Remembering Rabbi Mordechai Meir Bryski, 88

Rabbi Mordechai Meir Bryski, a long-time educator and Brooklyn community activist passed away on January 8, 2012. He was 88.

Born in Chmielnik, Poland to Chaim Elazar and Rachel Tzilka Bryski in 1923, Mordechai Meir was raised in a warm Chasidic home. From an early age, Mordechai Meir, or Mottel as he was affectionately known, developed close ties with the Chabad movement. His uncle Kalman had been sent by the previous Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn, to open a school in Chmielnik. Bryski studied in the school, known as Toras Emes, until his early teens. When he came of age, he transferred to the central branch of Tomchei Temimim, the Chabad-run network of yeshivot, in the Warsaw suburb of Otwock.

On September 1, 1939, German tanks rolled into Poland, swiftly crushing the ill-prepared Polish army and sending the country into chaos. The yeshivah disbanded as students fled Otwock for safer places. Bryski, then only 17, attempted to return to his family in Chmielnik. Train tickets were hard to come by, and after waiting with hundreds of others in line, Bryski found the train sold out. In fortuitous twist of fate, Bryski would later learn that the Polish trains had been bombed by the Luftwaffe, the German airforce.

With only his Tefilin and a few Polish Złoty to his name, Bryski headed to Bialystok and from there, over the border to Vilna, Lithuania. In Vilna, the young student was reunited with his friends from the yeshivah. While life seemed to return to normal studying in Vilna, the Polish refugees remained all too aware of the danger that loomed next door. Along with students of the Chachmei Lublin and Mirrer Yeshivas, Bryski and 53 other students of the Chabad yeshivah managed to secure transit visas from Japanese consul Chiune Sugihara in Kaunas, Lithuania. Traveling East, they crossed Russia on the Trans-Siberian railway to the port of Vladivostok and on to Kobe, Japan. The refugees were then transferred to Shanghai, where they spent the duration of the war.

Arriving at last in Brooklyn after the war, Bryski began to reconstruct his life from the ashes of the Holocaust. In 1946, he was introduced to his future wife, Etel Eckhaus. Following the birth of their first son Eliezer, the two were sent by the previous Rebbe to serve the Jewish community in Montreal, Canada. There, Bryski became a teacher in the recently opened yeshivah. In 1948, the Bryskis returned to New York. Continuing in the field of education, Bryski taught in Chabad’s yeshivah on Brooklyn’s Bedford avenue.

Even after entering in the field of real-estate to help support his growing family, Bryski remained involved in education at the behest of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, of blessed memory. Bryski began to work for the city, negotiating leases for the New York City Department of Education – a position that would later earn him recognition by the city.

Rabbi Mordy Einbinder, associate director of Chabad of the Valley and emissary to Tarzana, California, recalls his father-in-law’s continued perseverance in the face of personal tragedy. Despite the murder of his family in the Holocaust, and the loss of two sons, Shlomo Eliyahu and Chaim Avraham, during his life, Bryski was “a gentle man with a faith of steel, unflinching in his continued dedication to his family and community.”

“Rather than looking back [on the hardships he faced],” Einbinder notes, “my father-in-law reflected on the miracle of life and survival.”

Rabbi Mordechai Bryski passed away shortly after attending the bris of his great-grandson. He is survived by his wife, Mrs. Etel Bryski, and his children Eliezer Uri, Rabbi Sholom Dov Ber, Yitzchok, Rabbi Aaron Yaakov, Mrs. Rochel Tzilka Kohn, Mrs. Chave Sarah Einbinder, Rabbi Menachem Mendel, Rabbi Moshe Dovid and Mrs. Rivkah Leah Katz. He is survived by more than 100 descendants, many of them serving today as Chabad emissaries around the world.