Of P’tcha & Pedigree

A Guest Reveals His Amazing Yichus and Backstory

May, 2015

“Everyone has a story to tell, everyone is a writer. Some are written in the books and some are confined to hearts.” American Proverb

Indeed, everyone does have a story, just some are more remarkable than others.

When I first moved to Queens, I made it a point to meet, over the course of a year, with every member of my shul. Naturally, the main purpose for such meetings would be to get to know them on a personal level.

But there was something else driving me. I have come to learn that there is no single person in this world who does not have something fascinating in their background.

So, whether it was the remarkable stories of survival of the holocaust by so many of their parents, the genius math-wizard father who worked together with Albert Einstein at Princeton, or the member who was Rabbi Schneerson’s physical therapist during his final years, these new members did not disappoint.

In my old shul in Buffalo as well there were many stories. When I moved to Buffalo I naively believed that yiddeshkeit – at least the backgrounds I was used to –was confined to the major Torah centers of the world.

But I was wrong.

There was the one-hundred-year-old man from Dvinsk who was forced to bury his own family during the war. In his younger days, although unlearned, he recalled listening to the holy fires that left of the lips of the Meshech Chochma and the Rogatchover gaon. Although he never learned even a modicum of English, he would come each evening for davening and listen quietly to my divrei halacha. There was the retired Chabad rosh yeshiva, Rav Greenberg, who was chavrusos with Rav Shisgal and Rav Simcha Schustal –in their younger days they were known as ‘the three musketeers’ among their peers. He even once spent a Shabbos with Rav Menachem Zemba hy’d, while in yeshiva in Europe.

However, due to language, sickness, or time –and sometimes all three- I was never able to develop a close relationship with either of these two men.

But then came Shay.

He had a ponytail and walked with a cane. He looked about eighty-years old, and had a small kipa seruga pinned to his grey, thinning slicked-back hair.

I was walking to shul Shabbos morning when I first spotted him, lumbering slowly on the other side of the street.

At this point I had lived in Buffalo for seven years and I had never seen this man before.

I would have ventured that he was a guest, yet he was walking in an area that was residential and not near the many hotels where visitors would be staying.

As I watched him slowly make his way to shul I asked the person I was walking with, who himself had lived in the neighborhood for many decades, “Who is this man?”.

“Oh, him?” he responded, pointing to the older gentleman, “That is Shay Mintz, he lives a block away from you”.

I was surprised, as I thought I knew of all the Jews-religious or otherwise-that lived in my close proximity.

After davening I went over to give him a hearty shalom aleichem, and he could not have been sweeter.

In fact, he asked me a question on the parsha. I can not now recall what the question was (and I wish I could!) but I do remember thinking that it was a good question, in fact, I recall thinking that it was too good of a kasheh for an amateur, someone new to Torah.

I inquired more about this neighborhood visitor to shul and was told that although he himself has always been frum, he worked for many years for the adult education at the local conservative synagogue and helped run the Hillel at the University of Buffalo. The university’s campus was down the block from our shul and the reason why he was never in our shul is because he had been, for decades, running their Shabbos services.

Once retired he still felt that perhaps he would be considered persona-non-grata in a frum shul, so he reluctantly stayed away. But he he could not go anymore without a minyan, and although quite sickly he began to walk the short distance to shul, which for him took much effort and time.

I thought to myself that he must have come from a different, more confusing time in America and, nebech, got lost in the shuffle somehow. I mean, how ‘frum’ could he really be, could he really have been?

The next week he was back, and then the week after that, and again after that. He soon became one of the the Shabbos regulars. Every week after davening he would always first comment to me about the drasha and then ask me a question on the parsha.

In time I came to realize that every question he asked was taken from the sefas emes. ‘Interesting that he seems so fascinated with the sefas emes’, I would think for but a moment, but I never gave it any more contemplation.

At one kiddush soon after he began coming to shul each week I mentioned to him that I wanted to get home as I had made fresh ptcha for Shabbos and wanted to see how it came out.

Shay closed his eyes and, as if going back in time, he smiled and said “What I would do for a geshmekah piece of ptcha”.

Naturally, I invited him for lunch. “Bring your wife as well”, I sincerely encouraged.  Sadness suddenly engulfed his face as he shared with me his present reality; his wife was in a home, suffering from late-unsought Alzheimer’s disease. So, from that Shabbos onward, Shay would come to my house almost every Shabbos lunch thereafter.

It was at this first Shabbos seudah together that I discovered who this man really was.

“So, Shay” I asked, as I cut him a healthy slice of my ptcha, “Where did you learn to eat such heimeshe food”.

“Yerushalayim”, he replied.

“Oh, you spent some time there?” I innocently inquired.

“I was born there, before there was modern state”

He paused, “Perhaps in your time in eretz yisroel you have seen some streets named ‘rechov mintz’ found in Yerushalayim, Bnei Brak and other cities?”

“Yes” I replied with, in truth, only a shadow of a vague memory of such streets.

“Well, these were named after my father”

He then pointed to a sefer I had on my shtender from the great gaon and bibliophile Rav Reuvein Margolios zt’l. He began to swell with tears how recounted the time he had spent with that genius in Torah.

Just who was this man at my Shabbos table, who lived just a block away from me in, of all places, Buffalo, New York?!

Well, my dear reader, Shay Mintz, passed away last week in Yerushalaim. Sitting and writing this column has been cathartic, my way of dealing with his passing.

There is so much I want to share with the reader about his amazing life. But the news was so sudden, I am scrambling to find in my boxes the letters he kept from Rav Meir Shapiro, the great rebbes of Gur, and the biography of his father that he published, and much, much more.

Just who was Shay Mintz, and how he went from a chassideshe yingle in pre-Israel Yerushalim to Upsate New York?

For that story the reader should seek out his book -about his father’s life and his -titled Ai Shel Efshar (Hebrew).