competitions. And along with his emphasis on educational excellence,
Rabbi Bender has never neglected students who are academically
challenged or physically handicapped.
Darchei’s Weiss Vocational Center has granted confidence and success
to those students who need a streamlined curriculum while learning a
vocation that they can use later in life as a means of earning a livelihood.
Over the years, Rabbi Bender has accepted into the Yeshiva a number of
physically and mentally handicapped children, some from out of the Far
Rockaway/Five Towns area, who were not successful in other yeshivos.
These boys have thrived at Darchei, where Rabbi Bender’s compassion
and respect for every type of child filters down to the talmidim. It is not
uncommon for one such child to be sitting in a “seat of honor” alongside
the podium as Rabbi Bender delivers his weekly shmuess. And not
surprisingly, it is not uncommon to see a talmid pushing the wheelchair
of a handicapped boy on the way to minyan or lunch.
As Rabbi Bender often notes, when a handicapped child is accepted into
the Yeshiva, it is often his classmates who gain the most. By assisting
this child, including him in activities to whatever degree is possible, and
January 14, 2018
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תשע“ח טבת לכ“ח אור