Finally at Rest

Articles, video and photos of Rabbi Groner's levaya and kevura have already appeared on websites. Please note that some of the photos may be a bit stark for those not used to Israeli funerals. I hope to have some other photos after Shabbos is out in Israel.

• Shturem


• COL

Rabbi Elisha Greenbaum's article appeared in the Australian Hamodia this week.

Rabbi Yossi Braun of the Tzemach Tzedek Shul in Sydney also wrote the following tribute.

Tough Love: Tribute to Rabbi Groner
By Rabbi Yossi Braun

Monday, 12.30pm. The first call came in. I heard the loud ring of the phone demanding that I answer it. It made my head pound. “Did you hear the news? Rabbi Groner…” “Oy!” “When??!” That was enough to change my entire day. The world just became a darker place for me, for you, for an entire community.

Monday, 8.45pm. A shiur Tanya was supposed to be in full swing for fifteen minutes already. But, something else is on everyone’s mind. “What will be now?” “Are you going?” Everybody is reminiscing about their times with Rabbi Groner, the funny times and the not-so-funny moments. There wasn’t a soul in the room who was not part of the conversation. All present somehow knew the rabbi personally. He meant so much to them.In walks a latecomer, straddling into the shiur. “Did you hear the news?” We all nod in approval. He informs us about his decision to book a flight to Melbourne for the funeral. “I have many reasons not to go”, he says. “My wife needs my help, I’m needed at work and tickets are expensive. But, my heart tells me to go”. Someone asks a stupid question “did you know Rabbi Groner?” Well, the answer astounded us all. “No!” He did NOT really know him. “But I feel like I have to go, because he knew me”. That sort of summed it up. He knew everybody. And cared about everyone.

Wednesday, 2.00pm Melbourne is mourning over the passing of an individual who cared about you, often more than you cared about yourself. At the levaya, Rabbi Glick managed to put in plain words what’s on everyone’s mind. Rabbi Groner touched many, many people in his eighty three years. Rabbi Groner was a towering individual, who cut an imposing figure. He filled a large place in the world. But it was his wordless love that has brought us all here today. Love for him spilled across national borders. “He was very big, very intimidating, very strong, but he was a sweetheart”, commented one individual. “He would give you the shirt off his back.” And then I notice him. I notice that individual, the one who had many reasons not to go but has gone anyhow. He is joining the procession, a tear-soaked face, grieving with the rest of the crowd. The endless love generated by Rabbi Groner to all he came in contact with, struck a deep chord in everyone’s heart. Muscular. Tough. Dominant. That’s the way he loved people. He loved with a passion and with the intensity that encompassed his life. His ahavas Yisroel didn’t come from a textbook; it stemmed from his heart.

Wednesday, 8.30pm Driving back to the airport on the way to Sydney, trying to internalise all we heard today, our thoughts were on how we could model Rabbi Groner's example. How can we emulate the warmth and the ahavas Yisroel, which were the very essence of his being.I was privileged to get a lift to the airport with a colleague from Sydney. In the midst of it all, the driver turns to me, “I must tell you something. I went to see Rabbi Groner just three weeks ago. Do you know what he said….”? In the momentary pause mid-sentence, I had a fleeting thought. I considered myself fortunate to be privy to this classified information. We're taught that the soul begins to leave the body on a very subtle level thirty days before the individual passes away. I was expecting to hear some pearls of wisdom, some sagacious last remarks.“He enquired about you. He wanted to know how you’re doing, how your work is going” … And then it dawned upon me. That was the greatest piece of scholarship I could have ever heard.

Photos from Yerushalayim

A partial view of Har HaZeitim
as seen from the Kotel steps in wintertime

The sun strikes Har HaZeitim on a winter afternoon
as seen from the Jewish Quarter

My thanks go to Ya'akov Livni of Jerusalem for sending me these wonderful photos of Har HaZeitim which he took recently.

Hopefully I will be able to post Ya'akov's photos of the levaya and kevura of Rabbi Groner ob"m on Motzoei Shabbos our time.
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Rabbi Glick's Hesped

Rabbi Avrohom Glick's speech at the service in Melbourne for Rabbi Groner ob"m.

Rabbi Groner ע"ה - Levaya Photos Update

Photo by Zelig Shaul

More reports and photos have been posted on various Chabad sites.

• Yeshivah Community Website
  
• Shmais
• COL
• Shturem

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Rabbi Groner ע"ה - Levaya Report & Photos

Thank you to "a a" for sending me the two photos above.

From the AJN

According to the Jewish News over 1500 people attended the service for Rabbi Groner ob"m this afternoon. As can be expected it was an extremely emotional event. People from all sections of the community and also interstate came to give respect to Rabbi Groner and console his family.

The main address was given by Rabbi Avrohom Glick who has worked for Rabbi Groner for almost 40 years. Despite our custom, and Rabbi Groner's request, that there be no hespedim Rabbi Glick correctly pointed out that it would be remiss for us not to say some words about this exceptional individual. In an uncharacteristically emotional address he spoke about the qualities that made Rabbi Groner such a successful shaliach and special person.

After tehillim - which was led by various family members - everyone escorted Rabbi Groner down Hotham St and Balaclava Road to The Gurewicz Early Learning Centre. From there he went to the airport on his way to be buried next to his parents in Eretz Yisroel.


I am sure that I speak for all of us in Melbourne when I say that it is difficult to imagine this city without Rabbi Groner. Over the 50 years that he lived here he touched the lives of thousands of people in a signifigant way. Even when he was sick he was a force in the community. His passing is not just a loss to his wonderful Rebbitzen, children and einiklach but a true loss to all of us and to Lubavitch as a whole.
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Rabbi Groner ע"ה - Webcast of Levaya/Tehillim

Emmanuel has sent out an email announcing a webcast of the Levaya/Tehillim at Yeshivah this afternoon:

INTERNET TELECAST

LEVAYA SERVICE RABBI Y D GRONER o’bm

A live feed has been set up via the Internet, which will be telecasting the Levaya service this afternoon.

The service is scheduled to commence at 2:00pm, however a live test feed should be on display from 1:00pm. The link below will/should open your Media Browser.

mms://216.53.18.1/groner

The Levaya/Tehillim service for Rabbi Yitzchok Dovid Groner o’bm will be held on the outdoor grounds of Yeshivah Centre in front of the Smorgon Family Wing.
In the regards to levaya/Tehillim indoor (Werdiger Family Hall) and outdoor seating will be provided for the elderly and those unable to stand.

According the the Yeshivah Community Website the webcast only works on Windows computers. The video and sound are working now.

Rabbi Groner ע"ה - Eretz Yisroel Kevura

How many of us have sat at that table...

From the Yeshivah Community Website:

The Levaya will leave at 10:00am on Friday 8th Tammuz 5768 – 11th July 2008, from Shangar Funeral Parlor (next to Rav Shefa Supermarket) on to Har Hazeisim Chelkas Rabonei Chabad (across from the Police Station).

Aveilim will be sitting Shiva at the Cooper Family home, 4 Ibn Shaprut Street, Sharei Chessed, Jerusalem, Israel.

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The Mezaiva (consecration) will be Friday 15th Tammuz 5768 – 18th July 2008

More tributes can be found on the Jewish News website here. There is also a short interview by Jewish News editor Ashley Browne with Yossi Aron about Rabbi Groner ob"m.

Rabbi Groner ע"ה - Levaya / Tehillim Update

From the Yeshivah Community Website:

The Levaya/Tehillim service for Rabbi Yitzchok Dovid Groner OB''M will be held on the outdoor grounds of Yeshivah Centre in front of the Smorgon Family Wing, 92 Hotham Street, St. Kilda East, at 2pm on Wednesday 6th Tammuz, 5768 July 9, 2008.

In line with Chabad customs and Rabbi Y.D. Groner's wishes, a eulogy will not be said.

No onsite parking on Yeshivah Centre will be available and those who are able to walk to the Levaya/Tehillim service are encouraged to do so.

People may come to say Tehillim for Rabbi Y.D. Groner OBM at the Melbourne Chevra Kadisha 115 - 119 Inkerman Street, St Kilda at any time until 1pm on Wednesday July 9, 2008.

Tehillim Berabim (communal reciting of Psalms) will take place from 2pm to 2.20pm. There will be an opportunity for people to pass the Aron to pay their respects to Rabbi Y. D. Groner OBM for a few moments after the Tehillim service. The Aron will be leaving the Yeshivah Centre at 3.45pm sharp and there will be an accompanying of the Aron from the Werdiger Hall, along Hotham Street to Balaclava Road. The Aron will then go directly to the airport.

Rabbi Y.D. Groner OBM will be buried in Har Hazeisim in Eretz Yisroel, near his parents in accordance with his wishes.

The family will be sitting Shiva at 80 Hotham Street, St. Kilda East.

Shacharis -- 8.30am, 9.30am
Minchah -- 4pm, 5pm
Maariv -- 6:00pm, 7:00pm
Friday Minchah -- 2:30pm, 3:30pm
Motzei Shabbos Maariv -- 6:00pm

Rest times are from 1:00pm to 2:30pm

On Tuesday morning, 12 Tammuz 5768, July 15th 2008 both minyonim for Shacharis will be held at 8.15am. The family will be standing up from Shiva after Shacharis.

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The Shloshim will be held at Yeshivah Centre, 92 Hotham St on Thursday 7th Menachem Av 5768 - August 7th 2008 at 8:00pm.

Other emails have said that the Levaya/Tehillim will be held in the Werdiger Hall and I am assuming that the information on the Yeshivah Website is correct.
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Rabbi Groner ע"ה - update

Rabbi Groner in the sun (taken a few years ago)

According to the Yeshivah Website the Levaya/Tehillim will take place at the Werdiger Hall on Wednesday (9 July - 6 Tammuz) at 2:00pm. As more details become available I will post them here.

The website has also added a number of articles etc about Rabbi Groner here.

There have also been a number of news stories and blog articles. Some that I have found are on Lubavitch.com, JTA and Shirat Devorah. I just found this post on Circus Tent with a tribute by an ex-Yeshivah student taken from the Yeshivah World News website. Also see dozens on comments in tribute to Rabbi Groner on COL.
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Rabbi Groner ע"ה

How many of us remember Rabbi Groner
From the AJN

Tributes are starting to arrive for Rabbi Groner. There are already a few comments on the Yeshivah Website and they invite people to relate stories and/or express condolences.

You are welcome to write your reminiscences here but I would suggest the more appropriate place to express yourself is on the Yeshivah Community Website.

The ICJS website has a speech by Michael Danby which he made in parliment almost 4 years ago in honour of Rabbi Groner's 80th birthday. It can be found here.

The Australian Jewish News has also posted a short article on their website here.
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BORUCH DAYAN HOEMES

Our Rabbi Yitzchok Dovid Groner was niftar this morning.

My sincerest sympathy goes out to Rebbitzen Groner, his children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

From the Yeshivah Community website (updated 3:15pm):

It was Rabbi Groner's explicit wish to be buried in Eretz Yisroel and arrangement are being made to facilitate this.

There will be a Levaya/Tehillim service held in Yeshivah and details, time of service will be announced. In respect to the family members, the community is asked not to be contacting them directly as details will be posted on this website.

People may come to say Tehillim for Rabbi Groner A"H at the Melbourne Chevra Kadisha 115 - 119 Inkerman Street, St Kilda.

The Chevra Kadisha will remain open to facilitate people to say Tehillim.

Details of the communal service/Tehillim will be announced as they are forthcoming.

Sitting Shiva for Rabbi Groner ob"m are:
Rebbitzen Devorah Groner

His children:
Rabbi Sholom Ber Groner (SA)
Rebbitzen Miriam Telsner
Mrs Shterna Zirkind (CH)
Rabbi Yossi Groner
Mrs Chaya Haller (SA)
Rabbi Chaim Tzvi Groner
Mrs Rivkah Yurkowicz
Rabbi Mendy Groner

His siblings:
Rabbi Yehudah Leib Groner (CH)
Mrs Nechama Baumgarten (CH)
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Gimmel Tammuz - 14 Years!!

From Chabad.info

Another year has gone by.

I am reproducing this article by Yanki Tauber from Chabad.org which is much more positive than I am feeling at the moment.

I remember hearing the news early Sunday morning (Israeli Time) and rushing to the airport. I remember arriving at the cemetery hours after the funeral, in midst of the throng still pouring in, as it would through the night and the days and nights to follow, from all over the world.

We (my wife, my 20-month-old daughter and myself) came with the clothes on our back, thinking we'd be taking the return charter flight to Tel-Aviv that very night. We stayed seven days, most of which I spent holed up in an office at 770 Eastern Parkway working on a special issue of Week In Review, a weekly digest of the Rebbe's teachings which I edited at the time. I remember observing with growing amazement what was happening -- and what was not happening -- in the Chabad-Lubavitch community.

Just about everything imaginable was happening -- except for the natural, predictable thing which everyone expected to happen.

There was shock and incredulity. There was grief and agony. There was passionate disagreement and fervent expectation and many, many unanswered and unanswerable questions.

But there was not despair. There was not paralysis. Every one of the Rebbe's emissaries, disciples and followers was saying to him or herself, "what should I be doing now?" And doing it.

I remember thinking: The Rebbe, who has redefined virtually every aspect of life, has also redefined death.

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Such was the Rebbe's way. He would, for example, consider the concept "work". With sure and lucid steps, drawing on the wisdom of Torah and the truth of everyday experience, he would show that work equals creativity, creativity equals human partnership with the Creator, and human partnership with the Creator is the raison d'être of human life.

This truth, of course, was stated thousands of years ago by the Scriptural verse, "Man is born to toil." But that statement, which had always struck us as a melancholy if inescapable fact of life, became, in the Rebbe's hands, the key to understanding what makes us tick and to achieving meaningfulness and fulfillment in our daily labors.

He did the same with "marriage," "love," "rain" and "rockets". He would take a natural phenomenon, a cultural curiosity, an everyday activity, and by the time he had finished analyzing and applying it, it was something altogether different. No -- it was the very same thing it always was, but in the clarity of his insight its essence was exposed, revealing how scant and shallow was our previous conception.

In one of his talks, the Rebbe quoted the Talmudic dictum that "Sleep is one sixtieth of death." Well, said the Rebbe, if sleep is a form of death, then death is a form of sleep. Sleep is not a termination or even an interruption of life -- it is a time of foment, the means by which body and soul recoup their energies for a fresh and refreshed onslaught upon the coming day. So is death. Death, said the Rebbe, is a "descent for the sake of ascent," a retraction of the arrow of life so that it can be impelled by the bow of vacuity with redoubled force.

How? When? Why? The unanswered questions remain unanswered. But we know what we need to do. And we're doing it. You can go see for yourself -- if you reside on planet earth, chances are that you are within driving distance of a Chabad-Lubavitch center.

The Rebbe has trained us well.

Where is your light switch?

An interesting story about an interesting Yechidus.
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Op Ed - The Latest Attack in Jerusalem

See more photos here

Jake from Jerusalem has written an informative piece on the latest murderous attack in Yerushalayim. I think it is important for people to know the facts from regular Israeli citizens rather than just relying on press reports.

Today's attack on Yaffo Street in the center of town received lots of press coverage and you have probably seen / read about it. However, some inaccuracies have also been reported - some of them quite significant - so I have some clarifications.

The attack occurred on the stretch of Yaffo Street between Sarei Yisra'el and the Israel Broadcast Authority offices in the former Sha'arei Zedek hospital. I have walked by there many times. A number of foreign press organizations have offices across the street so that some of them actually witnessed this extraordinary attack. They were able to provide immediate coverage, both from their windows overlooking the street and from the street level.

I have no doubt that the attacker would have continued on to the Machane Yehuda market, just a 1 minute walk from where the attacker was finally stopped. My mother was shopping there at the time; her cellphone didn't respond for a while and we were concerned. She later told me that the Arabs working in the market heard of the attack and stood proud with the events. This behavior has repeated in previous attacks, as well.

Many reports claim that an Israeli policeman shot the attacker, but this is not quite correct. The construction vehicle involved is a monstrously large vehicle. The attacker started his rampage near the corner of Sarei Yisra'el and was shot at by a policewoman. He then repeatedly rammed a bus several times with the front-end loader shovel before picking the bus up with the shovel and overturning it. Along the way, he drove over and crushed several vehicles. At least one van was run over several times. The silver Toyota had it's roof pulled off by the shovel; I believe that the woman at the wheel was killed but her baby in the back seat is safe.

An armed civilian managed to climb up on the vehicle and struggled to wrest control of the still-moving vehicle. An off-duty IDF soldier, about 19 years old, jumped off his bicycle and also climbed onto the bulldozer. The off-duty soldier, in short pants and a blue t-shirt, took the pistol from the struggling civilian and shot the Arab attacker, I believe three times. Only then did the bulldozer come to a stop. A uniformed anti-terrorist policeman (you may have seen them in Jerusalem; they ride around in pairs on trail bikes, dressed in black) then climbed up and fired a few more shots, to ascertain that this attack had stopped. (Remember that the attacker had already been shot at before and managed to kill people since those earlier shots.)

In what the Jerusalem Post described as "a surreal coincidence", the young off-duty IDF soldier who jumped from his bike onto the bulldozer is a brother-in-law of the man who shot dead the previous attacker, at Merkaz HaRav, just a few months ago. I heard the young fellow on TV and he said that he took his brother-in-law as an example of proper behavior and knew to do the right thing. He heard the Arab attacker screaming "Allahu Akhbar" (Allah is greater, i.e. greater than any other god) before he was shot dead (perhaps demonstrating that Allah is not so Akhbar after all).

I watched some of the video clips during live TV coverage, some of them I probably saw a few dozen times. In the video which shows a man holding a pistol as the bulldozer moves away from the camera before coming to a stop http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/998294.html (Beware: this contains some graphic images, AE), the bulldozer is seen to rock side to side before coming to rest. This is where it climbs onto and crushes another car, killing it's occupant immediately. This happened in the last two seconds of the attack. That person might be alive and well if the attacker had been shot dead just a few seconds earlier.

The wild claims of Leftist and "Palestinian" so-called "human rights" organizations have made Israeli police and soldiers very, very hesitant to fire upon terrorist suspects. The MainStreamMedia give the false impression that Israelis are trigger-happy, though this is the opposite of the truth. What if the attacker had been shot 4 or 5 seconds earlier? What if he had been shot dead 40 seconds earlier? Would we have been spared most of the dead and injured? Had the attacker continued into the crowded Machane Yehuda market, the dead and injured list would easily have risen ten-fold. (Last I heard, three people were killed besides the attacker, and about 70 were injured, at least one suffering an amputation.)

Comments on the web from the usual quarters try to justify this attack and also question the killing of the Arab attacker. Experience shows that the sooner such murderers are cut down, the fewer innocents are hurt.