25 Years Later: Deitsch Tradition Continues
This Wednesday, the Chabad world will mark the twenty-fifth yahrtzeit of the philanthropist Dovid Deitsch. For close to five decades, Dovid and his wife, Sara, supported numerous educational institutions, but one stands out today in his hometown of New Haven.
Now bearing his name and operating in three locations, Yeshivas Beis Dovid Shlomo has, under the leadership of his children and grandchildren, grown into one of the largest out-of-town Chabad yeshivos. Its flagship campus occupies the former St. Brendan Church, the largest house of worship in New Haven.
When Senator Joseph Lieberman visited his hometown, once home to only a small Jewish community, and saw Hebrew letters on the main campus building, he recalled thinking, “I would not be surprised if Moshiach came this afternoon.” As he told Dovid Zaklikowski for his book Yards of Kindness, had someone told him even a few years earlier that Chabad would one day occupy that building, he would not have believed it. Now, he could only say, “Wow!”
Rabbi Yosef Kalmenson, the longtime rosh yeshivah of the zal who recently passed away, said that when he first arrived in New Haven, he could not have fathomed how much the community would grow. Nor could he have dreamed of having an employer like Dovid.
“He upheld the material needs of the yeshivah,” he said in Yiddish, “and he never mixed into the spiritual aspects of it.” Rabbi Kalmenson described Dovid as a soldier who did whatever needed to be done: “A refined person, a cherished person.”
Dovid never made Rabbi Kalmenson feel as though he were the boss. Instead, he became his study partner. Each weekday, the rosh yeshivah visited Deitsch Plastic to study with Dovid for forty-five minutes. Before they began, the businessman would tell his secretary that he was unavailable until the rabbi left.
The Deitsch-supported educational institution has grown to include a mesivta and a day school. Even during difficult financial times, the rosh yeshivah heard no complaints from its benefactors, the children and grandchildren of Dovid and Sara Deitsch. “They were still dedicated to the yeshivah,” he is quoted as saying in Yards of Kindness. But their commitment went beyond merely covering expenses; “it was done with breitkeit [expansiveness].”
The community, Rabbi Kalmenson said, has grown exponentially over the past two decades, with more shuls and more organizations. “It is a dream that Dovid wanted,” he said, “and is now being fulfilled by his children and grandchildren.”
The new book Yards of Kindness captures the life of Dovid and Sara Deitsch.
