Jerusalem Post - 07.28.2004

Jerusalem Post

Russian outreach rabbi mourned

By Abigail Radoszkowicz

Thousands flocked to the funeral of Rabbi Yitzchok Zilber, 87, the spiritual mentor of Orthodox Russian Jews in Israel, late Monday night in Jerusalem on the eve of Tisha Be'av. 

Heads of the leading Lithuanian (non-Hassidic) yeshivas eulogized Zilber, one of the few Jews to have kept an Orthodox lifestyle in communist Russia, paying for it by a stay in the Gulag, and who worked tirelessly to bring fellow Russian immigrants back to the faith after he was allowed to immigrate to Israel in 1972. 

Born in 1917 on the eve of the Russian Revolution to a rabbinic family in the city of Kazan in southern Russian, Zilber was schooled at home, since Jewish schools were banned by the communist regime. Zilber attended university. where he was trained as a mathematics professor, but after World War II was sent to a prison camp in Siberia for not teaching on Saturday. There Zilber managed to keep Shabbat, and even study Talmud from pages smuggled in by his wife. 

"When he came here his children were already teenagers, yet their Jewish education was as high as any student of comparable age at the best girls' school or yeshiva," said Rabbi Nachum Eisenstein, who worked closely with Zilber at the national beit din (religious court), where Zilber was employed upon his aliya. 

Shocked to see not a single Russian immigrant observing Shabbat, Zilber poured all his energies into bringing immigrants from the Former Soviet Union (FSU) closer to Judaism. 

"Despite his severe health problems, he worked 24 hours a day in outreach, marrying off thousands of couples himself," said Eisenstein. 

Zilber became well-known for going to great lengths in searching for missing husbands, helping thousands of Russian Jewish women receive gitten (religious divorces). He was himself an halachic authority on the laws of marriage and divorce.
On his frequent travels to the FSU, he would also gives classes and lectures. 

"He was involved with every Russian school in Israel and in the FSU," said Eisenstein.

Five years ago, Zilber and his son set up an evening kollel (yeshiva for married men) for working Russian immigrants, which quickly grew into the Toldos Yeshurun network of adult Jewish education for Russian immigrants, with 250 teachers around the country.