Roughly 75 members of Rabbi Yosef and Rebbitzen Natalie Akilov’s Congregation Sha’arei Eliyahu embarked on an annual pilgrimage to Buffalo, New York. Men and women, boys and girls, young and old from the Forest Hills and Rego Park Bukharian Jewish communities basked in the beautiful rays of sunshine at Niagara Falls, truly one of Hashem’s most marvelous wonders. The Queens group also enjoyed a delicious cookout and barbecue that even included a few l’chaims!
The program’s climax occurred earlier in the day during a spiritual moment at Buffalo’s Jewish cemetery, Ahavas Sholem Cemetery on Pine Ridge Road in Cheektowaga, where the assemblage prayed at the kever of the first Admor to be buried in the State of New York. “The Buffalo Rebbe,” also known as the Linitzer-Sokolivker Rebbe, Rav Eliyahu Yosef Rabinowitz, zt”l, passed at 54 years of age. The sage’s legacy is helping agunot displaced by the mass exodus of Russian Jewry at the turn of the twentieth century. The rav, in consultation with Torah luminaries, created a set of conditions for a halachic termination of marriages with extreme situations.
Rabbi Akilov delivered words of inspiration and encouragement to his congregants and explained how previous visitors to the Admor’s grave have been blessed with miraculous salvations in their lives. It is widely known that the esteemed rabbi exhibited extreme humility, hiding from accolades and praise. Rav Rabinowitz, a descendant of the Linitz-Slavita dynasty, immigrated from Kishinev, Ukraine in 1899 to the Lower East Side. He had studied b’chavruta with his brother-in-law Rav Mordechai Dov Ber Twerski, “The Hornosteipler Rebbe.” The great-grandson of Rav Pinchas of Koritz moved to Buffalo to strengthen Jewish life at the Jefferson Street Shul after spending less than a decade in the Lower East Side.
Rav Rabinowitz’ kever and its blessings were not commonly known until 1999 when word spread of the yeshuos received at the little brick enclosure marking the gravesite.
Due to technological difficulties this article did not appear as scheduled last month. The BJL apologizes for this inconvenience.
By Shabsie Saphirstein
Forest Hills Families Take Annual Trip To Linitzer-Sokolivker Rebbe’s Kever
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