Remembering Rabbi Mendel Labkowski, 58

Rabbi Menachem Mendel Labkowski, a Chabad Lubavitch emissary to Los Angeles, California passed away on Saturday, November 24, after a lengthy illness.

Rabbi Labkowski was a much admired teacher and mentor to many French Jews in the Los Angeles community. During the years of his illness, his students rallied behind him, conducting study and prayer groups in his honor. On news of his passing, a comment in French on a Facebook group created to let his students know about his prognosis, conveyed the love and esteem Labkowski’s students had for him.

“Rabbi Mendel was the very personification of humility and kindness,” it reads. “I so appreciated his Tuesday evening classes in French. He left the floor open to everyone, without ever showing derision or condescension for those less knowledgeable than he was.”

Born in 1954, Mendel was raised in the small Parisian suburb of Brunoy. Following the war, Brunoy served as a DP came for Russian refugees, many of them Chabad Chasidim. Opting to stay in the city, the refugees, Mendel’s parents among them, formed a small Chasidic enclave. A branch of the Chabad Tomchei Temimim network of yeshivot was opened in 1947, anchoring the community to the town. Mendel’s father, Rabbi Nochum Labkowski, served as a dean for the school. It was there, in the Parisian countryside, where the refugees carved out a small community imbued with the spirit of Lubavitch in Russia, that Mendel began his studies.

In 1982, shortly after his marriage to his Miriam Dubrowski, the Labkowskis moved to Los Angeles. There Labkowski served as a spiritual mentor for students of the newly founded Yeshiva Ohr Elchanan Chabad.

After leaving the yeshiva, Labkowski began a series of Torah classes and one-on-one study sessions with members of the Los Angeles Jewish community. Through these classes, he would reach out to people across the spectrum of observance, especially focusing on city’s French expats.

Rabbi Levi Chazan, Labkowski’s son-in-law, remembers his father-in-law as a man of “immense intellect, but even greater humility.”

“He never felt that what wasn’t good enough for him would suffice for others,” Chazan recalls.

“Before Sukkot he would buy Etrogim for the families he studied with. He devoted the same energy and attention to finding a beautiful Etrog for others – who would often be just as happy with a simpler Etrog – as he did for himself.”

Rabbi Labkowski is survived by his wife Miriam and children Aidy Chazan, Nochum Labkowski, Eliezer Labkowski, Leah Kesselman, Mushky Rosenfeld, Zalman and Sender Labkowski, all of Los Angeles.

He is also survived by his brothers Rabbi Yisroel Labkowski, Rabbi Shneur Zalman Labkowski, both of Crown Heights, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Labkowski of Marsaille, France, Rabbi Shmuel Labkowski of Brunoy, France, Rabbi Sholom DovBer Labkowski of Kfar Chabad, Israel and Mrs. Leah Greenberg of Buffalo, NY.