Lekavod the yohrtzeit of our esteemed Rosh HaYeshiva Reb Mottel Waldman zt”l we hereby open this blog with some memories of Reb Mottel. In this blog we hope to cover and discuss many aspects of Bais Dovid from over the years. The inspiration for this came from the fact that for many years whenever a Bais Dovid alumnus sits with friends all they want to hear about is stories of Bais Dovid. The same can be said about the alumni themselves, when we meet, all we talk about is our memories; be it the quirks of a certain rebbe, an imitation of an English teacher or, of course, some story with Rabbi Beyer….
We therefore turn to all of you, Bais Dovid alumni (and survivors) to post your stories, your memories, and even pictures if possible and let us all enjoy and reminisce [Please refer do a dictionary for all the words you didn’t learn by English..].


REB MOTTEL

The first thing one would notice about Reb Mottel would be his unique “up hat with pinches”. This style was widely popular in the Hess family (studies suggest that it has something to do with Esrog Jelly, but that we will discuss iy”h in future posts). Rabbis Moshe and Menachem-Manny Hess have both worn similar styles, with Manny’s leaning more to the “down-hat-with-the-brim-up” and Reb Moshe’s being similar to Reb Mottel’s but then being abandoned for a regular up-hat [without intentional pinches].
The next thing would be Reb Mottel’s glasses. Reb Mottel’s glasses were octagon shaped with the frames screwed directly into the lenses. This frame has probably been in and out of style lately, but back in the day, the “rayd” was that “only Reb Mottel and the Bobover Rebbe have this type of glasses”. [No-one ever made sure this statement was true, but then again, we all said that “Bais Dovid is ‘gematria’ Bronx Zoo” and we all tried to figure out the formula for that and failed repeatedly.] These glasses were worn by R’ Mottel for at least 20 years. There is a picture of him with R’ Yaakov Kamentzky at the Hanochas Even Hapina for the mesivta building and he is wearing them. We must mention here that R’ Mottel would be seen walking all over Monsey engrossed in thought, but always without his glasses. He also walked with his hands clasped behind his back, a pose that made spotting him from all the way down Saddle River very easy.
At his weekly farher he would constantly call younger brothers by their older brother’s names and sometimes even nephews by their uncle’s name. if there were a few brothers in a family he would go down the list. Lemashal, if it was a Lederer he would say “Moshe, uhh Pinchos, uhh Yosef…” If it was a Werner he would say “uhh, Avromy, Mordechai, uhh, Yossi”. All talking was done with a shaking of the head (eerily similar to that of Mrs. Jacobs).