didn’t know the extent of it, and I feel bad that we didn’t appreciate him enough,” Rebbetzin Schuster admits during our phone interview. “We didn’t know who he was; he didn’t want us to know. People came in during shiva and shared their stories, and we were flabbergasted. I knew that he was very dedicated to his work. It was his life; nothing else interested him. My husband was a real ben Torah, a ben yeshiva; he sat and learned. He asked Rav Noach Weinberg, z”l, if he should leave kollel, and Rav Weinberg told him to give up his learning for this, saying “This is what you are cut out to do.”
“My husband was a very sincere person,” continues Rebbetzin Schuster. “The reason he was matzliach (successful) was because he had siyata d’shmaya (Divine help) – that’s the bottom line. People who knew him when he was learning in Baltimore saw how shy and quiet he was and wondered what would become of him. But he felt such a closeness to Hakadosh Baruch Hu, and apparently, this is what Hashem felt he should do.”
“My husband was so concerned for everyone and deeply felt for them, and he looked beyond the way you were dressed; he was not judgmental at all,” notes Rebbetzin Schuster. “He once met a girl who told him that he was the first person who cared about her. A lady came to the shiva wearing a tichel; she looked like she was straight from Meah Shearim. We didn’t know who she is. When we asked her, she told me, ‘Your husband picked me up at the Wall, when I was dressed in jeans and a top. Everybody’s jaw dropped. I asked her why she would want to go with a man in a hat and jacket. She said, ‘I saw his sincerity; I saw that he cared about me.’” Indeed, the quality people saw most in Rabbi Schuster was his sincerity, as many of them told his family after his petira (passing).
Rebbetzin Schuster shares another story about how her husband – before email and cell phones – would take down the addresses of people he met and stay in touch by sending them a postcard. “There was a boy my husband sent a postcard to and, seeing that it came from Rabbi Schuster, he ripped it up,” mentions the Rebbetzin. “My husband sent him another one, and the boy ripped it up; he sent him another one, and he ripped it up. One day, he met the boy in the Central Bus Station, where my husband also used to hang around picking up kids. My husband said, ‘I’ve been waiting for you, I’ve been waiting for you!’ and gave him a big hug. That did it! He went with my husband and today he and is family are frum.
Nothing stood in Rabbi Schuster’s way. He was a very stubborn person, and used that quality for good.
“My husband didn’t just pick up a boy and send him to yeshiva,” continues the Rebbetzin. “He went to the yeshiva on Sunday morning to see how he was doing, and he would go every Sunday morning with the girls from Neve or the boys from Ohr Somayach and Aish HaTorah, to the Heritage House. He picked them up like flies; he couldn’t pick them up fast enough. Kiruv is not like that today; things have changed. In those days, the boys were looking for something. Hashem put my husband in that era to be able to bring them back to Yiddishkeit.”
Rabbi Schuster was willing to give the shirt off his back to everybody, says Rebbetzin Schuster, “One day, he picked up this girl who was on her way to Egypt. He said to her, ‘What do you want to go to Egypt for? We left Egypt thousands of years ago! What do I have to do to get you to go to yeshiva?’ She said, ‘Give me your hat!’ He said, ‘Okay! But first you have to go!’ She went to Neve and after three months she called him, and he gave her his hat. She has the hat until this day. It’s unbelievable!
“There was a man that Rabbi Schuster went up to a few times; each time, the man gave him excuses about not wanting to go to yeshiva. Finally, my husband said, ‘You’re not telling me the truth.’ He persistently said, ‘I don’t want to go to yeshiva!’ So, my husband went up to the Kotel and lifted his hands up to Shamayim and said, ‘Ribono Shel Olam!’ The man saw how my husband was davening with such sincerity. He approached him and said, ‘I think I’ll go with you.’ Today, this man is frum.”
A close family friend of the Schusters once pressed the Rabbi to tell him the number of people he had become involved with over the years. Rabbi Schuster didn’t know but thought it was more than 5,000. “But it had to be more than that,” remarks Rebbetzin Schuster, “and it extends to the next generation. All these people have had a ripple effect on the spiritual growth of yet others.”
As M. Lowinger so eloquently, put it in her article, “That Tap on the Shoulder” (Yeshiva World News, July 12, 2018), “Here is a man who spent countless hours at the Kotel Plaza approaching the crowds, one individual at a time. His goal? To break down the walls that divide us, to create a vibrant and powerful ba’al teshuva movement and, ultimately, to rebuild the Beis Hamikdosh in all its glory. He serves as a sterling role model for all of us.”
SIDEBAR 1
Lifelong Friends
by Rabbi Shlomo Porter as told to Margie Pensak
I was childhood friends with Meir in Milwaukee. He was about four years older than me; we parted ways when he went off to learn in Skokie Yeshiva. I too attended Skokie. He left after two years to attend Ner Yisrael. He was the one who encouraged me to come to Ner Yisrael from Chicago. Years later, when he would come to Baltimore to fundraise for the Heritage House, he would stay at my house and, later, on at his cousin Aharon Gibber’s home.
Although Meir was an extremely shy, introverted bachur who sat in the back of the beis medrash, he took on the job of going around to awaken the bachurim. He would faithfully walk through the dorms every morning calling repeatedly and with such pure earnestness, in Yiddish, “Wake up, wake up – it’s time to serve Hashem.”
Meir was a very frum guy. When he was in yeshiva, he hardly spoke at all on Shabbos, other than divrei Torah (words of Torah). Friday nights, he would be learning in the beis medrash, sitting with a box of dates and some fruit, and bachurim would return from their rebbeim’s homes on Garrison Boulevard, where the yeshiva was in those days. He tried to minimize his superfluous words on Shabbos, for example, by motioning to his fellow bachurim to take something to eat and make a bracha.
Meir was awkward, socially. Nobody ever imagined that he would be able to talk to college students – boys and girls – and try to convince them to try out yeshiva or go to Aish HaTorah or Ohr Somayach. He was very shy, almost introverted, but because he was a real eved Hashem, and he saw that this was something that Hashem has nachas from – bringing Jewish souls back to Yiddishkeit – he pushed himself.
Meir would call students he met who went back to America numerous times to keep up a rapport with them. He was very persistent. He had me call a girl who came to the Heritage House to follow up with her. I called her. A month later, Meir asked me, ‘Did you call her?’ I told him I did, but she was busy and couldn’t come back to the Heritage House. He told me, ‘Call her again!’ I did repeatedly, at his request, until she came for Shabbos. She’s a rebbetzin now!
Meir influenced thousands and thousands of people. He didn’t have any natural talent to do this; he had the will to do it. He was the most unlikely person imaginable to enter the field of kiruv, and would have been voted least likely to succeed at it.
When Meir came to Baltimore to fundraise, some friends arranged for him to speak at the Agudah for shalosh seudos. He got up and said, “My name is Meir Schuster; I learned here at Ner Yisrael. I run the Heritage House in Yerushalayim.” That was about it. I said, “Meir, you didn’t tell one story.” He said, “No.” He couldn’t tell any stories about himself.
SIDEBAR #2
Taps that Led to Finding Ourselves and One Another
by Bracha Goetz
“It is 1976. The man who was to become my husband was praying at the Kotel. Larry had finished his time in a kibbutz ulpan, and was still volunteering in a development town in the Negev when he decided to spend the weekend in Jerusalem. He was scheduled to return to the States a few weeks later, with no clear plans. Larry put a note in a crevice in the Wall and then prayed sincerely to find his path in life. When he finished, there was a tap on his shoulder. It was Rabbi Schuster, asking him, “Do you have the time?” Thank G-d, Larry did have the time, and he followed Reb Meir to a yeshiva for baalei teshuva where he began the process of finding his life’s path. After nine years of learning and teaching at Yeshiva Aish HaTorah, young wandering Larry became Rabbi Aryeh Goetz.
It is 1978, and after completing my first year of medical school, I was volunteering on the oncology ward at Hadassah Hospital, visiting with patients who were dying, while my secret mission was to learn the purpose of living. During my first few days in Israel, I went to the Kotel, and Reb Meir Schuster found me there. His purity and his sincerity came right into my heart. I began to study with Rebbetzin Denah Weinberg, and at the women’s division of Ohr Someyach, as the process of understanding the purpose of living began for me as well.
It is 1979, and every torch is lit on the menorah beside the Kotel, as it is the eighth night of Chanukah. My soon-to-be husband is sitting near me on a bench in the Kotel plaza. He tells me that on the eighth day of Chanukah, the spiritual potential for dedication is at its greatest. He wants to know if, on this night full of the power of dedication, I would agree to be his partner in life, so we could continue our separate journeys together.
Reb Meir is there, too, on the night when my husband asked me to marry him. We both see him at the same moment. He is looking for more and more lost neshamas waiting to be found, including those who, like us, will be blessed to find each other too.”
Excerpted from Mrs. Goetz’s recollections, published on rebmeirschuster.org.
