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Nechama Carmel: You’ve served as president of Yeshiva Beth Yehudah for many years and you are involved in a number of national and local organizations. How did you first get involved in communal work? Gary Torgow: My maternal grandfather, Manuel Merzon, a”h, emigrated from Russia to the United States in 1918 as a sixteen-year-old orphan. He worked hard, became a lawyer and built up a law practice. He was the first lawyer to wear a yarmulke in the courts in the ‘40s. But his real avocation was helping people. He was deeply involved in assisting the community, always with an eye on those less fortunate. During and after the war, he felt it was his responsibility to help the European Jews, and he brought many families over. He also served pro bono as a lawyer for the communal organizations in Detroit, and I grew up watching his kindness. My grandfather had a strong influence on every area of my life, including my communal career. I started out in communal work as an officer in our local Young Israel because my grandfather was a member of the shul. During those years I developed a very close relationship with Rabbi Avrohom Abba Freedman, zt”l, who ultimately became my Rebbi. Rabbi Freedman came to Detroit in 1944. He was sent by Reb Shraga Feivel Mendlowitz to build a Jewish day school; Rabbi Mendlowitz felt that there is an obligation to establish a day school in any place where there are 5,000 Jews. Rabbi Freedman and his colleagues took a fledgling afternoon school and turned it into a day school that currently has three beautiful campuses with more than 1,100 children. Detroit has other flourishing and wonderful yeshivos and day schools as well. Today, there are thousands of children in day schools in Detroit all because Rabbi Mendlowitz’s foresight and vision to send Rabbi Freedman, along with other outstanding rabbis, to Detroit. My Rebbi was mission-centric; he was totally focused on the Jewish people. There was no small talk with him. It was all business, and it wasn’t your business, it was the Almighty’s business. He encouraged me, among others, to get involved in the local Jewish day school they built, Yeshiva Beth Yehudah. That is really where my communal career expanded. NC: Having been a communal leader for decades and having worked with many other talented leaders, what would you say is one of the main lessons you’ve learned about askanus, communal leadership? GT: We are familiar with the Torah description of how Avraham Avinu had a dream in which God came to him and told him to pack his bags and leave his father’s home. Avraham left, of course, and followed God’s directive, and the whole world changed as a result. He became the leader of monotheism in the world and changed and uplifted millions of lives. The Sefas Emes asks, quoting the Ramban: Who was this man, Avraham Avinu? We don’t know anything about him before God came to him with this commandment. The Sefas Emes, quoting the Zohar, explains that on the night that Avraham Avinu had the dream in which God told him, “Lech lecha mei’artzecha umimolad’techa umibeis avicha,” every human being on earth had that same dream. Yet only Avraham Avinu got out of bed the next morning, packed his bags and did what God instructed him to do. And that seems to be one of the key lessons of communal service. If you’re willing to put yourself out there and get involved in the community, the Almighty will surely assist you. But you have to hear that frequency. Rabbi Meir Zlotowitz, zt”l, once said, quoting Rav Moshe Feinstein, zt”l, that a bas kol (heavenly voice) goes out every day. But only a small number of people hear it. But those who do hear it, grab onto it, and have the power of the Ribbono Shel Olam behind them to do good things for the Jewish people. I learned all of this by watching my Rebbi. Detroit in the ‘40s was a spiritual desert. He told me that on the first Shavuos night after he moved to Detroit, there wasn’t even a minyan of men for the vasikin minyan after learning, not one minyan. Today there are thousands attending minyanim. He, his rabbinic colleagues and the askanim of that time get the credit for that. NC: Do you view communal work as a religious obligation? Is this something that everyone is supposed to be doing on some level? GT: Whenever people ask me about askanus, I tell them all the same thing, which is what I tell my own kids: Everyone should get involved in some way, but it has to be at the right time in your life. If you do it a
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