Chesed in action: Rabbi Steven Moskowitz

Rabbi Steven Moskowitz organizes ski trips, coaches basketball, makes a mean cholent, and teaches his students that doing chesed is not a one shot deal, but a lifelong commitment

By Lisa Schiffman

Issue of Feb. 6, 2009 / 12 Shevat 5769

Rabbi Steven Moskowitz in motion is a marvel in the art of multi-tasking. During an interview with a reporter one afternoon in his office at HAFTR High School — where he teaches philosophy, Talmud and Jewish law — he managed a busily ringing phone with one hand while taking bites of his sandwich with the other. There were frequent interruptions: a colleague eager to discuss the latest chesed project, and students who wandered into his office between periods seeking guidance.

About a week earlier, Rabbi Moskowitz had received a phone call about a Jewish family with eight children living in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. They had lost everything to a fire that gutted their apartment. There was pride in his voice as he described how his students had organized a drive to replace the entire contents of that family’s apartment. It was obvious that two passions dominate his life: the need to help those less fortunate, and the need to teach his students to do the same.

At HAFTR and at the Great Neck Synagogue, where he is co-youth director with Rabbi Sean Jensen, Rabbi Moskowitz has made a profound impact on his students. As their teacher, mentor and friend, he plays an active role in their lives — in contrast to his own experience growing up in the Bronx.

“When I was growing up, my rabbis had long beards — they didn’t connect with their students,” he admitted.

Originally, after graduating from Yeshiva University’s Ferkauf Graduate School of Psychology and receiving Semicha (rabbinic ordination) from Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary (RIETS), Rabbi Moskowitz says he planned on becoming a psychologist. But after accepting a teaching position at the North Shore Hebrew Academy in 1991 and becoming youth director at Great Neck Synagogue in 1996, he realized his true vocation as an educator.

Settling in Great Neck with wife Adinah and children Chaim, Zahava, Rafi, and Moshe, Rabbi Moskowitz resolved that he was going to approach his students differently, giving them the gift of his time.

“You can impact on people more when you’re accessible to them,” he says.

Athletic and charismatic, Rabbi Moskowitz bonded with his students, accompanying them on skiing and backpacking trips, coaching basketball, spending Shabbat mornings with them, and engaging them in chesed projects that have run the gamut from food and clothing drives to building Sukkahs for needy Jewish families. His students have made Bar and Bat Mitzvahs and weddings for poor Jewish families, serving as waiters and waitresses at their simchas, providing photography and videography services, and buying gifts.

Rabbi Moskowitz emphasized that it is not the actual chesed they do, but the personal time his students invest that counts the most.

“As an educator, I look to teach kids not to give money but their time,” he said. “Teenagers are inundated with charities, but rarely do they have their own money. Writing a check brings a distance between charity and the act of charity itself. Chesed comes from you — your own time and money. Kids are more interested in doing things with their hands and time than just donating money. They’re totally involved in the process — it’s not just cutting a check.”

He has instilled his hands-on approach in his students.

“We’ve been doing so many chesed projects,” said HAFTR senior Rebecca Rubin, who has been in Rabbi Moskowitz’s class since the beginning of the school year. “We’ve built Sukkahs, served breakfast with Starbucks coffee and Costco muffins, participated in an ‘everything drive’ for a family who lost everything in a fire. In less than a week, we raised everything — ovens, toys, books, and clothing. It was an incredible experience to see how we could improve their lives.”

Rubin’s response is precisely the message Rabbi Moskowitz wishes to impart to his students: that there are people in this world who face hardship and that their efforts to help do make a difference.

His own efforts serve as a model. In 2004, after responding to an ad in The Jewish Press, Rabbi Moskowitz donated a kidney to a total stranger, a Chasidic Jewish woman.

“It was well worth it,” he conceded, making light of his sacrifice, which entailed major surgery and a five-day hospitalization. “It was a one shot deal,” he insisted. “Putting things in perspective, I am less impressed with a person who donates a kidney than one who donates their time to Tomchei Shabbos. The American soldiers deployed in Iraq put themselves in harm’s way every day.”

For Rabbi Moskowitz, donating his kidney may have been a “one shot deal,” but the same cannot be said of his ongoing involvement in two Jewish charitable organizations: Tomchei Shabbos of Queens, which delivers Shabbat meals to needy Jewish families, and OHEL Children’s Home and Family Service’s Bais Ezra program for the developmentally disabled.

Tomchei Shabbos spokeswoman Adinah Pelman credits Rabbi Moskowitz with singlehandedly raising awareness in the Great Neck community about Jewish poverty, and helping to recruit an army of volunteers.

“Aside from raising money, Rabbi Moskowitz has brought students of his to do packaging on a regular basis, and has gotten them excited about it,” she said. “It’s just amazing how he got the whole community involved.”

Rabbi Moskowitz’s Chesed Cholent Program, in which frozen bags of his homemade stew of barley, beans, onion, meat and spices are sold to synagogues and individuals for donation to Tomchei Shabbos, has netted $180,000 over the last 10 years.

What makes Rabbi Moskowitz so special, explains Rabbi Jensen, is his “consistency” in doing chesed. “This is a guy who gets up at 5:00 a.m. before Shabbos and starts chopping potatoes and spicing cholent meat to go in the freezer.”

His commitment to OHEL Bais Ezra is another example of his daily commitment to do chesed, Rabbi Jensen added. “Rabbi Moskowitz has put OHEL Bais Ezra on the map in Great Neck.”

According to Derek Saker, OHEL’s director of communications, after Rabbi Moskowitz contacted OHEL 14 years ago, a Shabbaton was held at the Great Neck Synagogue in which synagogue members sat together with clients from OHEL Bais Ezra’s residential homes. Since then, Saker said, the Great Neck community has become a “second home” for many OHEL clients, who have been invited to many smachot as well as twice-yearly shabbatons.

Rabbi Moskowitz has been instrumental in inspiring many high school students to volunteer, Saker added.

“These volunteers provide such vital services — they have helped to put up Sukkahs, make Bar and Bat Mitzvahs, raised money, and bought and distributed Chanukah gifts to Ohel Bais Ezra clients,” Saker said. “The excitement Rabbi Moskowitz has given these kids in regard to chesed is unsurpassed. He has planted in the minds of so many young kids the seeds of sensitivity, engagement and appreciation.”