Aron Mordechai Lubelsky // Belsky Precast

The story of Aron Mordechai (Mordche) Lubelsky is sure to inspire many people to make more time for learning, even as they pursue success in business. 

After a difficult start in life, losing his mother at only five years old, Aron Mordche went on to have what he calls a fairly typical childhood. When he joined the workforce about a year after his marriage, he found that he had a knack for helping people obtain government assistance. His company Belsky (a play on his last name) is dedicated to helping people apply for various government benefits, including those pertaining to rent, disability, food, tuition and more. 

After being inspired by Rav Yisrael Brog and Reb Eli Stefansky to dedicate more time to learning, Aron Mordche began recording himself after his daily learning, intending to use the recordings for his own chazarah. He also joined the Oraysa program (which guides participants through learning and reviewing Gemara), and then began giving a daily shiur. Aron Mordche’s audience of five during the first few months slowly expanded, and today, hundreds view his daily online Yiddish shiur, which is posted on Oraysa, Torah Anytime and other platforms. He went from working full-time to learning almost full-time, slowly chipping away at his workday.

Aron Mordche’s message is simple: Make more time for learning, starting with just a minute a day. As he attests, you won’t lose a penny. Truly motivating. 

—Nesanel

I was born in Zurich, Switzerland. My father worked at an accounting firm. Tragically, my mother passed away a few days after giving birth to my sister because of complications after the birth. She was only 25. I was only five and a half years old and the oldest of five. 

“In the middle of shivah, the Manchester rosh yeshivah, Rav Yehuda Zev Segal, called my father to give him chizzuk. My father had no previous connection with the rosh yeshivah and was surprised to hear from him. When Rav Segal called again a few days later to check up on him and offer advice on how to deal with us children, my father felt that he truly cared about him and our situation. 

“My mother passed away on Isru Chag Pesach in 1992, and a few weeks later, my father met the rosh yeshivah for the first time. During a lengthy conversation, Rav Segal urged my father to start working in klei kodesh. My father took his advice and became a melamed. He changed his life completely.

“My father wanted to try to raise us on his own, but the rosh yeshivah advised him against it and said that he should send us to live with other families. He said it would be difficult for my father to balance life on his own, and that a constant rotation of babysitters would be a breach of tznius. My father had a close friend and chavrusa named Yehoshua Bloch. He and his wife offered to take in my baby sister, and when they heard the rosh yeshivah’s psak they decided to take in all of us, which ended up being for the next three and a half years. The Blochs had five of their own kids, so we were ten kids all together, plus my father. We became very close to the Blochs. All of us children felt like siblings, and we still call them every Erev Shabbos and go to each other’s simchahs. 

“Baruch Hashem, three and a half years later, my father married a wonderful single woman from Bnei Brak, whom we all call Mommy. She brought us up as her own children. They have three children together, and we are all one big united, happy family. 

“I learned in local schools in Zurich and then I went to Gateshead Yeshivah, followed by the Mir in Eretz Yisrael. While I was in the Mir, I learned in the Beis Shalom beis midrash, where they had a specific learning program that didn’t include a typical shiur. This worked out better for me because I didn’t like going to shiur, which is pretty ironic, given what I do today. 

“As a teenager, I wasn’t entrepreneurial in any way. I bound sefarim for a couple of years, but that was it. I was pretty shy, and I wasn’t looking to put myself out there too much. My siblings and I grew up in a normal, happy home. Despite any financial difficulties, my parents made sure we never felt that we lacked anything. 

“I got married when I was 19. My wife is from Stamford Hill, London, and we got married and settled there. I learned in Pinter’s kollel for about a year. 

“I wanted to make a living and was looking forward to working. I found a job with a property management company. I worked there in the mornings and continued learning in kollel in the afternoons. As part of my job, I had to be in touch with the local councils, since in the case of most tenants, the council paid us directly, and whenever payments did not come in we had to get in touch and resolve the issue. There were always problems with missing payments.

“One day, my rosh kollel told me that he had a Jewish tenant who owed him over £8,000. He knew what I did for a living and wondered if I could help him collect payment. I told him I would try, and I was able to help him get the full amount from the local government. That’s how my business started. Word spread, and one by one, other people started to ask for my help with their own applications for government assistance. By 2011, it had become a full-fledged company.

“At first, I was only helping landlords who had problems with their tenants’ benefits, but slowly people started requesting help with new applications, as well as guidance on which benefits were available. That led me to branch out, helping with other programs such as childcare and money for basic food and living costs. Obviously, one has to meet certain lower-income criteria to qualify. And when it comes to tuition in the UK, the government gives money to eligible parents to use for childcare fees.

“I had some shares in the property management company, so I was sort of a partner in that business. My wife took over my role there while I focused on helping families obtain government funds. A short while later, I could no longer manage on my own, so we sold our shares in the property management company and my wife joined me to help grow my new business, which we named Belsky.

“We started Belsky out of our home. We had a spare room, and we used that as our office. At first, my wife and I would stay up until 2 or 3 a.m. submitting applications and doing paperwork, but it all became too much to handle. When we moved to our current house, we had two spare rooms on our third floor, so we hired our first employee to reduce our workload. Time passed, and we hired a few more people. By the time we had five employees working out of our home plus a driver on the street arranging collections and deliveries from clients to us and to the local councils, we knew we had to find a proper office. Employees were constantly walking through the main levels of our house to get to the ‘office’ on the top floor, and clients used the dining room as a conference room. Enough was enough. We needed to move. 

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