Four boys snuck onto the roof of their school building late one night and lowered one boy down to the office window of their dean. Through the slightly open window, he entered the office and changed his and his accomplices' grades in the student records. They successfully returned to their dorm without being seen, believing they committed the perfect crime. However, a second copy of records in a different office showed discrepancies between the two sets. All four boys were expelled for the serious offense. Rather than abandon the boys, their rabbi boarded a train with them and enrolled them in a yeshiva in Brooklyn, taking extraordinary measures to give them a second chance at their education.

1. AN ALMOST PERFECT CRIME
One year there was a group of boys who got into some
serious trouble, by anybody’s definition. Late one night
they snuck into the old T.A. school building and climbed up
onto the roof. Once there, they hung a boy over the side of
the building, and lowered him down by ropes to the window
of Dr. Kranzler’s office. The door was locked, but the
window was slightly ajar. Hanging in mid-air, the boy pried
open the window, climbed into the office and advanced to
the filing cabinet where the permanent student records
were held. He took out those records and changed many of
his own grades and those of his three partners who were
waiting up above. No doubt, the boys standing on the roof
whispered the prayer, “Let salvation come from below.”
When he was finished, he restored everything to look as it
had been before he arrived. He then returned to the
window, retied himself and tugged on the rope so that the
boys would know that it was time to pull him back up onto
the roof. The boys then hurriedly left the building and
made it back to their dormitory rooms without having been
seen. The perfect crime? Well almost.
What they didn’t realize was that a second copy of all
the records had been sent to a different office, and
somewhere along the way someone in the office noticed the
discrepancy. Somebody had been tampering with the
grades! Often it involves much detective work to uncover
who has committed a crime. In this case, however, exactly
four boys had been involved, and exactly four sets of grades
had been changed, so the perfect crime had an even more
perfect solution.
Rabbi Milikowsky often went to bat for boys who had
been expelled, and won them “last chances.” In this case,
however, even Rebbe’s efforts could not succeed, given the
seriousness of the crime, and the four boys were expelled
for good.
But what do you do when a sixteen or seventeen year
old boy is thrown out of yeshiva for a terrible crime such as
this one? I am not a school principal, so I cannot answer

2. that question. I can only report what Rabbi Boruch
Milikowsky did. He boarded a train with the four boys and
took them up to the Mir Yeshiva in Brooklyn, New York,
and was successful with getting them all enrolled there!
The person who told me this story, who today is a
school principal, concludes it as follows:
“I throw guys out of school. I do try to get them into
other schools, but I’m not ready to get on a train and go to
another city and plead with another school to take the boys
in. Rebbe did it though. That’s who he was!”