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FEBRUARY 10, 2022 | The Jewish Home
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A Master Mechanech
Rabbi Ovadiah Dubin zt”l BY ELI DUBIN AND HINDY LANGER
Early Years
In September of 1929, as the United States was slipping into the Great Depression, R’ Yisroel Eliyahu Dubin, an upholsterer by trade, made a decision to leave Philadelphia and move to New York in order to enroll his son in yeshiva. This, at a time when the “Upholsterer’s Journal” had taken out a full-page ad that month warning upholsterers not to come to New York to look for work, as there were no jobs available. Although by no means wealthy, R’ Yisroel Eliyahu was able to support his family in Philadelphia. But R’ Yisroel Eliyahu was undeterred. As he wrote in his autobiography: “I decided that if
I wanted to save my children from being assimilated amongst the Goyim and learning their ways, then I must, immediately, leave Philadelphia. My oldest son would be six years old on Shemini Atzeres. lf not now, when?” R’ Yisroel Eliyahu understood that the only way to ensure that his children would remain frum was to move to New York where there were proper yeshivas for his children. He rented an apartment just down the block from Yeshiva Chaim Berlin and enrolled his young son in the yeshiva. R’ Yisroel Eliyahu always said that the day that he enrolled his son in Yeshiva Chaim Berlin was the happiest day of his life. The son who would be turning six years
old on Shemini Atzeres was Rabbi Ovadiah Dubin zt”l, who was niftar last Wednesday, on the 24th day of Shevat. Rabbi Dubin’s life was a testament to his father’s vision and foresight. He lived his entire life within the bounds of a yeshiva; as a student at Yeshiva Chaim Berlin and Yeshiva Torah Vodaath, as a rebbe in Yeshiva Chaim Berlin, Salanter Yeshiva, HILI, and other day schools and Talmud Torahs, and in his later years as a mentor to talmidim in Yeshiva Sh’or Yoshuv. In R’ Yisroel Eliyahu’s later years, when he was a patient at the Betzalel nursing home, Rabbi Dubin would visit him every single day and study the daf hayomi together with him.
