Many Jews view Oct. 7, 2023 as the time when everything changed: there’s before Oct. 7 and after. But at the 40-year-old Jewish Learning Exchange (JLE), Rabbi Avrohom Czapnik, the JLE’s longtime executive director, has not altered his agenda — at all. “Our message has been consistent throughout,” the modest, quiet-spoken Manhattan native told The Journal “If you are Jewish, find out what it’s all about — and come, let’s learn more together. There has been more interest in learning since Oct. 7, but we haven’t changed the message.”

“If you are Jewish, find out what it’s all about – and come, let’s learn more together. There has been more interest in learning since Oct. 7, but we haven’t changed the message.”

In his nearly half-century as an educator, Czapnik is known for personally understating his role. And at JLE, his work includes in-person and Zoom learning, taught by its five instructors, plus a synagogue at its La Brea Boulevard headquarters. There are Sunday morning classes on how to learn Torah texts, and through the week prayerbook Hebrew, which is a follow-up to a crash course on learning Hebrew and also a Parsha class, the Torah portion of the week. 

For Rabbi Czapnik, his weekday mornings have been spent the same way the last 45 years. “I am a pre-1A rebbe at Toras Emes, which means I teach 5-year-old boys how to read Hebrew and about Judaism.”

As a yeshiva student in South Fallsburg, N.Y., this is precisely what the youngest of four children of Holocaust survivors dreamed of doing. “I always have loved being with kids,” the father of eight said.

Becoming a rabbi, however, never was among his intentions. It was the last thing he thought he would do. “I thought about teaching kids, young children. But I didn’t know beyond that. I just kept on studying. I thought I would teach kids.” He never envisioned being a pulpit rabbi. But after he married his wife Rivky, he started teaching little children at a yeshiva in Stamford, Connecticut. Then in 1980, the yeshiva at Toras Emes brought his family to Los Angeles. Five years later, when the late Rabbi Yitzchok Kirzner founded the Jewish Learning Exchange, he asked Czapnik to join his faculty. A year and a half later, Rabbi Kirzner left for the East Coast and tapped Czapnik as the new director.

At the time, Czapnik wasn’t sure if he was ready to take over. At the dinner honoring Rabbi Kirzner, “I said I felt a little like a kid who takes his father’s shoes and comes clunking around. That is exactly what I felt like. Rabbi Kirzner was a very special person, a very deep Torah scholar. I felt inadequate in his shoes. Very inadequate in his shoes. But with the Almighty’s help, you just develop your own style. And with the Almighty’s help, hopefully, people are gaining from it.” But at the start, he thought it might be “a temporary thing.”

Today, there are several aspects to his job. “Classroom, counseling, the practical side of trying to work out my schedule for Pesach, having speakers come to cover different classes. So there are technical things. When there’s a leak, we have to call someone to fix it.” And then there’s the planning of the classes themselves, making flyers, proofing them.  “There are a lot of responsibilities.” he notes modestly.

He points with pride to the fact that Jewish Learning Exchange class sizes are small enough to make sure everyone can interact with the instructor. “For a Sunday parsha class, I could have maybe five, 10 people present and maybe another five, 10 people on Zoom. Depends also on what’s going on.” Among the popular classes are a crash course in reading Hebrew and a Simply Parsha. Each class has its own group of people who love to come to it. It’s especially heartwarming when “people come to me and say ‘you taught me Hebrew 20 years ago.’”

As for the student body, “we are talking about a broad range of people,” he said. There are those who are not Jewish, people who are exploring Judaism, people who are in a conversion program, people who are religious already and want to grow. An important part of the job is just being there for people and “help them — spiritually or even practically.” But he’s consistently impressed by the “inner strength people have to make the change. Not everyone can do it,” he admits, “moving from secular to religious or more religious. It’s very inspiring to see people take dramatic steps.” 

The least appealing part of the job, he says, is fundraising. “I can be clear on that,” he said, an example of the rabbi’s understated sense of humor. “For a while, we didn’t have a building, and we were going here and there. But the Almighty helped and … 

“When people ask what is going to be, I say the JLE is very nonprofit. I am not a prophet. I don’t know what is going to be. We survive on people’s graciousness, and on donations.” He adds, “we keep on trying to do the best that we can … and pray for divine help.”

Fast Takes with Rabbi Czapnik

Jewish Journal: What is your favorite childhood memory?

Rabbi Czapnik: Having loving parents, and — despite what they went through with the Holocaust — to be warm and loving to me.

JJ: Was learning Holocaust history part of your growing-up experience?

RC:  It was part of the history in the sense there was no book, no course. It was life because my parents lived it. My mother didn’t want to talk about it, but especially on Pesach night, my father would tell us about his coming out of Egypt.

JJ: What is your favorite moment of the week?

RC:  Coming home Friday night to my wife and our guests.