A clandestine undertaking on behalf of Israel, the Jets and the Jews.

 
When we opened on Staten Island thirty years ago, we faced the question of whether to accept children from non-Shomer Shabbos homes. Rabbi Yaakov Feitman, our principal, and I sought the counsel of his Rosh Yeshiva, Rav Yitzchok Hutner, ztl, who built Chaim Berlin into a great Torah institution and who was a genius in matters of chinuch. We presented the question. The Rosh Yeshiva responded vigorously, insisting that we must not have a policy of refusing such children. He emphasized that some of his outstanding students had come from homes that were not Shomer Shabbos. Where would they be now, he asked, had they not been accepted?

In sharp contrast, a decade later, when I starting attending Chaim Berlin's high school in 1986, there was little evidence of R. Hutner's policy. (R. Hutner had already passed away.) The only students from non-shomer shabbos homes that I can recall were one kid who had escaped from Iran, and a Syrian kid. The yeshiva expelled a number of students for relatively minor infractions, particularly after 11th grade. There also was little tolerance of, or interest in, those from a "different background." A friend of mine whose family had just moved from Israel interviewed at Chaim Berlin wearing a knitted kippa. He was advised to go to a different yeshiva. Suffice to say that his learning would easily have qualified him to be in Chaim Berlin's upper echelon.
posted on 5/09/2005