After 55 years of teaching math and Jewish philosophy at the Yeshivah of Flatbush High School in Brooklyn – his own alma mater, class of 1963 – Joel Wolowelsky retired in June 2023 and moved to Jerusalem in July.
He joined hundreds of fellow alumni of the Modern Orthodox school who made aliyah before him. “We come with a love for the land nurtured by home and school,” he said.
“Zionism and accomplishment flow through the veins of Yeshivah of Flatbush students. People who were many years apart in school share a sense of common experience when they meet. Alumni have accomplished much here, and many have gone on to greatness in many fields.”
Among many illustrious Flatbush alumni who have made their mark in Israel are Neal Hendel, former deputy president of the Supreme Court of Israel; Zvi (Hal) Gastwirt, past president of Efrata Teachers College in Jerusalem; Carl Posy, professor of philosophy at the Hebrew University and past academic director of the Jewish National and University Library; Ben Corn, a world-class radiation oncologist; and rabbinic scholars Chaim Brovender and Yehuda Henkin.
A Brooklyn native, Wolowelsky attended Brooklyn College while serving as national vice president of Yavneh, the Religious Jewish Student Association. He earned graduate degrees at Yeshiva University and then New York University.
Wolowelsky started teaching at Yeshivah of Flatbush High School in September 1968. He was bestowed several national prizes for excellence in Jewish education and mathematics education.
But, he said, “the real meaningful award is simply knowing that you tried your best and helped others to do so, too.”Wolowelsky was appointed dean of the faculty, a leadership role that purposely had no job description, he explained, enabling him to innovate as he saw fit. Among many programs he created that are now part of Flatbush culture are a system of informal education, programs that gave college credit for Jewish studies, student Shabbatonim, and communal Holocaust Remembrance Day and Independence Day programs.
In the mid-1970s summers, Wolowelsky was a faculty member with Counterpoint, a groundbreaking informal Jewish education program at Mount Scopus Memorial College, the major Jewish school in Melbourne. He said he was able to “export” some of his ideas to Australia and work with a wider range of like-minded professionals and lay leaders. Many of these individuals have made aliyah, he said, adding that he was looking forward to the Counterpoint 50-year reunion planned for July 4 in Jerusalem.
Also active in the early period of the movement to free Soviet Jewry, he traveled twice to the USSR through Nativ, the then-clandestine Israeli agency that maintained contact with Jews behind the Iron Curtain, cultivated their connection to Israel and the Jewish people, and assisted them in aliyah.
“We met extraordinary people on these trips. It was inspiring and humbling to see their commitment to reaching Israel and their willingness to suffer to attain that goal,” he recalled.
“They were hungry for the Torah and Jewish history books we brought, and continuously expressed their love of Zion.” On one trip, he met renowned refusenik Yosef Mendelevitch a few months before Mendelevitch was arrested in 1970 for his participation in a scheme to hijack a plane to Israel.
“Tens of thousands marched each year on Solidarity Sunday to demand justice for him and other refuseniks. There was a real celebration when Mendelevitch came to speak at the Yeshivah of Flatbush shortly after he was released in 1981,” Wolowelsky recalled.
He also traveled to Turkey many summers, visiting a friend who was the brother of a Flatbush family. He helped Jerusalem’s Pardes Institute create a joint program with the Turkey Jewish School.
While in Istanbul in 2005, he met Lea Gul, a Turkish Muslim artist looking for a way to convert to Judaism. Because such a conversion is illegal in Turkey, Wolowelsky and the local Chabad rabbi arranged to have her travel to Atlanta, Georgia. A former Flatbush student was head of the local Jewish day school. Gul was hired as an artist in residence at the school for the months it took to complete her conversion under the guidance of Rabbi Michael Broyde, then head of the rabbinical court in Atlanta.
“It’s about knowing the right people and putting them together,” said Wolowelsky.
He and Gul, now both fairly new Jerusalem residents, had a reunion after nearly 20 years this May, when Wolowelsky attended the opening of her one-woman exhibition at an art gallery in Tel Aviv.
Wolowelsky is also an accomplished author and editor. He has written, edited, or co-edited about 25 books, including Women, Jewish Law and Modernity; Women at the Seder; and The Mind of the Mourner.
He is consulting editor of Tradition, the quarterly Journal of Orthodox Jewish Thought published by the Rabbinical Council of America; and associate editor of the series MeOtzar HoRav: Selected Writings of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik.
“My decades of involvement with Rabbi Soloveitchik’s manuscripts certainly shaped my views tremendously regarding what Torah is and should be,” Wolowelsky said.
Over the last three decades, Wolowelsky has also been exploring the interface of Jewish law and assisted reproduction technologies. He writes on this topic with Dr. Richard V. Grazi, a medical expert in this field and one of Wolowelsky’s first students at Flatbush. All of Grazi’s children and one of his grandchildren were Wolowelsky’s students.
Life in Israel
WOLOWELSKY NOW lives in Jerusalem’s Ahuzat Beit Hakerem, two blocks from his sister and brother-in-law, who made aliyah decades before.
In addition to reading, editing, and writing, he swims almost every day and often meets with former students, colleagues, and other friends he has here.
“When you retire, you have to reinvent your life,” he said. “I miss the dynamics of daily interaction with eager, bright, and challenging students and inspiring colleagues. But Jerusalem has its own special opportunities to offer.”
When asked how he feels about having moved to Israel shortly before this time of war and uncertainty, Wolowelsky said, “It’s meaningful and a privilege to be here at this crucial point in Jewish history. It feels very significant. May we all hear besorot tovot [good news] soon.”■
Joel B. Wolowelsky, 78
From BROOKLYN, NY to Jerusalem, 2023