Obituary: Pioneer Chabad Emissary, Rabbi Gershon Mendel Garelik, 88
by Dovid Zaklikowski – Lubavitch.com
The executive director of Chabad-Lubavitch of Italy, Rabbi Gershon Mendel Garelik, passed away after a long illness. He was 88. Rabbi Garelik and his wife Rebbetzin Bassie, were among the pioneers of the Chabad House movement.
Born in 1932 to Rabbi Chaim Meir and Rivka, Gershon Mendel was educated in the underground Chabad schools where his father was a teacher. Life under communist rule made Jewish education and religious observance punishable crimes, and the fear was a constant in the life of the young boy.
After WWII, under false passports, he and his family were smuggled across the border. The family then moved with his family to Israel. While his father continued teaching, Gershon Mendel, now a young man, became involved in enrolling young children to receive a proper Jewish education.
As a teenager, Rabbi Garelik had made every effort to come to New York to be in the Lubavitcher Rebbe’s court. Here he derived inspiration, internalized the Rebbe’s teachings and found his place. Then, in 1958 after his marriage to Bassie Posner, the daughter of the pioneers of the Lubavitch day school in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the Rebbe appointed the young newlyweds to serve as his emissaries to Italy.
“It was a rallying cry go out into the wilderness,” said Rabbi Garelik, reflecting on his appointment. It was a difficult journey for the young man, who spoke no Italian, and little English. However, by that summer they had established a camp, a kosher eatery and began building relationships with the local Jewish community.
With his twinkling eyes, patience and charisma, he touched the hearts of many Jews. “He was always discreet, attentive, with a good word for everyone,” says president of the Milan Jewish community Milo Hasbani.
The Gareliks soon had a school, women’s programs and classes, and Chabad under their leadership expanded with six centers, a Jewish publishing house and the availability of kosher products. Today there are some 40 Chabad representatives serving the city’s 10,000 Jews.
After WWII, says Walker Meghnagi, the former president of the Jewish community in Milan, when the community was struggling with Jewish life, Rabbi Garelik reached people “who were far away from religion and brought them close to Jewish observance.” He notes that today, most of those who attend synagogue in Milan do so as a result of the Gareliks and Chabad’s efforts in the country. “He was an extremely wise man.”
During a time when Jewish knowledge was almost nil in the local Jewish community, Rabbi Garelik had the patience to teach the local children without looking for shortcuts. “Rabbi Garelik was always attentively listening to each of us,” wrote Edoardo Fuchs, professor at the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, who was a student at the Lubavitch school. “He introduced us to teachings of the [Jewish] sages, especially of Hasidism and Maimonides.”
