The Jewish (Litvak) Community of Lithuania laments the passing of South African Jewish leader Mervyn Smith, a wise leader and a great friend. We extend our most sincere condolences to his children and grandchildren. May his memory never be forgotten.
Faina Kukliansky
Chairperson of the Jewish (Litvak) Community of Lithuania
MEILACH STALEVICH
(1923—2014)
by Dovid Katz (www.dovidkatz.net)
The Jewish Community of Lithuania has just lost one of its most powerful and authentic Litvak personalities, and one of the very last Vilna-born prewar Jews in Vilnius, Meilach Stalevich, who was born on June 28th 1923. The funeral: Wednesday November 12th, at 2 PM at the Vilnius Jewish cemetery.
Born on June 28th 1923 in the city (then Wilno, Poland; forever in Yiddish: Vílne), Meilach grew up on Kíyever gás (now: Kauno gatvė), opposite the Mishmères-Khéylim (Mishmeres Cholim) hospital which had a kloyz (prayer-house) where his grandfather Avigdor was the gábe (gabbai). Afterwards his family lived in a flat rented to them by a friendly Catholic priest on the grounds of nearby All Saints Church (Visų šventųjų; in local Yiddish: Kolanshómes [from: kol haneshómes ‘all souls’]). Meilach studied at the Yiddish secular Reál-gimnàzye on Rudnítsker gas (today’s Rūdninkų). He is a highly decorated hero of the war against Hitler (the only Jew in a Red Army unit of Cossacks). Most of his relatives were murdered at Ponár (Paneriai). He had received a letter in 1944 (after Vilna fell, but while he was still fighting at the front) that nobody of his family survived.
Yankl-Yosl Bunk (Jakovas Bunka), Famed Wood Sculptor, Last Jew of Plungyán (Plungė, Western Lithuania),
Dies at 91
Was World War II Red Army Veteran of the War Against Hitler
(13 July 1923 – 30 July 2014)
Bunk’s sculptures; his memoir of Jewish Plungyán; JewishGen Kehila links; Adam Ellick on Bunk; JTA; Bunk’s list of the Jews of Plungyán; “hypothetical” speech at the 2011 Plungyán commemoration.
Condolences to Efraim, and all the Zuroff family, on the loss of his dear father, Abraham N. Zuroff, who passed away peacefully at the age of 92 in Jerusalem on Sunday August 3rd. Rabbi Dr. Abraham Zuroff is forever the legendary founding principal of BTA (Yeshiva University High School for Boys in Brooklyn, NY) building one of the very rare educational institutions that was able to synthesize deep authentic Jewish learning with modern cutting-edge and culturally successful American education. In that specific period of American Jewish history, it took the steadfast and uncompromising devotion of the American born Abraham Zuroff to demonstrate that the two could be combined in a way that would attract Jewish youth to the unique fusion of authentic Jewishness and authentic wordliness (rather than a watered down version of either).
Rabbi Dr. Abraham Zuroff was principal of the school for over thirty years (“a life sentence,” he would famously quip) and during that period became the supervisor of all of Yeshiva University’s high schools.
The funeral was held Monday morning at Eretz Hachaim Cemetery near Bet Shemesh.
For his thousands of students, his life was a central inspiration. It is poetically symbolic that he left our world on the eve of the Jewish mourning day Tishebov (Tisha B’Av) that starts this evening, and commemorates the destruction of Jerusalem remembered tenaciously by Jews not only as a day of permanent memory and sadness but at the same time a reminder of the need to rebuild and recreate with a lot of hard work and stubborn steadfastness in the pursuit of quality.
Abraham Zuroff’s original research includes the book “The Responsa of Maimonides” (NY 1966, 804 pp.) on the replies to queries of the 12th century rabbi-physician-philosopher whose life and work demonstrate that same special synthesis of the authentic Jewish and the authentic scientific-worldly-modern.
