Rabbi Hershel Fogelman. Photo: LubavitchArchives.com

Rabbi Hershel Fogelman, Senior Chabad Emissary, 91

Rabbi Yehuda Tzvi Fogelman, Chabad-Lubavitch emissary to Worcester, Massachusetts, passed away Sunday, June 9 at the age of 91. At the time of his passing, he was the organization’s longest serving emissary, responsible for creating a vibrant Jewish community in the second largest city in Massachusetts.

Arriving to Worcester in 1946, Fogelman spearheaded a number of educational initiatives in the Northeast. Even as demographics changed in the former industrial center, forcing other communal institutions to merge or shut their doors, Rabbi Fogleman, together with his wife Rochelle, remained. Among his achievements is the Achei Tmimim Academy as well as the Beis Chana Girls High School, a synagogue, and satellite branches in a half-dozen cities in central Massachusetts.

Born in 1921 in the small village of Medenychi, then part of Galicia, Poland, Fogelman, who was known throughout his life as Hershel —the Yiddish diminutive for the Hebrew Tzvi— came from a warm, Chasidic family. When he was 9, the family moved to America. At a time when religious observance was rare among American Jews, the Fogelmans stood out for their commitment to their heritage.

Young Hershel attended Yeshivah Torah Vodaath, then one of the few yeshivot in Brooklyn. There he first encountered the Chabad movement. At the time, Rabbi Yisrael Jacobson, a disciple of the previous Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn, taught classes on Tanya and other Chasidic texts. A small cadre of students, today patriarchs to several prominent Chabad families, took to Jacobson and became enraptured with the Chabad Chasidism. Hershel soon joined their ranks.

When the previous Rebbe arrived to America on March 19, 1940, Fogelman was one of the first three students to enroll in the new yeshiva he established. Along with his peers, Fogelman was recruited to run a series of educational initiatives in Jewish communities across the Eastern seaboard. In 1943 he was sent to Buffalo, NY where he opened the Achei Tmimim school for boys.  Though he only spent two years in Buffalo, the school was a fast success with 200 students enrolled the year he left.

In 1946, Fogelman was sent by the previous Rebbe to Worcester, Mass. He and his wife immediately opened a new branch of Achei Tmimim in Worcestor.

At the time, Worcester was a booming industrial town with a large Jewish community. While many of the European immigrants were traditional — Worcester had a half dozen Orthodox synagogues as well as several kosher butchers — the younger generation was largely indifferent to the traditions of their parents.

“When we first started the school,” Mrs. Fogelman recalls, “we were always fighting against the idea that that the school was a ‘yeshiva for rabbis,’ or that Judaism was a relic from the previous century.”

At the time, Rabbi Fogelman recruited new students for the school by knocking on doors—quite literally—visiting families and speaking to parents about their children’s future.

Mrs. Ruchama Thaler, today a teacher for the Bais Chaya Mushka school in Los Angeles, California, recalls the effect Rabbi Fogelman had on her family.

“When my parents arrived after the Holocaust, they found a world where no one kept kosher or Shabbos. It was expected that all the children would go to public school,” Mrs. Thaler recalls. “When he convinced my parents to send us to the school, he opened a door to [the teachings of] Lubavitch to my family.”

Achei Tmimim students started out attending school in an old house on Worcester’s east side. When the school outgrew its home, the Fogelmans decided to construct a new building from the ground up. Opened in 1958, this was the first Chabad institution in America to be built from scratch.

“We knew that if we were going to build something new, it had to have a modern design,” Mrs. Fogelman recalls. “We wanted people to realize that Judaism belongs to them. That it was something modern and present and that the future of Judaism was in their hands.”

When the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, was consulted about the school, he insisted that the institution also serve the community’s needs. During a conversation with Rabbi Fogelman and members of the building committee, the Rebbe turned to them and said, “Boys, where’s the social hall?”

Indeed, Mrs. Fogelman relates that their presence was always “broader than a single school or synagogue. We wanted to transform the community.”

Rabbi Levi Fogelman, Chabad-Lubavitch emissary to Natick, recalls an anecdote his father would often retell. “When the Rebbe first came to America, he stressed the importance of making mesibas Shabbos [Shabbat parties] for small children.”

Despite the war raging in Europe and the mass assimilation in America, “the Rebbe proclaimed in Yiddish that ‘Dermit vet men einnemen di gantze velt – that through them we would change the entire world.’”

“To think,” Rabbi Fogelman would recall, “the world was a big place, and we were a couple of yeshiva students. But we knew that he was onto something that would change the world.”

Rabbi Fogelman lost his son, Chaim Yosef Fogelman, of New York, 12 years ago. He is survived by his wife, Rochelle Fogelman; his children Bassie Levin and Rabbi Menachem Mendel Fogelman of Worcester; Rabbi Levi Yitzchok Fogelman of Natick; Shmuel Binyomin Fogelman of Los Angeles; Sheva Liberow of Worcester; Mordechai Fogelman of Crown Heights, Brooklyn; as well as grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

2 Comments

  • One of a kind

    Rabbi Fogelman had the most incredible impact on everyone he met. He understood how to speak to each and every person in a way that reached them best. He was the Rebbe’s frontline soldier and let nothing stand in his way when it came to fulfilling the Rebbe’s requests.
    The world is a poorer place with his passing.

  • shterna

    Mass will not be w/o the kind Rabbi as his family will continue his shlichus as best they can yechi