A Day in the Life: Rabbi Avi Schnall, Agudah’s New Jersey Director

To any Hamodia reader with the slightest interest in Lakewood or in Jewish issues in New Jersey politics, Rabbi Avi Schnall’s name is a most familiar one, as his role as director of Agudath Israel of America’s Lakewood-based New Jersey office has put him at the center of most major advocacy causes for the last four years.

Hamodia decided that readers deserve a fuller picture of such an oft-quoted source than what can be surmised from interview comments in an article on school security funding or zoning restrictions. Rabbi Schnall graciously allowed Hamodia to spend a day with him in his office to get a sneak peek behind the stories, quotes, and press releases.

Mid-morning on a Thursday in August finds Rabbi Avi Schnall speaking to a fellow Agudah employee about the details of an event for Pirchei, the movement’s youth group. The subject seems almost a textbook study of how — to the imagination of an uninitiated observer — the director of Agudah’s New Jersey office occupies his time.

And why should he think differently? While community engagement is indeed helpful, the mission of askanim — professional or volunteer — is to be on the front line of challenges facing Klal Yisrael so that everybody else can go about their lives yet have an address to turn to, should they confront a situation that is “over their heads.”

But, if our observer would leave this scene too soon, how much he would miss. Similar conversations will come and go throughout the course of the next seven or eight hours, but during that time Rabbi Schnall will also speak to lawyers and political operatives, meet with a woman who is proposing new reading and writing curricula for elementary schools, and field a complaint from someone who feels that her religious rights were violated during a stay in police custody, to provide just a smattering of what he dealt with over the course of that one day.

It is a day or so after the Asbury Park Press has run a story highlighting that Toms River will be paying some $850,000 out of its own coffers to bus children to private schools, mostly to Lakewood mosdos. The article was factual, but it contains a relatively clear undercurrent — if Jews continue moving to Toms River, its school district will soon be in the same dire financial straits as neighboring Lakewood, and this is just the beginning. The local newspaper, serving central New Jersey, has taken a particular interest in and an often critical view of the growth of the Orthodox community in and around Lakewood.

Rabbi Schnall pens a letter to the editor of the story, and, shortly after the close of his Pirchei discussion, leaves a voice message for a news reporter, saying that the families of the 850 private-school students in question pay taxes, and that the district is, in fact, saving millions on not educating them in the town’s public schools.

In the span of about half an hour, Rabbi Schnall has dealt with three or four issues, each a story in its own right, mostly by phone, but some in brief conversations with his secretary who sits just outside his office. One of the many advantages of Rabbi Schnall’s booming, energetic voice is that he can usually communicate with his assistant without buzzing her extension. It is an asset that makes him a particularly charismatic speaker, and which, one can imagine, played a major role in his many summers as a well-beloved camp counselor.

“Yesterday, we really had a crazy story,” he says. A sad and complicated series of events landed a mildly autistic young boy, who had grown up disconnected from Yiddishkeit, in the foster care of his grandmother, a frum woman living in a large Jewish community in New Jersey. She arranged for proper medical care and placed him in a day school equipped to deal with his special needs and his lack of Jewish background. As the foster-care term came to an end, the grandmother was offered the option to adopt the child, but she lacked the financial means to support the therapies and other medical needs, and without that could not go through with the process.

“She called me to discuss the issue and, by the end of the conversation, just broke down crying and said, ‘I’m going to lose this child.’”

A call was placed to New Jersey’s only Orthodox legislator, Assemblyman Gary Schaer, to see what could be done to help the situation.

“That same day, Gary Schaer got on the phone with the head of Child Services, who said he would make sure that the child would be placed on Medicare, which took care of the heaviest expenses. And now, the grandmother is starting the process of adoption,” said Rabbi Schnall.

In another phone conversation, Rabbi Schnall discusses the possibility of arranging a meeting between members of the Toms River Jewish Community Council and Congressman Tom MacArthur, who represents their district and is in what is reported to be a neck-and-neck race against a little-known Democrat.

“We’ll make it work; they already met with Kim [Rep. MacArthur’s opponent] since his team reached out, but we should offer to do the same for him,” he says to the party on the other end of the line. “It’s very tight, but he [Rep. MacArthur] will probably still win, and this could be a good way to build a relationship with his office.”

Moments after the conclusion of the call, the phone rings again and Rabbi Schnall answers, “Hi Roman, what’s happening?” Hamodia has covered enough court battles over the construction of shuls, yeshivos, and the like to know that the caller is none other than Roman Storzer, one of the nation’s leading religious land-use attorneys. He is currently representing the Agudah in a suit against Jackson Township, claiming that recently passed zoning codes that effectively block the construction of eruvin and the building of schools and dormitories are illegal. Under pressure from the state attorney general’s office, Jackson has amended the controversial bylaws, and the two parties have been in mediation for several months, but an agreement has yet to be reached.

As with discussion of any ongoing mediation, matters are sensitive, as each side attempts to play the cards to their own benefit, with Agudah hoping for a friendly and favorable conclusion, while holding the proverbial “big stick” of a costly lawsuit in their other hand.

“Eventually, we have to go one way or the other; it’s already getting a little crazy,” he tells Mr. Storzer. “I’m looking forward to seeing what comes next.”

Moving steadily from one call and issue to the next, interjecting emails, texts, and quick discussions with his secretary, Rabbi Schnall seamlessly shifts from topics like discussing plans for an Agudah Shabbos in Passaic to reviewing with a member of the Ocean County Prosecutor’s office the legal ramifications of narcotics testing at a school for at-risk youth. From morning until late afternoon, there is hardly a break, and he will only begin his lunch at 3:45 p.m. Yet, there is no outward appearance of frenzy, neither in Rabbi Schnall’s responses nor in the atmosphere of the office itself as the many disparate topics are compartmentalized and dealt with one by one.

Rabbi Schnall has been the New Jersey Director for more than four years, but the operation under his charge has steadily grown. For most of that time, he worked out of a series of small offices. However, a little over a month ago, he moved into a spacious and airy office suite in a small, modern nondescript building on East County Line Road. Besides Rabbi Schnall’s operations, the office has become a remote base for several Agudah efforts. A set of cubicles is set aside for the Bnos Agudah team, which has recently relocated to Lakewood. Several other employees have workstations in the office, from which they work remotely with Agudath Israel’s Manhattan headquarters.

Next to the conference room is Rabbi Schnall’s own office. His whiteboard lists legislative issues for the coming year and other prospective and ongoing projects, one of which is to make a chanukas habayis for the office. During the course of the day, a delivery man drops off more chairs. A sofer’s business card on Rabbi Schnall’s desk is one more sign of the newness of the environs. Besides that, there are some scattered papers, but they are relatively few, bespeaking a 21st-century workspace with most remnants of chaos confined to the memory of a PC.

A call to George Helmy, New Jersey Senator Cory Booker’s State Director, finds him on the beach in Florida with his children, who, Rabbi Schnall will later mention, could be heard in the background.

“Well, if you’re on vacation, enjoy it,” Rabbi Schnall tells him.

Despite being very much out of the office, Mr. Helmy readily listens to the matter at hand:

Three individuals from Eretz Yisrael visited the United States several months ago on fundraising trips for different causes. For more than a year, customs officials at Newark International Airport have been engaged in a crackdown on undeclared money being taken out of the country, and many feel the move has targeted visibly Orthodox travelers to Eretz Yisrael.

These three individuals were stopped by an official who insisted on evaluating them as a group. Together, they were carrying a total of $27,000, but each had less than $10,000, the legal threshold as to what must be declared. The funds were seized, and even after a Lakewood askan hired a lawyer to work on recovering the money, only $10,000 was returned, as customs claimed the “source of the funds could not be determined.”

“We’re happy to come to Newark when you get back next week, whatever’s best for you,” Rabbi Schnall tells Mr. Hemly.

At the end of the conversation, Mr. Helmy asks Rabbi Schnall to contact the district office to set up a conference call between the involved parties on his first day back in the office, the coming Monday.

Why call a senator’s office to try to get confiscated funds back to meshulachim?

“We’re his constituents and this a federal issue,” answers Rabbi Schnall. “This is Cory Booker’s chance to be the savior of the Jews.”

Mid-afternoon, the steady routine was interrupted by a message forwarded by the Agudah’s New York Director, Yeruchem Silber, with what appeared to be a bona fide emergency. An Orthodox woman had been arrested somewhere in New Jersey, and police were insisting that she uncover her hair for the mug shot.

The message contained the woman’s cell phone number, which Rabbi Schnall promptly called. When she picked up and told him that the incident had happened the day before and she was now at home, he breathed a deep sigh of relief and switched back to management mode.

The woman had been pulled over for a moving violation and was arrested when the officer saw that she had several unpaid tickets on her record. At the station house, she claimed that officers threatened to keep her in custody overnight when she steadfastly refused to remove her snood while her photo was taken. After two hours, they relented, took the picture with the snood on, and released the woman, who was advised to call the Agudah about her ordeal.

Rabbi Schnall ends the conversation saying that he will do his utmost to make sure the police department in question is alerted about the need to be sensitive to such issues in the future and makes a note to contact a Lakewood-based police chaplain regarding the matter.

Rabbi Schnall had not planned to spend his life as an askan; however, he grew up in the midst of some of the most prominent askanim of the previous generation. His grandfather, Loychee Glueck, z”l, was an involved member of Agudah’s board of directors and was a close personal friend and confidant of Rabbi Moshe Sherer, z”l.

“We grew up going to Agudah conventions and our family sat at Rabbi Sherer’s table,” Rabbi Schnall said. “We were zocheh to hear their conversations and see their dedication to the klal. It was part of the air we grew up with.”

Together with photos of Hagaon Harav Elya Svei, zt”l, and Hagaon Harav Elazar Menachem Man Shach, zt”l, on the wall in his office is one of Mr. Glueck together with Rabbi Sherer and the late Senator from New York, Patrick Moynihan.

Rabbi Schnall’s father, Reb Shabsi, z”l, who was niftar about a year ago, Rabbi Schnall describes as a “quiet askan,” who served as Rosh Hakahal of the Tomashover shul in Flatbush.

“He sold the aliyos, started gemachim, turned out the lights, and took out the garbage, all without fanfare, but we saw a quiet life of chessed in the house,” he said.

“Baruch Hashem, part of my chinuch was that the Ribbono shel Olam gives everybody talents, and it’s our duty to use them for what Klal Yisrael needs,” he said. “Everybody has to find a way to support his family, but life is bigger than parnassah. Most people’s parnassah has its ups and downs; helping the klal never goes though market corrections.”

Growing up in Flatbush, Rabbi Schnall attended Yeshivas Torah Temimah before continuing on to Baltimore where he became a close talmid of Harav Tzvi Dov Schlanger, zt”l. He later studied in the Yeshivah of Philadelphia, under Harav Dovid Soloveitchik, and later in Beth Medrash Govoha.

After several years in kollel, Rabbi Schnall spent a year working for the kiruv organization Oorah. He was selected by Agudath Israel board member Raphael Zucker to lead the New Jersey office.

“It was somewhat of a fluke,” said Rabbi Schnall, who met Mr. Zucker through an Oorah connection. “He [Mr. Zucker] didn’t know my history, and so when he started introducing me to what Agudah does, I gently let him know that I had grown up in the organization.”

Over the ensuing four years, his office, phones, email inbox, and life have gotten gradually busier. He has built strong connections with politicians, business leaders, community activists, government agencies, private-school advocates, and others around the state.

“You never know when a particular contact will come in handy,” said Rabbi Schnall. In advocacy, alliances high and low are crucial. Never snub a low-level employee in an office; they can move up and be chief of staff before you know it. I’ve seen it happen.”

While many meetings and events Rabbi Schnall attends are held in the evening, his schedule remains relatively steady, since the majority of his work deals with government offices, schools and other institutions that, by and large, keep regular business hours.

Hamodia’s day with Rabbi Schnall found the askan based in his office, “traveling” around the state by means of both office and cell phones, both perched on his desk, and both used about equally. Yet, depending on the season and needs of the day, his travels can take him far and wide.

“Right now the legislature is on break, so there’s nothing happening in Trenton, but depending on the time of year, I can be there a lot — during budget season, two or three times a week,” he said.

Visits to individual legislators are often held in their districts around the state. While efforts to maximize funding to private schools is a yearly struggle that occupies much time and has high priority in Rabbi Schnall’s lobbying efforts, he feels that the most significant accomplishment was a bill passed two years ago, which temporarily restructured how the state finances busing for non-public school students in Lakewood. Prior to the new law, contentious school board meetings and the threat to cancel busing for a significant percentage of the town had become routine. While Rabbi Schnall and other askanim continue to work on plans for a long-term solution, the law gave them a respite and the ability to strategize without being under the gun.

“We’ve had a lot of successes, baruch Hashem, but there’s very little instant gratification in advocacy of this sort,” he said. “You can’t live on results; programs and funding die out and you constantly need to strategize how to get them back or compensate for them in some other way.”

Rabbi Schnall works with Orthodox communities in Edison, Passaic, Elizabeth, and many more around New Jersey, but Lakewood, whose Jewish population is roughly five times that of the second-largest center, occupies a great deal of his time and energy. Besides his advocacy in Trenton, he has been at the forefront of challenges faced by families settling in the neighboring towns of Toms River, Jackson, and Howell. Resistance by local populations to the growing influx of Orthodox residents has taken multiple forms and has been covered heavily by Hamodia and other media. Addresses at public meetings, legal action, quiet diplomacy, and public relations battles are just some of the forums that have featured Rabbi Schnall center stage in these often acerbic struggles.

Other matters attract less attention but are equally crucial. Rabbi Schnall has recently been involved in a series of meetings seeking a strategy as to how the Jackson school district — which controls state and federal funds for special education and similar needs for both public and private school residents — can partner with therapists and others who serve the Lakewood mosdos that several hundred of the town’s residents now attend. Even with a willingness on all sides to find a solution, such a new frontier needs careful thought and coordination between groups not used to working together.

By dint of its size, unique needs, and the speed with which it has expanded, particularly over the last 10 years, Lakewood has no shortage of long-term and day-to-day issues, and many of these cross Rabbi Schnall’s desk. While the Vaad, Ichud haMosdos and BMG’s office of government services, along with several other askanim, were in place long before Rabbi Schnall arrived on the scene, his statewide presence and his focus on serving as broad a base of the community as possible has made him a particularly effective partner in advocating for Lakewood.

As the day rolls on and late afternoon settles in, Rabbi Schnall’s barrage of phone calls slows somewhat. Two conversations with a girls’ school principal about whether the mosad could qualify for a government school-lunch program sheds light on another key function of his office.

Rabbi Schnall says that, since assuming his position, he has become the major resource for Jewish schools, particularly in Lakewood but throughout New Jersey as well, on the rules and regulations of a long list of state and federally funded programs.

“I’ve become an expert on Title One; that whole shelf of books is all about it,” he said, referring to a major federal aid program and pointing to a high shelf filled with white binders.

Over time, he has become increasingly familiar with the ins and outs of the complicated statutes that regulate such funding, as well as forging relationships with the many offices responsible for compliance.

“The community did not have one central address that was knowledgeable about how these things worked and which could help to maximize them within the limits of the law,” he said. “At this point, it is by far the number one issue that occupies my time.”

New Jersey has some 150,000 non-public school children, one-third of them in Jewish schools. This year, Rabbi Schnall was named chairman of the state’s Non-Public School Committee, the central liaison between the state government and all religious and non-sectarian private schools.

Towards the end of the day, Rabbi Schnall took issue with the presumptuous observer who thought Pirchei meetings would sum up a day in the offices of the Agudath Israel’s New Jersey division.

“Not so long ago, the average Yid didn’t see the connection between his life and government, but that’s changed, especially for Orthodox Jews,” he said. “When your kid doesn’t have a bus in the morning or you can’t build a normal shul in your neighborhood because the town council zoned it out, or if your tuition goes up because funding for private schools was cut, everybody feels that. And however much they do, the askan feels it even more.”