Thank you for a wonderful publication, and thank you for allowing me the opportunity—as a longtime Rockland resident—to voice my opinion on an issue that has long bothered me.

Recently, Torah Umesorah—the organization founded and guided by the Gedolim of America to bolster the cause of chinuch of our youth—publicized a letter to the public in which they revealed the months-long efforts to rectify a terrible wrong: the skewed calendar that our yeshivas have been adhering to.

I am referring to the insistence of our community in sticking to Labor Day as the start date of our yeshivas and schools—even if this means starting the yeshiva year with mere days remaining to Rosh Hashanah.

Working with schools in the Brooklyn area (the majority of them of the Litvish denomination) they have succeeded in getting the schools to start the school year of ’23-’24 in the last days of August, which corresponds to 12 and 14 Elul, for the boys and girls schools respectively. 

This is a monumental (if not fully-adequate) accomplishment that will enable these talmidim to spend more days of Elul in the classroom, preparing for the Days of Awe with the appropriate seriousness.

What message are we sending our children when the precious and holy days of Elul are spent hiking the trails in Vermont or religiously barbequing in the country? We go from hearing the shofar in the morning to playing and frolicking in the afternoons—as though the Yom Hadin is not right around the corner?!

Hayishoma Shofar b’Ir v’ho’om lo yechrodu, can the blast of the shofar be heard in the city and the nation not tremble?!

The ironic thing about this whole issue is that no one is suggesting that we deduct even one day of summer vacation! All that the proponents of change are suggesting is that we finish earlier in the spring and start earlier in the fall so that we adhere more closely, year after year, to the Jewish calendar as well as the secular one.

Yiddishe yeshivas and schools have no business following the Labor Day date as a start time for our school year. We should begin Rosh Chodesh Elul, as our counterparts in Lakewood and around the world have always done.

Now is the time for change. The Brooklyn Yeshivos have shown that it can be done… if slowly and incrementally.

Let the Rockland institutions do the same.

Sincerely, and with the sincerest wishes for everyone to see nachas from their children,

Ezra Kleinman, Monsey.