By Yosef Lewis for Chabad.edu
Assisted by his grandson, Rabbi Levi Haskelevich, Baruch Mordechai Lifshitz tells a Midtown Manhattan audience of secretly providing Jewish services during the height of religious persecution.
At 92 years of age, Baruch Mordechai Lifshitz walked slowly to the podium at Chabad-Lubavitch of Midtown Manhattan. His back was slightly stooped and his beard was fully white.
But when he began talking, people in the audience were taken aback by the vibrancy and strength of this one-time Soviet prisoner’s voice. Speaking last month, years since being sent to Siberia for giving encouragement and assistance to Moscow’s Jewish community at the height of Communist oppressions, he sounded like a man on a mission.