The Handshake
It was a Thursday night in Flatbush, and a young man stood at the front of the room waiting to be introduced to the man whose Torah tapes had electrified him for the past number of years. He was escorted by his rebbe.
Rabbi Miller greeted him warmly, shook his hand, and then said the unexpected.
“Why did you come here? With a rebbe like Rabbi Goldberger, you don’t need me!”
“I never returned,” says Professor Yosef Glanz.
But he never stopped listening either. “I bought and read every sefer and almost every tape that was published.”
Building on Ashes
It wasn’t a brush-off. It was the ultimate compliment to Rabbi Goldberger, and an expression of deep confidence in what he’d already given to his talmid, the product of a home built by a father who’d been left with nothing.
Yosef’s father was a Holocaust survivor who made his way to America. In 1950, he married Yosef’s mother, a former Polish national, who arrived in the States in the late twenties. Later that same year, Yosef was born, followed four years later by a sister.
Their home was fully Orthodox in every way. His father spoke Yiddish—except when he didn’t want the children to understand, when he switched to Polish.
Yosef has never stopped marveling at his father.
“I always found it remarkable that my father a”h, who lost everything, could maintain his religious observance. He was an inspiration.”
That inspiration became proof that a person can hit rock bottom and still choose every day, not just to survive, but to actively build a promising future.
College Material
As a child, young Yosef attended Yeshiva Zichron Moshe in the Bronx—now famous as Yeshiva of South Fallsburg. Later at public school, he excelled to the point where his tenth-grade teacher told his kvelling parents in no uncertain terms that he was “college material”—the fulfillment of a dream for many survivors.
And so it was that the dream became reality. He earned a B.A. and M.S. from CUNY, and an M.Ed. and Ed.D. from Teachers College at Columbia.
Thousands of Students Later
It was just the beginning of a decades-long career in education and academia. He started out as an inner-city classroom teacher. He spent five years as an assistant principal at PS 92 in Brooklyn, and was told he’d likely go far in the public school system. He left anyway to pursue his dream of reaching not only students but educators. That ambition led him to a professorship at CUNY. Then came Kean University, where he directed New Jersey’s largest Holocaust resource center, a role most fitting for this child of a survivor. From there, he went to Wagner College, then Yeshiva University. At YU, he held the Silverstein Endowed Chair for Professional Ethics and Values, clearly appropriate for a man whose own moral compass was so finely tuned by his parents and his rebbe.
In 2013, he and his wife made aliyah, joining their children and grandchildren who’d already made the move. There, he joined the staff of Michlalah College for Women in Yerushalayim, where he now heads the master’s program in Educational Leadership.
The Black Belt
While all this was happening in the classroom, he was building a second career entirely. His interest in martial arts began when he was bullied as a child, and he began training. He holds an eighth-degree Black Belt in the Tora Dojo Martial Arts System, and is a certified Tai Chi Chuan/Ba Gua/Hsing-I master and in Chi Gung. He attributes a great deal of personal growth to his study of the subject, and he’s taught thousands over the years.
What drives him?
“I have chosen to teach and lead as ways I can positively make a difference.” It’s as simple as that. Underneath all those titles and accomplishments is the instinct his parents raised him with: that a person’s job is to grow, give, and help others reach their potential.
Rabbi Miller’s Imprint
And yet, despite his impressive list of successes, the ones that truly stand out for him are the lessons he learned from Rabbi Miller.
“He doesn’t pull punches,” says Yosef. “He speaks the emes. It is so, so refreshing. And the topics he talked about are as relevant today as they were back then.”
Rabbi Miller’s talks on Gehinnom stayed with him more than any other subject.
“Many rebbeim avoid the topic because it’s uncomfortable to talk about. Yet he felt one could not be a frum Yid without a deep understanding of it. Rabbi Miller told it as it is. Keeping Gehinnom in mind as you learn and review Pirkei Avos is a great motivator to start working on your middos.”
Yosef Glanz has abundant gratitude to Rabbi Miller. “I feel Hashem’s presence constantly, whenever I say, ‘Thank you, Hashem, for this or for that.’ Hashem is always on my mind because of the Rav’s teachings.”
He puts it in broader terms, reflecting on everything he’s achieved.
“Whatever modicum of Yiras Shamayim I’ve been privileged to attain is due, in large measure, to Rabbi Miller. May he receive the enormous rewards he most certainly deserves for influencing thousands—and now tens of thousands through Toras Avigdor.”
Rabbi Miller’s influence isn’t confined to Yosef alone. His wife, who never listened to the tapes back when he did, now eagerly awaits the Toras Avigdor booklets every single week. And he finds himself smiling, recognizing practically every word from those recordings he heard so many years ago.
And that handshake? Young Yosef never really let go. Decades later, he’s still holding on.
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