Rav Meshulem Jungreis passed away in Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in Manhattan close to three o’clock in the morning on Tuesday, January 23, 1996/2 Shevat. The funeral was slated to take place at Congregation Ohr Torah in Long Island at one o’clock that afternoon, some ten hours later. Between the moment of his passing and the beginning of the levayah, over two thousand people gathered to pay their final respects to a man who had never sought or requested an iota of kavod. On the contrary, throughout his lifetime he’d run from honor time and again. Yet now it was no longer up to him, and the crowds continued to swell outside the shul he’d built up from scratch.
The motorcade escorted the Rabbi from the funeral home in Boro Park to Long Island. People lined the streets to watch as this over twenty-car Nassau County Police motorcade — in their bright orange and blue colors — made its way through the streets of Boro Park for the Rabbi’s final journey. Not only that, the NYPD joined up with the motorcade and shut down the entire Belt Parkway from Brooklyn to the Nassau County line to enable the Rabbi’s levayah motorcade to travel unimpeded by the normally heavy traffic on this route — a procedure normally reserved for heads of state as they make their way from Kennedy Airport to the City. It was an amazing sight.
As soon as Rabbi Jungreis was niftar, word was sent to Donald Kane, the Police Commissioner of the Nassau County Police Department. Police Commissioner Kane loved the Rabbi for his warmth, compassion and kindness, and for his unique method of dealing with every member of the police force, whenever they needed his pastoral care and guidance. The Commissioner had his top Deputy, Lieutenant Daniel Lishansky, contact Rabbi Shlomo Gertzulin to arrange an “Inspector’s funeral.” Lieutenant Lishansky told him that it normally takes two-three days to arrange all of the logistics for this type of departmental funeral, with all of the attendant ceremony. “Daniel,” Rabbi Shlomo said to the Lieutenant (who happened to be Jewish and was also extremely close to and enamored by the Rabbi), “while the Jungreis family greatly appreciates the honors that the Department wants to bestow upon the Rabbi, Jewish law and tradition mandate that the funeral be expedited, and although it is now about four o’clock in the morning, the funeral will be taking place in just a few hours at Ohr Torah.” The lieutenant of course told him that it would be difficult to arrange a suitable “official” funeral on such short notice, but that they would try their best.
It was a sight to behold outside Ohr Torah at one o’clock. Hundreds of uniformed police officers, as well as the entire top brass of the County, Village and the Nassau County Police Department, were standing at full attention as the hearse bearing the Rabbi’s aron arrived at the shul. It was a lengthy levayah, as befitting a rav of his stature, addressed only by rabbanim, roshei yeshivah and family members (requests to have political and governmental officials speak at the levayah were politely declined — with an appropriate explanation, of course). And when the levayah concluded, they were all still standing there outside, as an aerial salute of police helicopters in a “missing-man” formation flew overhead as they bade a final farewell to their beloved chaplain.
Do not think that they were all Jewish policemen; they were not. But it made no difference to them. Rabbi Jungreis was their man, their rabbi, their bridge to G-d, and they had all come to bid him farewell. As Nassau County Executive Thomas Gulotta said to the family at the funeral, “We will miss his advice and counsel. He was a dear and trusted friend.” The police weren’t just paying him lip service. Their Rabbi Jungreis had been promoted through his years on the force to the rank of Inspector, the highest rank below Chief of Department. Across the street from the Jungreis home on Hungry Harbor Road lies a small lake known as Doxy Pond. It was gated, and Rav Meshulem had the key. That was where the congregation went to recite Tashlich on Rosh Hashanah every year — to the point that this body of water became known as “Tashlich Pond.”
Being a loving father and grandfather, Rabbi Jungreis would also open the gate when his own grandchildren came to visit, taking the kids for a walk around the pond. The pond was a place where the Rabbi could meditate in learning and prepare his speeches. It was serene and tranquil, removed from the hustle and bustle, yet close enough that he was just a few minutes away. It was a picturesque spot and he loved it very much, both for the privacy and connection with nature that it accorded him, and for giving him an opportunity to feed the ducks that gathered at the pond. He’d take left over pieces of Shabbos challah with him and scatter them every few feet. The ducks knew that the tall man with the bright smile always came prepared, and they’d congregate around him.
The Rebbetzin and her children remember looking out of the window of the car on the way to the cemetery. There was much to see as they accompanied their father and grandfather on his final journey, among others, the astounding sight of the several hundred police officers who stood at rigid attention. But then they saw something else, something completely unexpected. The sight of dozens of ducks standing and watching the procession passing by. Who could have prepared the Jungreis children and their mother for the unique sight of those ducks? Nobody had ever seen them venture outside the pond’s gate before. Yet there they were for the first time anyone could recall, standing at attention on Hungry Harbor Road — dozens of them just standing and watching solemnly, as they paid their final respects to the Rabbi who was so good to them.
["The Rebbetzin"]
