Rabbi Hillel Pevzner, Founder of First Jewish School in Post-War Paris, Passes Away

Rabbi Hillel Pevzner, who founded the first Jewish day school in post-World War II Paris and was awarded the National Order of the Legion of Honor, France’s highest civilian distinction, passed away Thursday. The Chabad-Lubavitch emissary, noted Talmudic scholar and sought-after Jewish legal authority was 85.

Forcefully orphaned at a young age from his father – whose dedication to strengthening Jewish life in the Soviet Union ran afoul of Communist authorities – Pevzner was known for his self-sacrifice in providing a Jewish education to native Parisian children and the many who had fled locations throughout Europe and, in the 1960s and 70s, Arab nations. The Sinai-Lubavitch Educational Complex he opened in 1992 today serves thousands of students.

Pevzner was born in 1922 to Rabbi Avraham Baruch and Alte Pevzner in Minsk, Belarus, where the couple had been sent by the Sixth Chabad Rebbe, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn, of righteous memory, to strengthen Jewish life. The Sixth Rebbe would write that he chose the rabbi because he needed an emissary who would look out for the affairs of the local Lubavitch community without any concern for his personal interest. Avraham Baruch Pevzner fit the bill and carried out his mission to organize Torah classes in each of Minsk’s more than 100 synagogues in addition to serving as a spiritual guide for the city’s Lubavitch Chasidim.

But in 1930, Soviet authorities cracked down on Jewish observance in the city after an American rabbi described to U.S. journalists his witnessing harsh treatment of local Jews at the hands of government officials. Avraham Baruch Pevzner was one of 30 rabbis arrested in the purge, having been accused of proffering anti-Soviet propaganda and working for United States agents.

The elder Pevzner was jailed for a short period of time, which he took as a warning to cease his activism on behalf of the Jewish community. True to the Sixth Rebbe’s summation of his character, he refused to stop his activities. When news came of his planned re-arrest, he fled Minsk, forced to leave his family behind.

Article Continued (Chabad.org)