Oldest Chabad-Lubavitch Emissary Passes Away

Rabbi Moshe Elye Gerlitzky, who fled from the advancing Nazi armies of war-torn Europe to find refuge in Canada and establish a Jewish educational network on the country’s Atlantic coast, passed away April 4 at the age of 94. One of the thousands of Holocaust survivors saved by the selfless acts of Japanese Consul Chiune Sugihara, Gerlitzky was the city of Montreal’s first full-time Jewish day-school teacher and, later in life, the oldest Chabad-Lubavitch emissary.

Born in 1916 in the Polish city of Lodz to Avraham Yitzchak and Leah Gerlitzky, he became accustomed to travel at an early age. His family moved to Kintzk, and as a 10-year-old boy, he made his first “Blessing of the Sun,” a special springtime liturgy that takes place just once every 28 years. More than eight decades later, he made the same blessing in a pre-Passover ceremony last year, making him one of the few people to have taken part in the tradition four times.

In Poland, he spent his childhood studying with local teachers, as well as travelling to several Jewish schools across the country. At the age of 15, a cousin, Moshe Pinchus Katz, told him about a relatively new school in Lodz, the Tomchei Tmimim Lubavitch yeshiva. Intrigued by its focus on both the revealed and esoteric components of Torah study, he enrolled, delving into Talmudic arguments under the famed scholar Rabbi Yehudah Eber.

In Lodz, he began to appreciate the unique manner of the Chabad-Lubavitch way of life, devoting time not only to Torah study, but also to deepening personal prayers by meditating on the nature of G-dliness according to the teachings of Chasidic thought. He earned a reputation as a diligent student, and became known by his bright smile and charitable manner. Classmates recalled a young man who was always willing to give a helping hand to those in need.

When he was 17, he transferred to the central Lubavitch yeshiva in Warsaw, and spent the High Holidays with the Sixth Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn, of righteous memory, in the suburb of Otwock. The experience – which included studiously observing the hours-long prayers of the great scholars and pious Chasidim of the day – had a profound effect on the young Gerlitzky. Years later, he could repeat by memory the Sixth Rebbe’s Chasidic discourses he heard while in Otwock.

Article continued at Chabad.org – A Historic Event