JERUSALEM, Israel — The Jerusalem municipality this week named a street after Rabbi Eliezer Nanas, who endured imprisonment at the hands of Soviet authorities and, later in life, tutored thousands of students in Israel's capital. In a ceremony attended by Rabbi Zeev Slonim, rabbi of central Jerusalem, the municipality unveiled Maaleh Harav Nanas, which translates to “Rabbi Nanas Ascent.”
Deceased Rabbi Memorialized With Jerusalem Street Name
JERUSALEM, Israel — The Jerusalem municipality this week named a street after Rabbi Eliezer Nanas, who endured imprisonment at the hands of Soviet authorities and, later in life, tutored thousands of students in Israel’s capital. In a ceremony attended by Rabbi Zeev Slonim, rabbi of central Jerusalem, the municipality unveiled Maaleh Harav Nanas, which translates to “Rabbi Nanas Ascent.”
Nanas, who passed away 10 years ago in Jerusalem, was born in 1897 in Kherson, Ukraine. After completing his studies, he became an accountant, a job which allowed him to secretly support the Lubavitch underground yeshiva network in the Soviet Union. He helped provide food to the yeshiva students and also was instrumental in obtaining financial support for the teachers’ salaries.
Later, he secured an agreement with a small town mayor in the vicinity of Rostov-on-Don, Russia, whereby students could learn in his jurisdiction even though the town had no Jews of its own. The students learned there for eight years without the Communist authorities discovering the yeshiva.
Nevertheless, Nanas spent a total of 20 years in Soviet prisons for actions deemed counterrevolutionary, an experience he recounted in Subbota under the pseudonym of Avraham Netzach. Among other charges, Nanas earned particularly harsh punishment for possessing letters proving his correspondence with the Sixth Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn, of righteous memory.
