Monsey Memories: Hebrew Institute of Rockland County (ASHAR)

By Yitzy Fried

The Hebrew Institute of Rockland County is now close to seventy years old, and in this time, it has educated thousands of Jewish children from Rockland county.

It was begun in the year 1954 out of the Monsey Community Synagogue on Cloverdale Lane (where Rabbi Tendler served as the rav for decades). From a group of two classes and twenty-six students, it would grow into an institution in the Monsey community.

In 1956, it moved to the location that would be its home for more than half a century. That same year, the legendary Rabbi Nochum Muschel came on board as the principal. He would oversee the school's tremendous growth.  

In 1963, the Journal News reported: "The Hebrew Institute of Rockland County in Monsey is reducing its growing pains this year. Institute officials hope to have a new seven-classroom school addition completed by the end of October. Costing approximately $250,000, the wing will accommodate 175 students. The facility will include a science lab, a library, an art room, and two kindergarten rooms. Two mobile classrooms are being used as temporary quarters behind the main building. Classes have been doubled from kindergarten through eighth grade; Enrollment is at an all-time high of 280 pupils.  

"The new teachers, Mordechai Kuchinsky and Menachem Roth share interesting backgrounds. Kuchinsky was an interpreter in the Polish army when German forces occupied Poland during World War II. He escaped to Russia, where he served as a Russian interpreter in the army there. Kuchinsky speaks Russian, German, Polish, Spanish, French, and Hebrew. Roth spent some time living on a kibbutz in the Negev desert. He returned from a trip one time to find the settlement wiped out by Arabs."   

In 1975, HIRC was renamed the Adolph Schreiber Hebrew Academy of Rockland (ASHAR) in memory of one of the school's founders.

The opening of ASHAR's state-of-the-art facility on 360 New Hempstead Road marked the beginning of a new chapter in the Yeshiva's history—one that continues to grow seven decades after its founding.