Yisroel Avrohom Portugal

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Yisroel Avrohom Portugal , also Israel Abraham Portugal (born June 2, 1923 in Skulen , today Moldova ; died April 1, 2019 at the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore , Maryland , United States ), was an American rabbi and spiritual leader of the Skulen grouping («Skulen Chassidim»). He was considered one of the last great Hasidic Rebbes to survive the Holocaust and the Iron Curtain and to rebuild their communities in New York and Israel.

Life

Yisroel Avrohom Portugal was the son of Rabbi Eliezer Zusia Portugal and his wife Sheina Rachel. He studied in Viznitz with Eliezer Hager . At the age of 17 he was already in charge of the Jewish community in his hometown. Before the beginning of the Second World War, he and his families fled from the Moldovan Sculeni ( Yiddish סקולען, Skulen ) and survived the war in Chernivtsi, Ukraine . After the end of the war they lived in Bucharest, Romania . After arrest and torture they reached 1959/60 on intervention of the United Nations Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold , in the United States and lived in Borough Park, Brooklyn . His father was the founder of the small, ultra-Orthodox Hasidic Skulen group that Yisroel Avrohom Portugal took over as Grand Rabbi after his father's death in 1982. However, he did not establish a yeshiva for his community in the United States, but was only engaged in spiritual development.

Together with his father Eliezer Zusia Portugal, they saved over 300 Jewish children from Nazi persecution and hid them in Bucharest. Father and son were sentenced to prison and tortured for teaching the Torah and smuggling orphans into Israel.

Yisroel Avrohom Portugal was married to Reisel (died 2005); the marriage had five sons and three daughters. The funeral service took place in Boro Park with great sympathy from the population; he was buried in the Hasidic Cemetery in Monsey, west of New York City.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Joseph Berger: "Yisroel Avrohom Portugal, Revered Orthodox Rabbi, Dies at 95" , The New York Times of April 5, 2019, accessed April 8, 2019 (English)
  2. ↑ a b Andreas Mink: “« Skulen-Rabbi »Yisroel Avrohom Portugal dies” , tachles from April 4, 2019, accessed on April 8, 2019
  3. ↑ Valley Leather: "They called him 'Tate'" , The New York Times of 13 March 2019 called on April 8, 2019
  4. ↑ a b Josh Nathan-Kazis: "The Last Holocaust-Era Rebbe Dies, And A Neighborhood Shuts Down To Mourn" on forward.com of April 2, 2019, accessed on April 8, 2019 (English)
personal data
SURNAME Portugal, Yisroel Avrohom
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Portugal, Israel Abraham
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American Grand Rabbi and spiritual leader of the Skulen sect
DATE OF BIRTH June 2, 1923
PLACE OF BIRTH Skulen , today Moldova
DATE OF DEATH April 1, 2019
Place of death Baltimore , Maryland , United States