Page 58 - HaMizrachi #27 Purim USA 2021

GENERAL INTEREST

Rabbi Hanoch Teller

A Purim Passing

veryone knows there is no short- sums of money from a free-loan society protests, Rabbi Rubin was adamant he
age of people collecting charity every month. He borrowed because he could not let down the needy as Purim
Ein Yerushalayim. There are also felt he had a personal debt which had was the holiday of the poor.
many gabbai tzedakah (officers to over- to be paid. He wasn’t doing the poor
look charity distribution), but 50 years a favor, he was merely carrying out an Early the next morning, Rabbi Rubin
ago, Rabbi Yosef Binyamin Rubin z”l, obligation. was out celebrating Purim by collect-
was reputed to be the finest gabbai tze- ing for the poor, trudging through the
dakah Jerusalem had ever known. Poor people are all the same, he rea- snow, battling his illness and fighting the
One cannot transcend overnight. His soned, and he was color blind as to weather. The fatigue was apparent and
background: Sephardi, Ashkenazi, Chas-
capacity for charity was partly indige- his knees gave way.
nous, partly cultivated. The result was sid, Lithuanian, Mizrachi, whatever; all Yerushalayim’s greatest gabbai tzedakah
have the same needs of life’s necessities
a paragon so exalted that he became a lay motionless on the freezing asphalt.
legend in his very own lifetime. and dignity. Rabbi Rubin’s greatest joy,
however, was to provide for a talmid Rabbi Rubin was rushed to the hospital
From the time that he was a child he had chacham. for emergency treatment to help him
an inner drive to give tzedakah which An impoverished talmid chacham did regain consciousness.
would afford him no rest.
not even have a proper jacket to wear. Nothing seemed to work. Not a move,
Directly after his wedding, during the Rabbi Rubin purchased a wardrobe for not a twitch.
week of sheva brachot, adorned in a him, and could not help boasting: “I have His family gathered around his bedside
shtreimel and a bekishe and accompa- just bought a cover for a Sefer Torah.”
nied by a shomer (guard who accompa- day and night. Specialists tried every
possible method to restore him to
nies a groom when he is not with his He was an undercover detective of
bride during the week of sheva brachot), the highest order. No matter what the consciousness.
he stood on the street corner collecting camouflage – he saw through it. He Still nothing.
tzedakah. had an uncanny nose for detecting who
was truly in need, and when he found a Until his wife went over to his bedside
“Do the poor people have to suffer just worthy recipient, nothing stood in his and whispered, “Yossel, it’s almost time
because I have a simcha?” path. Some way or another the needy for kimcha d’pischa” (Passover help
received, usually never realizing how,
Rabbi Rubin revolutionized giving tze- when, or from where. for the needy. Customarily, collections
dakah by introducing radical concepts begin 30 days in advance of the holiday,
in the art of giving. He contended that Jerusalemites will never forget Purim the day after Purim.) Only then did
one must give according to the poor 1979. It was a Purim Meshulash – Rabbi Rubin awaken.
person’s needs and not according to the three consecutive days of celebration, Rabbi Rubin lived for tzedakah, and for-
giver’s means (with substantiation for bedecked with snow. Flurries began to ever after his memory is commemorated
this policy from a Mishna in Pirkei Avot). fall early in the evening. Late into the through tzedakah through the Od Yosef
He borrowed terms from the infla- night it still hadn’t stopped, and there Chai (Yosef Lives Yet) Fund.
tion-plagued Israeli economy to help was an eerie feeling that this was a sor-
the indigent: poor people must also have row-clouded harbinger. Rabbi Hanoch Teller, internationally-ac-
wage increments, price increases, value claimed storyteller extraordinaire, is an
added supplements etc., he reasoned. Everyone in the Rubin house was still award-winning author and producer.
awake. Rabbi Rubin was ill, but still
To cover his budget of fund allocation threatened to go out the next day col- A member of the Mizrachi Speakers Bureau
to the needy, he borrowed staggering lecting for the poor. Despite a chorus of mizrachi.org/speakers

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