Boruch Dayan Hoemes: Reb Mendel Morosov, 101, OBM

With sadness we inform you of the passing of Reb Mendel Morosow OBM, an elder member of Anash and resident of Crown Heights. He was 101 years old.

Reb Mendel was the son of the legendary Mashpia Reb Chonye Morosow, and the last to have merited to see the last three Chabad Rabbiem and participate in their farbrengens.

He was just a month shy of 102nd birthday.

Born in 1916 in the village of Lubavitch to his esteemed father Reb “Chonye” Morozov – confidante and secretary to both the Rebbe Rashab and Rebbe Rayatz – Reb Mendel lived in Russia through the murderous Stalin years and the tumultuous years of WWII. Always sharp, even as a young boy he an played an active role in saving his father from the NKVD who had come to arrest him for his efforts on behalf of the Rebbe. Later as a teen and then as a young man, he saw his father arrested twice, the second time in 1938 –tirtzach – never to return.

Reb Mendel and his family lived in the same house as the Rebbe Rayatz in Rostov where as a young child he experienced personal encounters of great kiruv from the Rebbe. Later he lived with his family on the same floor of the Rebbe Rayatz in Leningrad.

After the war he escaped Russia with forged Polish passports on the famous “train transports,” and spent time in both France and Ireland before coming to America in the early 1950’s so he could be with our Rebbe.

When Reb Michoel Teitelbaum founded Oholei Torah, Reb Mendel joined its central Hanhalah, and spent the next six decades helping the Yeshiva, educating and being Mashpia to the bochrim in Yeshiva. Thousands of Chassidim around the world retain fond memories of Reb Mendel farbrenging in his inimitable style throughout the wee hours of the morning – his stories, his niggunim, his witty vertlach.

His father had been asked by the Rebbe Rayatz to record the Alter Rebbe’s ten Niggunim in musical notes, rescuing these tunes for posterity, and Reb Mendel never tires of teaching and singing the handful in the set that are not commonly sung. Reb Mendel sings another Niggun, a stately march, so often that people already call the Niggun by his name (Avraham Fried recorded it on his latest Chabad Niggunim Album).

He is survived by his wife Rosa and their children Mrs. Rochel Goldberg (Crown Heights), Zalman Morosow (Montreal, Canada), Mrs. Henya Milecki (Sydney, Australia), Mrs. Sterna Lesches (Monsey, NY), Mrs. Leah Goldman (Crown Heights), Mrs. Esther Friedman (Kansas City, KS) and Hirshel Morosov (Crown Heights).

The Levaya will take place tomorrow, Thursday, 12:00pm at Shomrei Hadas and passing by 770 at around 1:00pm

Boruch Dayan Hoemes

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