You often can tell when two people have known each other for a long time.
There’s a sense of ease that an onlooker can sense; a shared vocabulary and pool of memories. It’s a feeling of comfort that extends itself to everyone else in the room.
Last week, two men sat around a dining room table to talk about their history and the award that one of them is going to give to the other. The two, who are just a year or two apart in age and both live in Teaneck, are very different from each other, but that doesn’t get in the way of, well, anything.
One of the two is Rabbi Dr. Yisrael Rothwachs, the Leo Brandstatter z”l dean of the SINAI Schools. The other is Yakov Karasick, one of the school’s first students. Their parents were instrumental in starting and maintaining SINAI, and both of their lives have been entwined with the school.
This year, SINAI is honoring Mr. Karasick at its annual dinner.
Yakov Karasick holds up a menorah.
The SINAI Schools — the name is plural but the truth is singular — is an institution that works with developmentally or learning-disabled students who have been diagnosed with a wide range of conditions; what they share is that they can’t learn as well as other kids if they’re put in a mainstream classroom. SINAI operates discreet programs in Jewish day schools — it now has four elementary schools, in Teaneck and Livingston in New Jersey, and in Riverdale and Queens in New York, and three high schools, two in Teaneck and the other in Livingston.
Students are taught in very small groups or individually, by teachers who know them well and can tailor their lessons to each student’s specific needs. They also work with art, music, and physical therapists, as well as other specialists. Some can be mainstreamed in some classes; all have the chance to develop relationships with the neurotypical students in the school that houses SINAI as they sit together at lunch and on the bus, and share other activities before, during, and after school.
SINAI demystifies both groups and it destigmatizes non-neurotypical students not only in school but also in the community.
Yakov Karasick embodies all of this.
“Yakov grew up with SINAI, and SINAI grew up with Yakov,” Sam Fishman said. Mr. Fishman is SINAI’s managing director; long before that, he too was a SINAI parent. He knows what he’s talking about not only intellectually, but deep in his heart.
“Yakov was with us for 41 or our 44 years,” Mr. Fishman said. Sharing in a sentiment that just about everyone who talks about Mr. Karasick says, with deep conviction, “We taught Yakov so much over the decades, but we and our entire community learned so much more and gained so much more from him.
“Special ed in general, and Jewish special ed in particular, was very new when Yakov joined us. The early SINAI students were proof of concept that special ed could work in a Jewish school. They were proof that including them in a mainstream Jewish school would not only allow them to thrive, but that the entire mainstream school community would benefit from it.”
From left, Yakov’s brother Avi; their father, Rabbi Mark; Yakov, wearing a tie that shows his love of music, and his old friend, SINAI’s dean, Rabbi Yisrael Rothwachs, are together at the SINAI dinner in 2019.
The SINAI Schools grew out of the coincidence that three Fair Lawn families included children with learning disabilities and wanted them to have a Jewish education. Those families — headed by Leo and Dossy Brandstatter (Rabbi Rothwachs’ position as dean is named to commemorate Mr. Brandstatter, who died in 2021), Ray and Risha Saperstein, and Marty and Beverly Fuchsman — put together meetings with Jewish educators to see if they could spark any action.
All of the educators seemed sympathetic, but only one, Rabbi Dr. Wallace Greene, was willing to take on the admittedly large challenge. Rabbi Greene, who lived — and still lives — in Fair Lawn, headed the Hebrew Youth Academy. That school was founded in Newark, moved to South Orange, then to West Caldwell, and finally to Livingston, where it has become the Joseph Kushner Hebrew Academy and Rae Kushner Yeshiva High School.
Yakov’s parents, Linda and Rabbi Mark Karasick of Teaneck, soon joined the other three families in working to promote and protect the SINAI Schools.
In 1984, they enrolled their son Yakov in SINAI. It was the school’s third year.
Yakov Karasick works with a teacher at the SINAI Schools.
It’s unusual, by definition, for any social service agency to use cutting-edge methods and understandings — once everyone uses them, they continue to be enormously valuable but they’re not new anymore. Their edges dull. It’s even more rare for a Jewish special ed program to use such methods, but SINAI did.
Much of that was guided by its first dean, Laurette Rothwachs, who moved to Fair Lawn to undertake the challenge of starting a new school. As her name might lead a reader to suspect, she’s related to Rabbi Rothwachs. She’s his mother. The school has had only two deans, and they are mother and son.
Mr. Karasick’s parents are both longtime members of SINAI’s board, and Rabbi Karasick has been its president.
“It is really poignant that Yakov and I in a way had very similar and formative experiences when we were kids, watching our parents dedicate their lives to making the community better by advancing inclusion and all that meant in the Jewish community, at a time when inclusion wasn’t a word that many people understood,” Rabbi Rothwachs said.
The school’s planners met at each others’ houses, so the Karasicks and the Rothwachs came to know each other very well. Yakov Karasick started SINAI at the Hebrew Academy in West Caldwell, where Yisrael Rothwachs — who grew up to be Rabbi Dr. Yisrael Rochwachs — was a neurotypical student in the main school.
“I have so many memories of meetings at the Karasicks’ home, and Yakov was always around,” Rabbi Rothwachs said. “He was always the first person to greet me. He always had a huge smile on his face.”
“And here we are, so many years later. There are a lot of differences between me and Yakov, but there are many similarities in our backgrounds.
Yakov playing Scrabble with friends.
Then as now, Mr. Karasick’s social skills came into play. Then, “he’d always ask me how I was doing,” Rabbi Rothwachs said. Now, whenever he sees me, “he always asks me about my kids, by name, looking for details.” And he doesn’t ask only Rabbi Rothwachs. Mr. Karasick seems to have a list of contacts — for our older readers, a Rolodex — in his head. He always knows who has which kids and what they’re doing, and he always asks for updates.
“As SINAI grew, Yakov became a valued, essential part of the Jewish community,” Mr. Fishman said. “As SINAI grew, Yakov, just by being Yakov, was a superb ambassador; he has an ever-present smile, a warm, outgoing personality, a great sense of humor. Yakov is easy to love. It’s easy to want to include him.”
It’s true. To meet Yakov is to meet someone unself-consciously warm, genuinely welcoming, and extremely considerate of other people’s needs and feelings.
“As Yakov got older, he worked with SINAI’s vocational placement,” Mr. Fishman continued. “He lives in the community, and the community embraces him.” He moved out of his parents’ house for more independent living in SINAI’s S.H.E.L.I. House in Teaneck; recently that house’s management was transferred to Ohel, the Brooklyn-based social service agency that runs group homes for Jewish adults like Mr. Karasick.
As he grew up, Mr. Karasick continued to be a presence in the community. He worked in the Yavneh Academy in Teaneck for two decades, meeting hundreds — probably thousands — of its students. He worked at Ma’adan and the Lazy Bean Café, both in Teaneck.
Yakov cooks at home in S.H.E.L.I. House
He’s active at Congregation Beth Aaron in Teaneck; it’s the shul he grew up at and it’s across the street from where he lives now. Perhaps coincidentally, Beth Aaron’s rabbi, to whom Mr. Karasick also is close, is Larry Rothwachs — Laurette Rothwachs’ other son and Yisrael Rothwachs’ brother. (They also have a sister.)
“When I was putting my thoughts together, I spoke to my son, who is a few years younger than Yakov but they were in SINAI together,” Mr. Fishman said. “He told me that he looked up to Yakov as an older student. He told me that Yakov always made you feel that you were the most important person in the world, and he described Yakov as not having a malicious bone in his body.”
“I see the common thread in Yakov’s life, from elementary school to high school to adult life,” Rabbi Rothwachs said. “SINAI’s mission is seeing that our students are truly included in our community. I think that people see Yakov as a friend, as a guy in the community, the guy who lives down the block. He’s not unusual. Not out of the ordinary. He’s just there, the way everyone else is just there.”
When he goes to shul, “he is treated just like everyone else. He’s asked the same questions about how he’s doing. He’s given the same high fives.”
But he’s not only just plain there. He’s been there so long, and he knows so many of the details of people’s lives, and he cares so much about them, that he takes extraordinary steps to comfort them.
“Yakov has a trait that is so unusual that has made him become, many say, the mayor of Teaneck,” Ms. Karasick said. “Any time I tell Yakov that there was a simcha or, God forbid, a loss, immediately he says, ‘Please give me their phone number.’ And then he calls.
“I don’t think a week goes by that somebody doesn’t call me and say, ‘You won’t believe that your son Yakov called me.
From left, SINAI’s first president, Leo Brandstatter z”l, Rabbi Mark Karasick, Yakov Karasick, and a sofer dedicate a new Torah for SINAI in the late 1990s.
“Yakov is a blessing,” she added.
“I always feel like a million bucks when I see him,” Rabbi Rothwachs said. “He really remembers things. He really cares.”
Another Yakov story from Rabbi Karasick: “There was a situation in Teaneck when there had been some accidents on Cedar Lane, so the town instituted a no-jaywalking rule. You had to cross at the crosswalk. But Linda crossed the street in the middle. She wasn’t careful, and a police officer started to write a ticket for jaywalking.”
Ms. Karasick took over the story. “I said, ‘Oh my gosh, I have a son who is disabled, and he crosses the street all the time. I don’t think he knows about the crosswalk.’”
She was wrong. “‘Are you Yakov Karasick’s mother?’” she reported that the police officer asked her. “‘He said, ‘Yakov knows where to cross!’ Let me get rid of this ticket for you.’
“Everybody knows Yakov.”
That feeling of making someone who knows everyone making someone feel like he or she is the most important person in the world — that’s the definition of charisma. Mr. Karasick has it.
Yakov is with members of the BaRock Orchestra; he often plays percussion with them.
And then there’s music.
“It’s such a big part of who Yakov is,” Rabbi Rothwachs said. “He’s a happy, outgoing person, always interested in other people, and one of the ways that is facilitated is through music. He connects with people through music, and he makes people happy through his performances.
Mr. Karasick plays percussion; he’s often played with the BaRock Orchestra. His connection to BaRock also comes through SINAI; the group’s leader, Ari Greene, is the son of Rabbi Wallace Greene, who led the first iteration of SINAI, when it was still in West Caldwell.
But that’s just the initial connection. Mr. Greene kept Mr. Karasick playing with the band because of his musicality and his infectious joy.
Linda and Mark Karasick and their children; from left, Avi, Yitzi, Zev, and Yakov
He’s also developed strong relationships to some of the biggest names in Jewish music. He’s particularly close to Avraham Fried, an American singer whose mastery of many styles of Jewish music has made him very popular among American Jews and wildly famous in Israel. As a result of that connection, the two families, the Frieds and the Karasicks, also have developed a strong, deep friendship.
Back at home, “the community has been exceptional,” Rabbi Karasick said. “The boys who live in the S.H.E.L.I. House have been welcomed into the community, and that’s in large part because of Rabbi Rothwachs and his brother, Rabbi Rothwachs. The boys are invited regularly to Shabbes dinners and lunches. And there have been many employers in the community who have offered them the chance to work.”
“This community is unparalleled,” Ms. Karasick said. She talked about the early years. How did that first group of families create an institution like SINAI? “We persevered,” she said. “We know that many couples divorce because the challenge of a troubled child is too great, but it either destroys you or makes you strong.” It made the Karasicks and the other founding families strong.
Still, how did they do it? They had no choice, Ms. Karasick said. They tried the local public school system, but it didn’t work. They were in Teaneck, and the other founders were in Fair Lawn, but eventually “we found each other.
Yakov Karasick, left, is at a wedding with other S.H.E.L.I. House residents.
“Thank God we were all together,” she said.
North Jersey is unusual in its willingness to accept developmentally disabled students, she said. Parents from many other communities across the country have talked to her and other SINAI founders and board members, asking how they could start their own versions of Sinai, but none have been successful so far. She thinks that there are some resources that families need — enough money and enough time and enough gumption — but it takes something more than that. Something perhaps undefinable but unmistakable that the North Jersey community has.
So it makes perfect sense that SINAI will honor Yakov Karasick — along with three other impressive and deserving honorees, Elizabeth Kratz and Ron and Diane Strobel — at its dinner, the school’s biggest annual fundraiser. He’s been at its heart and part of its soul for most of its life, and most of his.
Rabbi Rothwachs thought about the sense of community and shared responsibility that Yakov Karasick embodies, and he tied it to SINAI in yet another way.
“Everything is so intertwined,” he said. He talked about the biblical story of Mount Sinai, and how God gave the Torah to the Israelites gathered at the foot of the mountain. “Everybody was there,” he said. “Every single person, every man, woman, and child, of all abilities, received the Torah. And our rabbis teach us from that point on, we all became responsible for one another. The Hebrew word for that is arvut.”
He wasn’t in the room when the adults creating SINAI discussed its name. “I was about 5 or 6, and in my bedroom at the time,” he said. But he thinks that the name has not only the obvious meaning, but a corollary one as well.
“It’s not only that everybody” — no matter how neurotypical or neurodivergent — “gets the Torah, but there is a shared sense of responsibility and community that was created at the Mount Sinai, and we still hold onto strongly now.
“That’s when we became a nation.” The responsibility not only came down but spread laterally as well. “That responsibility for each other — that’s what being a nation is all about,” Rabbi Rothwachs said.
Who: The SINAI Schools
What: Has its annual gala dinner
When: On Sunday, February 22; buffet dinner opens at 4:30, and the program begins at 6:30.
Where: At the Marriott Glenpointe in Teaneck
Who are the honorees: Yakov Karasick, Elizabeth Kratz, and Diane and Ron Strobel
For information and reservations: Go to sinaidinner.org or call (201) 833-1134, ext 106
To read this article as it originally appeared in the Jewish Standard, click here.