At Torah Links, the key to kiruv lies in immersing students in limud HaTorah

 

 

By Reuvain Borchardt

 

 

“The big final exam after 120 asks you, ‘Did you fulfill the tafkid that you were put into this world for?’ You need physical things to fulfill your spiritual tafkid, and therefore you have a right to ask for them. You have every right to ask for money, to ask for health—but those are tools. The ultimate question is: Did you fulfill your spiritual tafkid? And that’s the most worrisome question.”

 

It’s early Elul, and Rabbi Aaron Gruman, manhig ruchani of Torah Links, is delivering his daily hashkafah shiur. The bachurim sit around the table in a glassed-in shiur room just off the beis medrash in the kiruv organization’s sparkling new edifice.

 

The topic of today’s shiur is an in-depth look at L’David Hashem Ori. Rabbi Gruman passionately explains to the boys how the theme underpinning this psalm is how David Hamelech’s most fervent wish is to dwell in the House of Hashem and grow spiritually.

 

“We have to double down and make sure that we’re asking for the spiritual tools that we need to fulfill our tafkid,” Rabbi Gruman tells the boys, each of whom has begun his journey of spiritual fulfillment in recent years and is now dedicating his days to learning in America’s preeminent Torah town. “The primary reason we say this during this period is that it’s defining where we should all be at.”

 

The Beginnings

 

Three decades ago, the BMG roshei yeshivah sought to have yungerleit reach out to the masses of secular Jews in the region. The yeshivah began several initiatives, which coalesced in Torah Links, the kiruv wing of BMG.

 

“The roshei yeshivah felt such an achrayus to the mosad that only a couple of years after it was founded, they asked the mashgiach, Rav Mattisyahu, to really oversee the mosad,” says Rabbi Gruman. “So we were zocheh to have shimush by the Mashgiach.”

 

His shiur has ended, and he’s now speaking with The Voice about Lakewood’s flourishing institution for Jews seeking a connection to Torah.

 

The organization’s first initiative was setting up Torah institutions in areas of the Garden State that desperately needed them: Marlboro, East Brunswick, and Cherry Hill, transforming Jewish life in, respectively, Western Monmouth County, Middlesex County, and South Jersey.

 

Rav Matisyahu himself would spend a Shabbos each summer in Marlboro, taking great pride in its achievements and developing a kesher with its leaders.

 

While today Torah Links operates as an independent institution, Rabbi Gruman says, “We still very much pride ourselves on doing things with the blessings of the roshei yeshivah, and we speak to them before doing anything that is a dramatic departure from what we have been doing.”

 

The Programs

 

The most dramatic departure came 15 years ago, when Torah Links shifted its focus to hosting programs in Lakewood for university-age youth and recent graduates.

 

Two years ago, its massive new building was inaugurated, complete with a beis medrash, shiur rooms, and dorms.

 

Today, the core of Torah Links is the roughly 15 boys who are in yeshivah full-time. Most of these are American boys who have already studied in yeshivah in Israel.

 

 

 

 

There are also some guys here for Elul zman before heading back to college or grad school. There’s a Bnei Torah Links program for boys who were in the yeshivah and have gone out to work but want to maintain a connection with night seder and Sunday learning.

 

And there are various programs operating at any given time for those who are not-yet-religious. There are large trips of boys coming from around the world who want to experience a taste of yeshivah for several weeks, perhaps during a break between college semesters. And then there’s the summer Fellowship Program, for guys to experience Lakewood with an internship at a local frum business and night seder in yeshivah.

 

The 65 beds in the dorm host more than 500 boys a year between the rotating programs. The most recent foreign trip this summer had 90 South American students; Torah Links had to rent a hotel for them.

 

The Lakewood Attraction

 

Lakewood today has almost no Jews who grew up secular, and its population has one of the highest concentrations of FFBs in the world. It’s precisely because of, not despite, this that Lakewood was chosen for the headquarters of this kiruv organization.

 

“When Lakewood residents wake up in the morning, what’s the first thing we think about?” asks Torah Links CEO Rabbi Yehuda Farber. “Traffic, fighting to find a parking spot, and thinking about someone who couldn’t get into school. That’s what happens: You get into a tunnel vision and gravitate to negativity. We don’t realize that when a secular person comes into this town, it’s a kiddush Hashem. It’s beautiful. Our way of life is very inspiring—halevai we should chap that ourselves.”

 

 

One ba’al teshuvah program director from South Africa says he prefers to send his students on trips to Lakewood than to Israel.

 

“When my boys go to Lakewood, I don’t have to worry about them in clubs and bars and that whole scene,” the director said. “And there’s the advantage of having them be around people who give them a realistic model of what they can become. In Eretz Yisrael they see such holy, special people, but they don’t see a dugma of what they can be. But in Lakewood, they see ba’alei batim from every profession who are bnei Torah, and they know that they can become that.”

 

And what might at first seem strange and a turn-off to secular young men end up being the greatest attraction.

 

“Where do you find a business with separation of males and females?” says Rabbi Gruman. “At first they think it’s weird. But then they watch it in action, they see how women are treated in the workforce, they see how the women’s focus is really about their career as mothers and as being an akeres habayis. They see Minchah; they see Toraso Umnaso. They see people collecting, coming in and out of the executive suite. Many guys will tell you that that is far more of an influence than my most magnificent shiur.”

 

Another advantage of being educated in Lakewood is that the boys feel comfortable enough in a Torah community that when they get married and start their own families, they feel a part of the Torah world and don’t drift off into other communities.

 

“Sometimes ba’alei teshuvah and their kids have a hard time integrating,” says Rabbi Moishe Katz, Torah Links’ COO and menahel. “They don’t get the nuances and whatever. If they’re here in Lakewood, they get those nuances, and then, no matter where they choose to move, they’ll be able to integrate into the Torah community.”

 

Nate Saadon, a 24-year-old student who came to Torah Links in the summer after a year in Israel and loved it so much he’s staying for this year, said, “Lakewood’s been great; everyone seems really nice.” While he says he’s not sure that “long term, I would end up in Lakewood myself,” he could see himself settling in another nearby town of Torah Jews.

 

The Method

 

While some ba’al teshuvah yeshivos focus heavily on intense theological discussions, at Torah Links, limud haTorah stands above all else.

 

Much like at a typical yeshivah, every morning the Torah Links beis medrash is knocking with the sounds of the students learning Gemara with chavrusas (the chavrusas are bnei Torah who are paid a stipend).

 

Much like at a typical yeshivah, the boys learn in the same study hall as kollel yungerleit. (Torah Links hosts two independent kollelim in its beis medrash, which provides a true kol Torah experience.)

 

 

Much like at a typical yeshivah, the limud is an intense iyun perek—this zman it’s Shnayim Ochazin.

 

And much like at a typical yeshivah, the Gemara shiur is the longest of the day.

 

There are also daily shiurim in Mishnah Berurah and Chumash. The hashkafah shiur, given by Rabbi Gruman, is the shortest of the day.

“Our motto and message and mission is, ‘Transform through Torah,’” says Rabbi Zev Freundlich, Gemara maggid shiur and director of the beis medrash program. “Torah belongs to every Yid. Whether it’s a kid who came back after being in Ohr Somayach for three years or someone right out of a frat house in UC Berkeley and this the first time he’s ever opened up a Jewish book—they both connect to it, and they both change.”

 

“We spent our time in yeshivah learning this way, and we hope our ba’alei teshuvah become mainstream,” says Rabbi Ezriel Munk, the halachah rebbi. “Just like a mainstream yeshivah boy learns Gemara and halachah well, that’s what we want for our talmidim.”

 

 

 

Students certainly ask questions about the fundamentals of Judaism, and those are discussed and answered. But that’s not the raison d’être of this organization.

 

“What we’re trying to achieve,” Rabbi Freundlich says, “is to make Torah the main part of their lives, but also to give them a geshmak in learning.”

 

And to those who say, “Kiruv is not my thing,” Rabbi Freundlich responds, “Is learning your thing? Because we just learn Torah with people. That’s the paradigm shift that we’re trying to create. It’s learning Torah.”

 

Rabbi Munk says he tries to give them that geshmak in halachah and show them that without knowing halachos a Jew can’t do anything.

 

 

I ask him if college-educated adults don’t roll their eyes when they’re taught, for example, that there are rules about how you must tie your shoes or wash your hands.

 

Rabbi Munk smiles. “At first they do. But when you explain the reason,” he says, accentuating the word, “it’s like a different world!” His smile grows wider, his voice rises, and he continues animatedly, “You explain that putting on your shoes is a sacred thing, and you’re tying with your left hand first because you want to show appreciation to the tefillin, and you wash your hands al netilas yadayim; we talk about the shulchan as a mizbe’ach. Everything has reasons. Nothing is random!

 

“They come from a secular world where you just do whatever you want. When they see that everything we do is regulated by halachah, most of these guys are blown away.”

 

The Emptiness Filled

 

The most common question asked these days by those on a spiritual journey is not about the existence of G-d or religious strictures.

 

“They’re asking, ‘How can I have more meaning in my life?’” says Rabbi Katz. “All they want is a more meaningful and happy life.”

 

This, the rabbis say, is due largely to the values, or lack thereof, of this technology-focused generation.

 

There are the well-known issues of how tech devices have destroyed thinking capabilities’ and attention spans. Some of the irreligious boys who come on the trips have told the rabbis they spend as many as 12 hours a day on their phones. There are shiurim in the yeshivah that used to be an hour but have been reduced to as little as 25 minutes, and video clips the yeshivah creates of divrei Torah on the parshah have been reduced from seven minutes to less than one.

 

But the problem is deeper than this, says Rabbi Gruman. “It’s also the sense of bittul that comes with everything and anything, thanks to the internet. Nothing is sacred anymore.”

 

He relates how the mashgiach of a ba’al teshuvah yeshivah in Israel told him that students in his yeshivah are expected to stay for a minimum of two years. Only after spending a year detoxing from the depravity and irreverence and frivolity in secular American society can they spend a year of actual spiritual growth.

 

But this sense of emptiness and longing for meaning provides a golden opportunity for bringing people closer to Yiddishkeit by showing them the beauty of Torah life.

 

Dr. Chuna Chaim (Howard) Lebowitz, who lives near the yeshivah and has hosted many students for Shabbosim, related how at the end of one summer program, each boy was sharing his thoughts, and one exclaimed, “I want to have a table like yours.”

 

The Reciprocal Benefit

 

As much as the FFBs who run the program give to the boys, they say they often feel they get back more.

 

Yechiel Freundlich (a brother of Rabbi Zev) spends his days as one of the chavrusos for Torah Links students (and his nights as one of Lakewood’s most popular wedding musicians).

 

“We all know the famous Chazal about how a person can learn more from his colleagues and students than from his rebbe’im, and I get to feel that on a daily basis,” Yechiel says. “It’s moving to see someone who grew up with none of the spiritual background and education we take for granted struggle and work again and again and persevere to understand the Gemara. These boys didn’t inherit Yiddishkeit as we did; they chose it, step by step. As proud as I am of their achievements, their growth uplifts all of us.”

 

And the Shabbosim spent together leave an indelible impression on the host families as much as on the students.

 

Scott Klein, then a not-yet-religious young man, once started asking questions at the Munk Shabbos table. Rabbi Munk’s sixth-grade son Yechiel opened a sefer and began learning with Scott—and they kept going for more than two hours. Today, Scott stands up for Yechiel, whom he considers his first rebbi.

 

The Difficulties … and Opportunities

 

The world has undergone a political transformation since 10/7, and this has been felt most acutely on college campuses.

 

Those bastions of higher secular education have made it clear that Jews don’t enjoy the rights of other minorities—and those who haven’t the stomach to fight have had to hide their Jewishness.

 

But this harassment and ostracization has led many to look elsewhere in their search for the meaning of life.

 

“Over the last couple of years, Hashem has been making things uncomfortable for everybody—particularly the Jews,” says Rabbi Farber. “These students coming from college campuses or wherever realize the world is nuts, and that even the nuts don’t want any part of the Jews. And then they come here and see that we have a beautiful life.”

 

As I head out to Central Avenue, I wish Rabbi Munk a kesivah v’chasimah tovah and turn to leave. But he pulls me back in and asks, “Do you know the reason we say kesivah v’chasimah tovah?”

 

I shrug.

 

“There are three, actually,” he says. “The first reason is, like blowing shofar, it’s to wake us up from our slumber and remind ourselves and our friends that the Yom Hadin is coming. The second reason is that when you give someone a brachah, you get the brachah as well. So in order for us to get more brachos now, we give brachos.

 

“And the third reason is that if you know your friend is about to face a major judgment and you don’t wish him well and try to help him in his din, it’s achzariyus; it shows that you don’t care about him.” He smiles. “We wish a kesivah v’chasimah tovah to show the Ribono Shel Olam that we care about our fellow Jew.”

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