Solomon Halberstam; Oldest Polish Hasidic Rabbi

Grand Rabbi Solomon Halberstam, 92, world’s oldest surviving Polish Hasidic rabbi. A descendant of one of the first Hasidic leaders in Europe, Halberstam survived the Holocaust and saved hundreds of followers of the Bobov sect by providing them with false identification papers. His own wife and his father, the former grand rabbi, were among thousands killed when the Nazis invaded Soviet-occupied Poland in 1941. The sect’s network of 50 yeshivas and dozens of synagogues also was destroyed. After the war, Halberstam helped hundreds to immigrate to the United States and Israel by supplying them with visas claiming clergy status. He moved to New York in the 1960s, bringing with him 40 boys whose parents had been killed by the Nazis. He established the first of several yeshivas that would eventually spread from Manhattan’s West Side to Crown Heights and Borough Park. Followers today number in the tens of thousands worldwide. In New York, Bobovers, as they are called, operate a large network of boys’ and girls’ schools, camps, synagogues and societies that assist the sick and impoverished. The Bobov sect became so influential that former New York Mayor Edward Koch named a block of 48th Street Bobov Promenade. When a celebration marking the anniversary of Halberstam’s arrival in the United States was held in 1997, congratulatory messages were sent by Vice President Al Gore, Gov. George Pataki and Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan. A crowd of mourners estimated at between 10,000 and 20,000 packed the streets outside the sect’s synagogue after news broke of Halberstam’s death. On Wednesday at Maimonides Hospital in New York after a long illness.