| | Feature
Mr. Shatnez: Reb Yosef Rosenberger: The Amazing Story of One Man Who Didn't Give Up
by M. Samsonowitz
R. Rosenberger with his kooker
This was first published in 1996, exactly 30 years ago.
Part II
For Part I of this series click here.
For Part III of this series click here.
The first part told of R' Rosenberger's early life in Europe and how he wound up in America and began to become interested in shatnez.
R' Rosenberger married his wife, Miriam, a fellow refugee, in 1945, and moved to his own flat in Williamsburg. The laboratory went with him and occupied the front room of his home. A few years later, he moved to his final home at 203 Lee Avenue, and this became the laboratory's headquarters for the following 50 years until Rosenberger finished his stint on earth.
His wife gladly joined him in his endeavor, and with the time she became part of the shatnez checking team. She undertook much of the tedious work involved in shatnez checking — opening up collars and labels, replacing the backing, stitching them back — while Rosenberger focused on the search for forbidden thread mixtures in Jewish garments.
From the beginning, Rosenberger sought endorsements from the entire spectrum of religious Jewry. He accomplished the near impossible of having a Kol Koreh published with signatures from the Mizrachi, PAI, Young Israel, Shomer Hadati and Aguda organizations, as well as every Litvish and Chassidishe group known in the U.S., including Satmar, Lubavitch, Belz and more.
Although the trickle of people who were observing shatnez was slowly increasing, shatnez was far from being considered of the same importance as kashrus and Shabbos. For shatnez testing to filter into the consciousness of every religious Jew, Rosenberger felt that he had to reach the youth who were being educated in the Jewish day schools and yeshivas.
Beginning in 1945 and continuing on well into the 1970's, Rosenberger visited classes from third grade and up to spread the message that one of the Torah's mitzvos was alive and well.
The short man in faded clothes was not dismayed that his quick talking and strongly accented Yiddishized English sounded funny to the young children's ears. He stood up in front of the Amerikaners and spoke to them heartfelt words concerning the importance of checking their clothes for shatnez.
And the kids listened. They came home and told their parents and they got the parents thinking too. Rosenberger came back, year after year, because he knew accumulated impressions are far more important than one-time sorties.
He contrived the idea of a hechsher. He printed up cloth labels with the words "Shatnez Laboratories" surrounding a picture of a microscope. Garments that were certified shatnez-free had these labels attached to them by a "plumba," like a meat hechsher. In this way, any Jew who would receive this garment had his guarantee that it was free of shatnez.
Williamsburg Row Houses
In the Shatnez Laboratory Headquarters
The newcomer to his laboratory saw a beehive of clutter and activity. The 10 square meters of the room sported higher and lower racks stuffed with hanging garments along one side of the wall. On the opposite side were microscopes, chemicals and supplies (such as razor blades, long binding needles, and rubber-tipped tweezers) that Rosenberger needed for examining the garments.
His unique invention, "kookers," were binoculars which he had contrived to sit on his head and which he could pull down over his eyes as needed. They allowed him to closely observe the fibers of a garment while his hands could be free to manipulate a garment, answer the phone, write a message or use one of his many tools.
The typical picture of Rosenberger that talmidim recall is of him holding a phone to each ear, his "kookers" on, with a client waiting, and the doorbell ringing.
A stack of his specially-designed sample-receipt books stood in a corner. These were given to his regional testers to facilitate the processing when sending samples to him. A list of specifications were written on them in code to help the tester describe what kind of piece he was sending to be tested.
In another corner stood his faithful file cabinet, where Rosenberger kept track of different, unusual samples, his contracts and business records with different stores, and various promotions he had published through the years, including his grassroots "Mitzvos Magazine," which conveyed important halachos and homey anecdotes imparting yiras Shomayim. This was distributed among many day schools in the New York region.
One of his innovations that was published in every edition of the magazine was a "coupon reward" program to be used by a student each time he bought a suit and had it tested for shatnez. The student would cut this coupon out of the magazine, have the clothing store clerk sign it when he bought a suit and ordered shatnez testing, and then would mail it to Rosenberg postage free.
This clever promotion accomplished three things: It encouraged the youths to insist on shatnez testing when they'd go to buy a suit, it increased the store owners' awareness of the demand for shatnez, and it also brought extra funding to yeshivos, because Rosenberger promised to donate money to a yeshiva according to the coupons he received from students of that yeshiva.
Over the years, over $100,000 was distributed to every kind of yeshiva in this way. The coupons themselves drummed up enthusiasm for shatnez testing, proclaiming such exciting messages as "We've already given away $50,000 to yeshivos!" His magazine was dotted with interesting caricatures that graphically conveyed Jewish ideas to the students.
One vivid picture depicted a bomb falling on a man who confidently takes refuge under an umbrella. The caption to this was: "You're being as clever as this man if you rely on the store owner's assurances that a suit doesn't contain shatnez!"
Another caricature has a yeshiva student refusing a piece of ham with the succinct caption "Treif — never! — but shatnez — yes??!!"
Awareness of shatnez was slowly penetrating, but sometimes in a humorous way. In the 60's, a yeshiva student went into a store to buy a suit. He asked if testing for shatnez was available. The owner obsequiously looked at him and said with a smile, "Oh, you're Jewish! Don't worry! Our suits have the finest shatnez available!"
Other Mitzvah Projects
Rosenberger's entire life became one with the mitzvah of shatnez. From the little income he made from shatnez testing, he only took the minimum necessary for his subsistence and the rest he reinvested in his shatnez project. Although until the end of his life shatnez remained his favorite concern, Rosenberger was involved in anything that could further the propagation of all Torah and mitzvos.
He was part of the founding team of people of Hatzoloh, and helped out as a dispatcher. He was a first address for many newcomers to the U.S. who needed a warm meal and a place to stay. One of his talmidim was present years before when a stranger in tattered clothing burst into his office. "I just arrived in the country a few hours ago and someone told me Mr. Rosenberger could help me out."
Mr. Rosenberg gave the stranger a warm "Sholom Aleichem" and spoke a few minutes with the Jew. The man had no relatives and no place to stay.
Fishing out his black address book under a pile of clothes, Rosenberger found a few addresses where the man could sleep and eat, and sent him off with an envelope containing money. A few warm words and blessings from Mr. Rosenberger concluded the visit. His list of families that would offer hospitality covered all the boroughs of New York, not just Williamsburg. His warmth and affability were infectious.
An unknown client who walked into his laboratory was greeted so keenly that onlookers were under the impression it was a long lost friend.
He loved yeshivos — any yeshivos. He contributed to all the different yeshivos, and everyone felt he was "unzere." Although an Oberlander Jew who dressed in a short jacket and was clean shaven for most of his life, he davened in the Pupa shtiebel and felt right at home. He was in harmony with everyone and that's how everyone felt with him.
The avreichim who learned shatnez testing from him never felt like "employees," and their special relationship precluded them being called "workers". Instead, they took pride in calling themselves talmidim and seeing themselves as furthering his life's work.
Part of the reason why Rosenberger was able to do so much for everybody was because his needs were so minimal. In fifty years, he never once purchased a new suit for himself. A secondhand suit was good enough for him. He saw no reason to buy new shoes either.
His humility and simplicity shined and warmed the heart of everyone who met him. The same single-mindedness and simplicity made him refuse offers to be honored at melave malkas, or to spend time at social affairs and personal simchas, which he almost never attended.
Although he was a G-d-fearing and learned Jew who kept a regular kevi'us of Torah learning every morning, he was never known as Rabbi Rosenberger. He insisted that his workers and talmidim call him Mr. Rosenberger.
In fact, he had a second name "Mr. Shatnez," which yielded a warm smile from him each time he heard it. Rabbi Moshe Heinneman declared about him, "Just as a person who saves one Jewish soul is as if he saved the entire world, so one who saves a dead mitzvah is credited with saving the entire Torah!"
The Williamsburg Bridge
Shatnez Testing Goes Hi Tech
In the 1960's, after the concept of shatnez testing was firmly established in N.Y., Rosenberger began to think of other vistas. He realized that he had backing in the form of the first generation of educated bnei Torah who had been raised with the importance of shatnez. These alumni of the day schools he had visited were learning now in Lakewood, and moving out-of-town to assume positions of education in the new day schools that were burgeoning all over the U.S.
Around this time, he devised an abridged test that was sufficient to test the majority of American clothes, based on his knowledge of 20 years of examining American-made clothing. He began to train avreichim and educators in basic shatnez testing so they could test standard garments in their local vicinities. Among these early testers were R' Yehuda Nussbaum in Boro Parka, R' Uri Mandelbaum in Philadelphia, and R' Nochum Eisenstein in Detroit.
In the 1960's, 95% of American clothing was American made and only a few garments were imported. One could spot the American "Union Made" tag affixed to the lining of garments in the stores. Since the unions had clear-cut standards and their production was quality-controlled, only a few shatnez concerns applied to them which Rosenberger had thoroughly catalogued. Testing for these problems could be done by testers with minimal equipment. Only unusual or complicated cases had to be sent to his lab in NYC.
This situation was workable until the mid-70's arrived. Drastic changes in the textile industry took place then. Synthetic materials were created to simulate properties of natural fibers. Since petroleum, the raw material from which synthetics were made, was so cheap, the textile world tried to replace natural fibers with synthetic look-alikes.
In addition, retailers began to buy inexpensive suits manufactured in third world countries. Suits began to arrive from Czechoslovakia, Romania, Poland, Korea, Taiwan, China, Hong Kong and South America. These suits were distinctly different from the American suits.
Among Rosenberger's findings were that the new suits contained shatnez in places that didn't exist in American suits. In 1980, Rosenberger set up a research division headed by one of his main talmidim, Rabbi Yoel Shockett, to search for ways to develop new accurate techniques to discover fiber content.
The Ramie Puzzle
What emerged to become the most pressing problem was a new linen-look fiber called ramie ("Chinese linen") which many clothes produced in the Far East contained. Although it is not linen, it is widely used in many garments in place of linen since it is cheaper and its texture is almost identical to linen. In fact, there are garments where "linen" is listed among the ingredients that are in fact not linen, but ramie.
To compound the ramie problem, when Ronald Reagan took over the U.S. Presidency in 1980, he made drastic budget cuts in U.S. government regulatory agencies. In particular the Federal Trade Commission, which hitherto enforced label accuracy, had its inspection staff cut down to a bare skeleton so they were unable to deal with the onslaught of foreign imports entering the country. Negligence in labeling became rampant, and manufacturers often omitted to write ingredients on the label, particularly if the percentage of a fiber was slight. Sometimes they would try to get by with writing "unknown fibers" or "recycled wool" — which under inspection would turn out to be recycled anything.
Confronted with this new state of affairs, Rosenberger realized that he needed professional help to learn how to identify distinguish ramie from linen. His talmidim got in touch with the U.S. Textile Testing Laboratory and Hatch Textile Labs in New York, and another laboratory in Washington. They sent a sample of a blended collar reinforcement, and stated that it contained either linen or ramie. Could the laboratories properly identify the contents of the swatch?
To their disappointment, the results they received were conflicting. One lab said the swatch was linen; another said it was ramie. Rosenberger realized that existing methods were not accurate enough, but he had to find a way. He had to find a method that worked. Although Rosenberger was able to identify some ramie, he suspected that certain beige and off-color linen found in suits from the Far East was really ramie, and therefore was permitted to be sewn with suits made of wool, but he couldn't positively identify it.
Rosenberger's research division approached the Textile Association and asked if they could offer a solution. The association suggested they get in touch with a certain laboratory in Brooklyn that was concerned with the presence of linen in garments. Rosenberger looked at the address. It was his own. Rabbi Shockett got to work.
Supplied with samples of pure ramie that Rosenberger had been sent by manufacturers in the Far East, he went to the U.S. Department of Agriculture and found out that they had also been experimenting with ramie. The department furnished him with a sample of ramie that they had grown in their experimental labs in Miami.
Months went by without any success in their research. The breakthrough came in 1990. In one of their searches for information about ramie, Shockett was advised to go to the foremost forensic training institutes. The one especially recommended was McCrone Institute in Chicago, whose specialty is training CIA men, heads of foreign police forensic departments, and multi-billion dollar industries that need quality control on highly sensitive equipment.
End of Part 2
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