Meet the other mayor of Lakewood: How one man's vision reshaped a school and community

LAKEWOOD - Four dire words had Rabbi Aaron Kotler scrambling up Capitol Hill in 2010.

The phrase, "who is not married," was tucked on page 14 of the 906-page tome of the Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare. The words were a tiny parenthetical overlooked by many during the chaotic moment as Congress was passing health care reform.

MORE: Lakewood's Orthodox Jewish community: Everything you wanted to know

Check out part 2 of the series, on how one elite school turned Lakewood into NJ's Boomtown.

More: BMG: How this Orthodox Jewish school and its leader turned Lakewood into NJ's boom town

More: Orthodox Jewish women are 'major breadwinners' but can't attend BMG

The statement, though, had a profound meaning to Kotler, the president of Lakewood's Beth Medrash Govoha, the largest Orthodox Jewish yeshiva, or college, outside of Israel. Often called the Harvard University of Orthodox Jewish higher education, the 75-year-old school has about 6,700 students from around the world. Kotler is the third generation of his family to oversee the institution.

Kotler went to Washington with goals to get meetings and get those four words deleted.

“Try to buttonhole, same thing just as everyone else on Capitol Hill is doing," he recalled recently of his mad-dash to Congress. "The beauty of the legislative system is that people can do that."

As a noted college president, Kotler counts among his contacts former governors, legislators and prolific political donors. Kotler sees himself as an advocate for his students and the Jewish community as a whole.

In Lakewood, Kotler is a seen as a facilitator, a influential man who is loved for the growth the college has brought to the once-depressed Lakewood — and at the same time loathed for heralding what some see as out-of-control expansion beyond what township infrastructure can handle.

The 54-year-old husband and father of seven says he never sought such responsibility.

He is part of a family legacy that runs the Talmudic college, which has become a magnet for population and economic growth. Kotler's two-decade tenure at the helm has been marked by expansion. Lakewood is adding more homes faster than every other New Jersey town except Jersey City, and claimed the fastest-growing population last year. Orthodox Jews, many of who are drawn here by the college, account for 70 percent of the township's 100,000 residents, by official estimates.

Students at Beth Medrash Govoha often marry in their mid-20s. Obamacare extended the time those students could stay on their parents' health insurance to age 26, but that four-word provision drawing Kotler's concern threatened to cancel the insurance for couples who married young.

So Kotler went to Washington, and when then-President Barack Obama signed the historic bill, those four words were gone.

Kotler grew up in a much different Lakewood.

“I’ll never forget this,” he says, sitting in a study in his Lakewood home. The room is lined with built-in wood shelves, a library full of books in at least three languages and black-and-white pictures of relatives including his grandfather, the architect of Orthodox Jewish study in the U.S.

“As a kid, I had two classmates in my entire grade in Lakewood, and then one of them moved to California and I had one classmate," Kotler recalled. "And I thought that was normal.”

His grandfather and namesake, noted scholar Aaron Kotler, fled the Holocaust and established Beth Medrash Govoha in Lakewood in 1943. The college, also known as BMG, has grown into the largest center to study the Talmud — the book of religious law, tradition and commentary that is one of the guiding texts of Judaism — in the nation.

The school's founder died in 1962 — a year before his grandson and namesake was born. Control of the school passed to the elder Kotler's son, Shneur Kotler, who died 20 years later.

At the time of his father's death, Aaron Kotler was 18. His older brother, Aryeh Malkeil Kotler, took over as academic dean of Beth Medrash Govoha in 1982.

The next decade of the young Aaron Kotler's life was marked with movement: He studied in New York, Israel and then at Beth Medrash Govoha. In Lakewood he married Jany, his wife of 31 years. Together they moved to Israel, then back to New York. Aaron Kotler earned a living teaching and dabbling in business, he said.

But distance from family — and a familiar educational predicament — weighed on Kotler and his wife.

“My oldest son was in second grade and there were only three boys in his class,” Jany Kotler said. “Socially it was time for him to be with more kids his own age.”

Beth Medrash Govoha needed help. It was financially failing, board members told the Asbury Park Press, and needed a strong leader. They called Kotler.

“I really didn’t want to do this, I promise you,” Kotler says now. “I thought about it for a long time and had a lot of debate and internal discussion in my own head and with friends and family. I landed up here and it’s been an incredible journey since."

Now in the 25-square-mile township there are 120 private primary and secondary schools for about 30,000 Orthodox Jewish students.

In the mid-1990s, Beth Medrash Govoha faculty members weren’t getting paid and student stipends were running dry. Enrollment was outpacing revenues at Beth Medrash Govoha before Aaron Kotler took over in 1996, according to Abraham Biderman, a New York investment banker who has been on the board of the college for more than two decades.

Kotler helped balance the books by recruiting donors to refill the institution’s coffers and raising tuition, according to Biderman. Since Kotler was named president, the college's enrollment has more than tripled to about 6,700 students and it has expanded to four campuses in the township.

The college has spent more than $800,000 in the past decade lobbying federal lawmakers on issues that include education policy, notably supporting the funding of Pell grants, and transportation project funding, according to public disclosure records.

Board members say Kotler's business acumen and professionalism afforded the college's deans comfortable legroom to make Beth Medrash Govoha's academics the pinnacle college of its kind in the nation.

“While the institution has been very successful, with success come more and more responsibilities,” Kotler said. “That’s not just for ourselves and those in the leadership, but also for the student body as we represent an ideal. And with that ideal comes responsibility to society, to community, to the country at large.”

Under Kotler's leadership, the college founded a health clinic, now the thriving CHEMED center on Route 9, and established the Lakewood Resource and Referral Center, a social services agency that runs the health center.

“He’s sort of like the mayor of Lakewood in that there’s such a large Jewish community and they need to be supported," said Stephen Rosedale, a Cincinnati health care executive and Jany Kotler's step-uncle who helped convince Aaron Kotler to take the helm of Beth Medrash Govoha. "He had a vision of not only the learning that goes on in the yeshiva but its counterpart of, how are people going to support themselves and where are they going to live?”

Howard E. Friedman exemplifies the connections that Kotler brought to Beth Medrash Govoha — and how Kotler gets them there.

Friedman is the founding partner of a hedge fund called Lanx Management, a board member at television giant Sinclair Broadcast Group, a former head of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and a political donor who hosted President Obama for $32,000-a-plate dinners at his home in Baltimore. In 2007 and 2009, Washington Life Magazine named Friedman one of the 100 most powerful people in Washington, D.C.

As kids, Kotler and Friedman attended the same summer camp in New York state. As adults, Kotler asked Friedman to hold school fundraisers and introduce him to the powerful, ultimately offering him a seat on the college's board.

The Baltimore resident said Kotler has been successful because of what Friedman saw on a ski slope in Utah more than a decade ago — a charisma and an inability to say something was impossible.

"When he was learning how to ski he just wouldn't give up," Friedman said. "The same slope, over and over again until he got it right."

"He pushes and pushes and pushes," Friedman said, "until he gets something done."

But Kotler doesn't always get his way.

"There's a myth out there that he can get done whatever he wants," said Ralph Zucker, president of Somerset Development, a Kotler family friend and Beth Medrash Govoha board member.

“I would say he has a lot of clout, but it’s not power, and there’s a big difference.”

Zucker, who is redeveloping the massive Bell Labs property in Holmdel as Bell Works, said he's seen Kotler concede during discussions in board meetings.

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The two friends have had disagreements, including what Lakewood's growth should look like.

Just more than a decade ago, Kotler and Zucker served on an advisory committee creating a new master plan for the township. The plan was a massive document of zoning nuances and regulations that dictate what can be built and where.

"The yeshiva (BMG) had a clear pro-growth policy," Zucker said. "As a developer, clearly that was something I was aligned with. But where we were misaligned, he was focused on the numbers and I pushed the quality."

New houses are necessary to keep real estate affordable, Zucker said. But Kotler pushed for more units whereas Zucker focused on aesthetics and planning, according to Zucker.

Now construction is rampant, and Kotler says he's working with the state to widen Route 9, the township's biggest traffic bottleneck and the bane of anyone trying to drive across town.

“It’s important to remember what is at the root and the core of what is fueling this growth," Zucker said. "The largest and most significant rabbinical college in the world outside of Israel."

"Rabbi Kotler's office, what's doing?" Liebe Rosenzweig says into her office phone. A minute later her cellphone rings. "The whole day is booked."

Rosenzweig has worked for Kotler for 16 years. She's the keeper of his schedule and in 15 minutes in her office — in a locked-down third-floor executive suite with wood-paneled walls and green, patterned carpet — she's gotten three phone calls and a few text messages. Four people have stopped by and she's explaining how sometimes she double-books meetings so Kotler can quickly get from one to the other, though he'll always take time for students. Evening meetings are always in his home and he once called her at 3 a.m. to re-book a flight.

"I don't know when he sleeps," she says. "I don't know when he eats."

Kotler's a suit-and-tie type — a dozen pre-knotted ties hang in the front closet of his home — with a trimmed beard and gray hair under his yarmulke. He's cordial in conversation and each word is deliberate. He grins at his own jokes, noting that he drives a Smart mini electric car and may be the only one who's never had an issue parking around the busy college.

At home one recent Friday night, the start of the Jewish Sabbath, Kotler anchors the center of a dining table the size of a small bus. The top button on his white collared shirt is undone and he’s slouched in a plush dining room chair. Jany Kotler has spent one day and three ovens preparing a feast for the dozen or so guests they have for dinner.

Discussion ranges from the Holocaust to Israel to technology and social media. Kotler laments leaving 19 emails unanswered in his inbox before the Sabbath, the 25 hours a week from sundown Friday to Saturday that he is not working.

His religion forbids it.

When Kotler takes a vacation, it’s not to laze at a resort. He prefers backpacking or skiing or cycling. Ask to see a picture of his off-the-grid adventures and he’ll show you a dozen. Last month, he camped on ice under the Northern Lights in Norway.

It was his fifth trip to the Arctic.

“The nicest thing is I leave my phone,” he said. “But I’ve never been so cold in my life.”

Jany Kotler, who stays behind on such trips, said her husband's rugged vacations are nevertheless restorative.

"When you go out to these glaciers and see how huge the world is, the issues that he’s dealing with are put into perspective," she said. “This really helps keep him sane."

Kotler sits on the Lakewood Vaad, an influential council of Orthodox Jewish rabbis and businessmen who advocate for some in the Jewish community. Vaad means council in Hebrew. Commonly known for political endorsements, the Vaad is often perceived as carrying a bloc of Jewish votes and a good predictor of contest outcomes.

“I don’t think anyone has won without their endorsement,” Lakewood Mayor Ray Coles said of his time on the committee since 2001. Coles, a Democrat on the five-man committee, holds the Vaad endorsement.

Votes don't always go the Vaad's way. The council’s 2009 endorsement of Democrat Gov. Jon Corzine for reelection was ignored, with more votes going to Republican Chris Christie. Last year, the Vaad endorsed Phil Murphy, a Democrat with liberal social values, like legalizing marijuana, that conflict with many conservative views of some in the Jewish community. Murphy barely won Lakewood — by 114 votes.

Kotler has traveled to Israel with Christie and gave the invocation at Christie's state of the state address in 2016. When Kotler's mother died in 2015, Christie arrived in Lakewood to pay respects.

Kotler's relationship with the former governor was crucial two years ago, when Christie approved a measure that created a special consortium of private schools in Lakewood and paid for busing for the town's large private school population, according to Lakewood School District lawyer Michael Inzelbuch. Beth Medrash Govoha also spent $30,000 on lobbying in Trenton on the measure, public records show, and worked alongside the advocacy group Agudath Israel of America.

"When the district needs help on the state or federal level, there’s two people we call," Inzelbuch said. "Sen. Singer, a loyal ally of the public schools, and Aaron Kotler." Robert Singer, a Republican who represents Lakewood and other parts of Ocean and Monmouth counties, did not return calls for this story.

And Kotler has welcomed now-governor Murphy into his home, Kotler said, working on securing more funding for Lakewood's public schools.

Kotler leverages relationships to help with requests big and small, from recommending doctors to helping parents get their children into schools, Zucker and Rosenzweig said. Last year, Kotler used his political contacts as part of a group of people that helped free a Beth Medrash Govoha student who was arrested in an airport in Moscow, according to Zucker and media reports.

“I wish people would realize how much of his personal time and his very essence he gives to help people,” Zucker said. “It’s not an official thing, a Vaad thing. It's just, he has the resources to help and so he does.”

In 2015, when a 37-year-old Beth Medrash Govoha student died suddenly, Kotler stepped in to make funeral arrangements and cover the costs because the student’s family was unable to do so, according to the student’s cousin, Daniel Kasten.

“BMG understood it was important to be done,” Kasten said. “It was one of their students. It was the right thing to do. And that’s Rabbi Kotler.”

Still Kotler, and the Vaad, have no shortage of critics.

Among the most outspoken are Tom Gatti and Harold Herskowitz, who say growth in Lakewood is out of control and has outpaced township infrastructure. Gatti stood at a township committee meeting last year suggesting the committeemen reported to the Vaad, not the taxpayers. Coles, the mayor, rejected that claim.

“This is a self-destroying travesty,” Gatti told the Asbury Park Press, speaking about rapid construction he said benefits Beth Medrash Govoha at the cost of quality of life for other residents. “The more kids that come here, the more kids go to BMG.”

Gatti uses sour words to describe Kotler.

Yet Kotler, asked about Gatti, calls him a friend.

“I think that any healthy society will have critical voices,” Kotler said. “You don’t have to agree with a critical voice to recognize that there’s a value in having critical voices.”

Sometimes, critical voices come from inside Beth Medrash Govoha.

Last year, students signed a petition objecting to the college's for-profit company planning a shopping center development.

"They're seeing a gentrification of Lakewood, and that's of concern to them," Kotler said. "We're kind of leading the way in up-scaling Lakewood ... and weren't sensitive to that."

Plans to build a major shopping destination have been scrapped in favor of smaller retail projects, according to Kotler.

Kotler travels to Washington about two times a year, he said.

In 2009 and 2010, his focus was Obamacare. Kotler said he ultimately got meetings with New Jersey Democratic U.S. Reps. Frank Pallone and Rob Andrews and Republican Congressman Chris Smith to discuss those four words: "who is not married." He called Friedman, he said, who connected him with the legislation's architect, U.S. Sen. Max Baucus, D-Montana.

The four words were taken out of the law.

Kotler doesn't deserve all the credit, nor does he take it, noting that other religious groups, like the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, also lobbied against that aspect of the bill. But his trips to the Hill are one example of the big-picture work he's prioritized on behalf of the community.

That work is never-ending.

The 2016 legislation Kotler helped work on to create a special busing consortium in Lakewood has a three-year time limit: It expires after the end of the next academic year. Early discussions are under way about extending the consortium or finding other funding fixes, according to Inzelbuch, the schools' lawyer.

What's certain is the school board will enlist Kotler's help, Inzelbuch said, adding: "He is crucial."

Stacey Barchenger: @sbarchenger; 732-643-4245; sbarchenger@gannettnj.com

Design and development: Felecia Wellington Radel