MONTREAL — Rabbi Moshe Elye Gerlitzky, one of the founders of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement in Canada, died April 4 at age 94.

Rabbi Gerlitzky, who was active until nearly the end of his life, was described by Chabad as the movement’s oldest emissary. He was among a group of nine Chassidim, refugees from Nazi-occupied Poland via Japan and China, who in 1941, established the Rabbinical College of Canada in Montreal, a day school that was open to boys of different backgrounds. Rabbi Gerlitzky was its first talmudic studies instructor.

He and his colleagues owed their life to the Japanese diplomat Chiune Sugihara, who, while posted in Vilnius, Lithuania, during World War II, helped thousands of Jews find safe haven.

Rabbi Gerlitzky  was born in 1916 in Lodz, Poland. When he was 10 years old, he recited his first Blessing of the Sun, a springtime prayer ritual that takes place every 28 years. More than eight decades later, he recited the same blessing in a pre-Passover ceremony last year, making him one of the few people to have taken part in the tradition four times.

He earned a reputation as a diligent student at the Tomchei Tmimim Lubavitch yeshiva in Lodz, and became known for his bright smile and charitable manner.

When he was 17, he transferred to the central Lubavitch yeshiva in Warsaw, where he was later ordained. He spent the High Holidays with the sixth Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn, in the suburb of Otwock. The experience, which included observing hours of study and prayer, had a profound effect on the young Rabbi Gerlitzky. Years later, he could repeat by heart the Rebbe’s discourses.

At the outset of World War II, Rabbi Gerlitzky and two friends left Lodz, where he was teaching, for Warsaw. There, the Rebbe gave them American money to pay to be smuggled across the border to Russia.

Once in Russia, they made their way to Vilnius, and joined the Lubavitch yeshiva there while they knocked on the doors of foreign diplomatic offices for transit visas. Along with thousands of others, they came to the Japanese consulate, where Sugihara issued them visas to travel through Japan and on to North America.

According to a colleague, Rabbi Volf Greenglass, also a Chabad-Lubavitch founder in Montreal, his friend never lost his positive outlook, even as the prospects of surviving seemed grim.

“We lost everything,” Rabbi Greenglass said. “We lost our families, our belongings and the roof over our heads. It was his lively spirit that maintained us and kept us going during our long and difficult journey until we came to Montreal.”

Travelling across Russia via the Trans-Siberian Railroad, Rabbi Gerlitzky made it through Japan and on to Shanghai, China. From there, he joined eight other students, eventually heading to Montreal, where they arrived in 1941.

A year after his arrival, Rabbi Gerlitzky married Chana Rosenblum. At the request of Rabbi Schneersohn, the couple started a school for girls a few years later, and the first class held in their home was the genesis of today’s Beth Rivkah Academy.

In the 1950s, Rabbi Gerlitzky started visiting Atlantic Canada to bolster Jewish life there.

“He travelled by bus, by train and on foot,” said Harold Medjuck, a native of Halifax, where the rabbi visited at least once a year. “He travelled a long distance, he had a lot of miles to cover, a lot of people to see.

“His smile, his appearance, his sparkling eyes, his magnetic personality – we were drawn to him as to a fireplace on a winter day.”

He is survived by eight children and over 300 grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

Many of those descendants today serve as Jewish educators and Chabad-Lubavitch emissaries across the globe.

— Compiled by CJN Staff