By Y.M. Lowy

Last week, we looked at how Rabbi Shraga Feivel Mendelowitz’s Bais Medrash Elyon transformed Monsey from a quiet village into a growing Torah community. This week, we move into another chapter, as new families began arriving in larger numbers and one of Monsey’s most beloved figures, Rabbi Yudel Weberman, found himself stepping into a role that would shape the town.

For generations, Monsey might have remained a quiet rural community were it not for two major developments: the opening of the Tappan Zee Bridge and the New York State Thruway in 1955.

The new transportation routes made it far easier for New York City residents to reach Rockland County and continue on to the Catskills. As vacationers pushed farther north, many of the bungalow colonies and hotels that once filled Monsey and Spring Valley gradually gave way to residential neighborhoods.

Families looking to escape the noise and congestion of city life were drawn to Monsey’s open space, fresh air, and peaceful surroundings. Slowly but surely, more frum families began settling in the area. Among them was Rabbi Yudel Weberman, who arrived in Monsey in 1961.

His son, Reb Shmuel Yitzchak Weberman, recalled those early years, “We arrived in Monsey four years after the Skver community was established by the Skverer Rebbe zt”l, and four years before the Vizhnitzer Rebbe zt”l came to town. I was nine years old at the time.

“The Vizhnitzer Rebbe once remarked that one reason he came to Monsey was because the town already had a Yid like Rabbi Yudel Weberman living there.”

Reb Shmuel Yitzchak attended the Skverer Talmud Torah until his early teenage years before continuing on to the Vizhnitz yeshiva.

“My bar mitzvah was actually the first bar mitzvah celebrated in Vizhnitz Monsey,” he recalled.

At the time, Monsey’s heimishe population was tiny.

“There were perhaps thirty heimishe families living here year-round,” he said. “Some people only came for Shabbos or spent the summers here.”

When the Weberman family moved into their home on Grandview Avenue near West Maple Avenue, there were virtually no other heimishe families in the immediate neighborhood.

Around that same time, members of the Shopron Rav’s community, including the Brecher brothers, established the Bais Yisroel Baalei Batim Shul. Reb Leibel Rapoport z”l served as the congregation’s rav, and shortly after arriving in Monsey, Rabbi Weberman began delivering a daily Mishnah Berurah shiur there each morning.

Rabbi Weberman balanced Torah with earning a living, working in the jewelry business. Old newspaper reports from the 1950s even document one dramatic incident in which he was robbed at gunpoint during a business trip to Youngstown, Ohio. The thief escaped with jewelry valued at $35,000, an enormous sum at the time.

After moving to Monsey, Rabbi Weberman expanded his business interests and became involved in buying and selling antiques, particularly items connected to the region’s colonial history and earlier Native American settlements.

Reb Shmuel Yitzchak remembered his father bringing home old wagon wheels, restoring them, and then selling them to collectors. Yet despite his success in business, Rabbi Weberman never intended to become a public askan. The role found him.

Not long after arriving, he realized that Monsey lacked a proper chevra kadisha. Seeing the need, he organized one himself. At first, participation was limited, and finding volunteers proved difficult.

“He once hung a sign on the wall,” his son recalled. “It said that he wished to resign from the chevra kadisha, but unfortunately he had nobody to resign to.” The humorous message struck a chord, and new volunteers soon joined the organization.

One day, while Rabbi Weberman was working in his jewelry store on Remsen Avenue near Route 59, Ramapo Police Chief Joseph Millie walked in with an unexpected request. The department was searching for a Jewish chaplain.

“Why are you coming to me?” Rabbi Weberman asked. “There are plenty of Conservative rabbis who would be interested in such a position.”

According to the family, Chief Millie responded simply, “We need someone from the real Jewish religion. Someone honest and sincere.”

Before accepting, Rabbi Weberman sought guidance from Harav Moshe Neuschloss, zt”l, the Skverer Rav and Av Beis Din of New Square, whose counsel he regularly sought on important matters. The Skverer Rav advised him to accept.

“If they came to ask you personally,” the Rav told him, “it is a sign that this is something you should do. Go and be mekadesh Shem Shamayim.”

That decision would mark the beginning of Rabbi Weberman’s decades-long role as one of Monsey’s most respected communal representatives and advocates.

Rockland Daily’s “Unearthing the Past” series will continue exploring the people, places, memories, and hidden stories connected to Monsey’s historic time capsule, preserving the history that helped shape Monsey into the town it is today. As 2026 marks 50 years since the 1976 reopening, Monsey is once again drawing closer to revisiting that historic moment.