Harav Binyomin Kamenetzky, Zt”l

Harav Binyomin Kamenetsky, one of the pioneers of Torah life in the Five Towns community of Long Island and the eldest son of Harav Yaakov Kamenetsky, zt”l, was niftar on Erev Shabbos. He was 93 years old.

For over half a century, Rav Kamenetsky worked tirelessly to turn what was a fledgling community into the center of frum life that it is today. He founded two of its major mosdos hachinuch — Yeshivah of South Shore and Torah Academy for Girls (TAG) — and led them for decades. Aside from his role at the helm of the two institutions, Rav Kamenetsky participated in other projects, helping to build shuls, mosdos and other essentials of Jewish life.

“He was like a zeidy to the whole community,” said one Five Towns resident. “He would visit a lot of the shuls in the neighborhood and you could see him shepping nachas from all that he had built.”

Rav Binyomin was born in 1923 in Tytuvenai, Lithuania, where Rav Yaakov served as Rav for some time. He studied in Telshe as a bachur before moving with his family to the United States in 1937 to join his father, who had left to assume a rabbanus some years before. In America, Rav Binyomin attended Yeshivas Chofetz Chaim, under its Rosh Yeshivah Hagaon Harav Dovid Leibowitz, zt”l, and later learned in Ner Yisroel, where the Rosh Yeshivah, Hagaon Harav Yaakov Yitzchak Ruderman, zt”l, was his father’s cousin.

In 1947 he married Tzirel Spiegel, a”h, the daughter of Harav Pinchus Eliyahu Spiegel, zt”l, the Ostrove-Kalushiner Rebbe, who led a beis medrash in the Bronx.

Soon after his marriage, Rav Kamenetsky became a rebbi in Yeshiva Toras Chaim in East New York, which was founded by Harav Isaac Shmidman, zt”l.

One day, he met a child who’d traveled from Cedarhurst, and he realized that there was no Yiddishkeit there. With his father’s encouragement, he moved to the Five Towns, where he set about the task of building the foundations of a Jewish community.

For several years, he served as the Rav of a minyan that would become the Young Israel of Woodmere, one of the largest Young Israel shuls in the country.

In 1956, Rav Kamenetsky left his rabbinical position to focus on the new Yeshiva of South Shore and TAG.

South Shore, which began as an elementary school with a few younger grades, took root and bloomed over the years into a massive network of multiple parallel classes in the elementary, middle school, high school and beis medrash divisions which comprise Yeshiva of South Shore-Toras Chaim. His distinguished father, Rav Yaakov, provided constant guidance to Rav Binyamin in the growth and operation of the yeshivah.

Rav Kamenetsky once related an incident that occurred when Rav Yaakov came to South Shore for a visit.

“He noticed that we had placed a preschool doorway mezuzah at a lower height for the benefit of the young children so they could reach it. He admonished us, saying, ‘First and foremost the children must see the proper way to place a mezuzah. You can place a stool so they can step up to kiss it. Raise them to the mezuzah, don’t lower it to them.’”

The story became a parable for the approach that guided Rav Kamenetsky’s work over decades of nurturing the community’s growth, always striving to encourage students and families to reach higher.

He is survived by his siblings, Hagaon Harav Shmuel, Harav Noson and Mrs.& Rivka Diskind; his children, Mrs. Sarah Knobel, Mrs. Esther Wilhelm, Mrs. Shani Lefkowitz (wife of Rav Simcha Lefkowitz), Harav Mordechai Kamenetsky, Rosh Yeshivah of Yeshiva of South Shore, and Harav Tzvi Kamenetsky of Toronto, as well as grandchildren, great-grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren.

The levayah was held on Sunday at the Yeshiva of South Shore.

Yehi zichro baruch.