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Rabbi Eli Lapa spent the past 25 years serving Monmouth County's Jews, and at a dinner in his honor Jan. 17, hundreds of attendees did not let him forget the effect he has had on the community in that time.

Lapa served as principal of Shalom Torah Academy, Morganville, and saw his last 8th grade class to graduation in 2009. He left to found a new yeshiva in Lakewood called Derech Hatorah, designed for middle school boys who have difficulty learning in larger environments. The dinner at Freehold Jewish Center brought speaker after speaker to the floor with stories about Lapa's effect on their lives.

Morganville resident Arthur Ringer sent all four of his children to Shalom Torah Academy and described himself as "lucky" to have known Lapa.

"He is and still is the only name that comes to mind when you mention Shalom Torah Academy," Ringer said. "Our children, mine and all the kids, are lucky to have been able to come to school with a principal as warm, understanding, kind, considerate, knowledgeable, and his main job, he felt, was to nurture the neshama of each and every child."

Shalom Torah Academy was founded in 1973 to accommodate for a growing need for a Jewish day school in the area that focused on individual attention. Two branches opened in East Windsor and in Jamesburg; the latter branch, led by Lapa, relocated to a new building in Morganville several years ago.

"Throughout the last 16 years, teachers and administrators have come and gone, but there was always one constant, and that was Rabbi Lapa," Ringer said.

The dinner was well attended by Shalom Torah alumni, parents, and prominent rabbis from Monmouth County, such as Rabbi Boruch Chazanow from Chabad of Western Monmouth County and Rabbis Yitzchok Oratz and Gedalia Liebes from Monmouth Torah Links.

"Now the Lapas are not spreading Torah in the Monmouth county area, [but] there's still hope for us!" said Rabbi Shimon Richter, an administrator at Shalom. "Hashem runs the world, and there's a great principle that says Hashem prepares the remedy before the disease. Years ago, there were Torah institutions that took root in Monmouth county -- we have Chabad, we have Kollel, we have the Chofetz Chaim (yeshiva high school), we have so many institutions here that took root in Monmouth county because of Shalom."

Liebes, who presented the award to Lapa and his wife, Tziporah, compared Lapa to the biblical Joseph, who revealed his identity to his brothers and, knowing that his father Jacob was still alive, still asked about his wellbeing.

"His question was: Is my father, the father who is personally concerned about me, who cares about me, who loves me -- is he still alive?" Liebes posed. "Does he still have those thoughts after many, many years of separation? That's what Yosef was asking. From my perspective, that's who Rabbi Lapa is to all of us. He's my father. In what sense is he my father? What does he do? He's there to guide us, be a mentor for us, he cares for us, he guides us endlessly -- he's flowing with his emotions and empathy, he is strength and inspiration for all of us -- has there ever been an occasion where Rabbi Lapa wasn't there for us in any which way?"

Liebes worked with Lapa as a rebbe in Shalom Torah for several years when he came to Marlboro to works as part of Monmouth Torah Links nine years ago, and described Lapa as a father figure for himself as well as his students.

"I was privileged to be a rebbe at Shalom, so he was my boss," Liebes said. "But he was also my friend, and he was also a colleague, and an avi (father) as well. I learned many invaluable lessons from Rabbi Lapa; the tremendous care and love that he'd put into not only the students, of course, but the parents and any other members of the family, the staff, the faculty, whatever it was, it was always the highest amount of care and respect that Rabbi Lapa would personally invest hours and hours behind the scenes without most of us realizing it."

Ninth grader Jacob Smalkin was a member of the last 8th grade graduating class that Lapa supervised, and he told the banquet attendees that Lapa had made him a better person.

"We've been through a lot -- I've been in his office many times -- but I know that through all that, he personally has made me a better person and through the school that he ran and the great education it gave me," Jacob said. "I really learned from what Rabbi Lapa taught me. I, and everyone else who has gone through the Shalom system, loves him and misses him."