Memory Lane: Dr. Joseph Kaminetsky

For more than four decades, Boro Park resident Dr. Joseph Kaminetsky served in the leadership of the Torah Umesorah organization. In this capacity, he served as a revolutionary force in the landscape of Torah chinuch in the United States and Canada. Filled with love for his fellow Yidden, he channeled his incredible wisdom and energy—with utter mesirus nefesh— to fight for the future of Yiddishkeit in America, resulting in hundreds of day schools being founded in the length and breadth of North America. 

Brooklyn Born 

Yosef Kaminetsky was born to his parents, Reb Shimon and Fannie Kaminetsky, immigrants from Russia who resided in East New York. He started out in public school, but soon his father recognized the need to send him to yeshiva. So he sold their home in East New York, and the family moved to Brownsville, where young Yosef was enrolled in Yeshivas Rabbeinu Chaim Berlin. After graduating the elementary school, he was sent to Talmudical Academy high school on East Broadway in the Lower East Side. From TA, he proceeded to be part of the first class of Yeshiva College, graduating from RIETS in 1932.    

He soon began his career in Torah education, even as he pursued his doctorate in education from Columbia University. He went to work for Dr. Leo Jung at Manhattan’s Jewish Center synagogue, and in 1946, he joined Torah Umesorah under Rav Shraga Feivel Mendlowitz, zt”l.

For close to forty years, Dr. Kaminetsky loyally fulfilled the mission placed on his shoulders by gedolei Yisroel. He traveled throughout the United States, spoke with the public, and with people from all walks of life, built, encouraged, and recruited funds. He was a mechanech with his every fiber of his soul. He planned study sessions, taught teachers and trained principals, mediated and solved the problems of every school which had difficulties. He became a well-known figure in the United States, and his life and name became fully associated with Torah Umesorah.

As Reb Avi Shulman put it in a preface to Dr. Kaminetsky’s book: “Those of us who had the privilege of working with him were constantly impressed by his indomitable spirit. The hardship of the three-week-across-the-country bus and train trips, nights on the couch, missed meals, and forgotten promises were all swept away by the excitement of the opening of a new school.” 

Fighting for the Future 

In his book Memorable Encounters, in which he recorded the stories and memories from his time at te helm of Torah Umesorah, Dr. Kaminetsky recalls:  

“Torah Umesorah began operations in a building in downtown Manhattan, near City Hall, at 132 Street, which must go down in history as the ‘hub’ of salvation for Torah on these shores. We were on the tenth floor, the Vaad Hatzolah was on the fifth, and the Agudas Harabbonim a few floors above us. At the outset, we were a bare-bones staff of four highly energized recruits who each took charge of a fledgling department… Shortly after Reb Shraga Feivel’s death in 1948, I assumed the title of National Director. We all took on as many additional functions as time and energy allowed. 

“As a strategy for overcoming the Torah illiteracy which reigned in this country, we began traveling to outlying communities, trying to reach people by explaining Gemoro sources for Jewish education, all of which accentuated the vital role of Torah study. In each community, we sought out the small corps of Jews where were willing to put their lives and reputations on the line to create a day school, and we taught and interpreted these Gemoros for them. 

“In due course, the Hebrew day school became the focus and treasure of so many communities that were far off the beaten path… My work at Torah Umesorah was fascinating, exhilarating, all-consuming. The great gedolim of America were my advisors and directors in the holy work of Torah Umesorah; the visionary activists of American Jewry, great and small, were my partners on the front lines of the day-school campaign. As both witness and agent in the grand drama of American Jewish history, I have had a lifetime of memorable encounters. Those were colorful times of challenge and dreams, of vigor and renewal, beginning in 1946, when I joined Reb Shraga Feivel’s team. I had the zechus to work closely with the gedolei hador, to participate in American Jewish history, to surround myself with truly illustrious friends. 

“The saga of my activities in building the edifice of Torah in America is a circuitous tale spanning five decades and bridging ideological worlds.”  

Dr. Kaminetsky retired to Eretz Yisroel, surrounded by his children, and he was niftar there in the spring of 1999 following a lifetime dedicated to the furtherance of Torah education.