BDE: Mrs. Freida Levin, 100, OBM

With great sadness we report the passing of Mrs. Freida Levin OBM, the matriarch of a large Chabad family, and the oldest living resident Kfar Chabad. She passed away on Wednesday, the 3rd of Shevat 5780.

She was 100 years old.

Mrs. Levin was born in 1919 in the Russian city of Kremenchuk to R’ Yechiel Yosef and Sheina Rivkin.

Raised in Gomel, a city in southeastern Belarus, she was forced to enroll in the vehemently anti religious Soviet public school as a child.

After 10 years of public school, she enrolled in university where she studied biology, enrolling as an “external student” so that she would not have to stay in the dormitory and not have to study on Shabbos.

During the Second World War, her family fled to Tashkent, Uzbekistan, where they joined the growing Jewish population.

During the war, she married to R’ Binyomin Levin, a Lubavitcher chossid who was born in the Russian town of Nevel.

In 1946, as soon as the war ended, her parents seized the opportunity, and using forged Polish documentation, they smuggled their family out of Russia.

Two years later, they arrived in Israel on the “Galila” immigration ship

Mrs. Levin’s family was from the founding residents of Kfar Chabad, with her brothers, R’ Hirshel Rivkin, R’ Zusha Rivkin and R’ Chaim Rivkin building and sustained the Beis Menachem Shul and other institutions in Kfar Chabad.

Freida’s husband worked as a teacher in the Chabad school in Jaffa, was a baal menagen and founded the Hakafos Shniyot celebration in Kfar Chabad following Simchas Torah.

He tragically passed away at the age of 44, leaving his wife and children devastated. Mrs. Levin continued raising her family on her own, and worked as the dedicated housemother of the Central Yeshiva Tomchei Tmimim in Kfar Chabad. For years later, bochurim recalled her kindness and care for them during their Yeshiva years.

She is survived by her children Rabbi Feitel Levin (Crown Heights), Mrs. Chaya Lifshitz (Kfar Chabad, Israel), Mrs. Rochel Green (Kfar Chabad, Israel), Mrs. Doba Lerer (Kiryat Malachi, Israel), Mrs. Chana Sukharenko (Kfar Chabad, Israel), Mrs. Rivka Zaklikowsky (Crown Heights), and grandchildren, great-grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren.

She was predeceased by her siblings R’ Hirshel Rivkin, Mrs. Gita Ceitlin, R’ Zusha Rivkin, Mrs. Risha Rochel Reichman and R’ Chaim Rivkin.

Her funeral will be held on Wednesday, leaving from her home in Kfar Chabad. She will be buried in the cemetery of Tzfas.

Shiva information to be announced.

Boruch Dayan Hoemes