Eulogy for

Israel Isadore Rubenstein
January 31, 2011, Clanton Park Synagogue, Toronto

As I stand here in Clanton Park shul, a place where my brother and I stood and davened with my father on so many Friday nights and Shabbat mornings, and on so many chagim, my memories drift back to my childhood, when my father stood ramrod straight, over 6 feet tall, and his voice was strong and clear, his handshake firm and steady.. I remember walking to shul with him on countless occasions, from our house on Bonnacord Drive, then from our home on Faywood Ave, standing next to him in the front row, being covered by his tallis during the duchaning on Yomim Tovim or watching him recite Pesukai D’zimra during the Yamim Noraim.

But I want to begin remembering my father, by talking about his beginnings, his humble origins.

My father’s father, Nechemia or Charles Rubenstein, was born in a small shtetl, called Tarlow near Ozarow in the Galicia area of Poland. My grandfather came over to Canada in 1913 and became a well known figure in the Toronto Jewish community. He was a founder of the Chevra Shas, and the Agudath Yisrael in Toronto. He established the Rubenstein Insurance Agency in 1924 and, during the 1920 and 30s, was very active in helping bring over Jews from Poland – and helping them get on their feet in Toronto – until the borders were sealed in WWII.

My grandfather married Dobra Laufer from Ozarow, Poland, and together they had 3 children, Sam who was born in 1910 and Simi who was born in 1913, both in Poland, and my father, Yisrael, who was born in 1921 in Toronto, and who was named after his mother’s late father.

Throughout his life, Charles Nehemia Rubenstein supported numerous charities in Israel, including Rabbi Meir Baal Hanes and Bais Yaakov.

For his entire life, my father held his father in the greatest esteem, and in so many ways, followed in his footsteps. Besides for leading a deeply religious life, like his father, my father was one of the founders of the Agudah shul in Toronto – he was the first treasurer of the Agudah, co-signed on the Agudah’s original mortgage on Brunswick Avenue (he cosigned the mortgage with his good friend (Rabbi) Faivel Rosensweig), and he actively collected for the Meir Baal Haness Tsedaka well into his 80s.

My father’s teen years were not easy ones – the Great Depression took place when had barely turned 9. Times were tough and most of his clothes were hand me downs. When he was still a boy, his mother became sick with an illness she would never recover from.

But my father persevered.

My father was very athletic as a young man – apparently he was a champion handball player and had a terrific arm – but he was also good at math. 

In fact, his uncle by marriage, Max Dale, worked with one of the tailors on Spadina Avenue. At the end every week or two he would bring my father paper tickets (each ticket meant that he finished a garment) which my
father would add up and give him a total to charge his employers. My father was so quick with numbers, he could do it all in his head.

As a child, my siblings and I remember being able to ask our father to multiply almost any two numbers –and without pen or paper, his answer was always instantaneous and correct.

As a young man, my father actually wanted to be an accountant, but at that time you had to take the test on Shabbes, and my father would not compromise his principles, and so ended up joining his father in the insurance business.

In early 1953, my father met a beautiful young woman in New York, a refugee from the Holocaust in Hungary, while on a trip collecting Tsedaka. My father married my mother, Esther Greenblatt, in October of 1953, a union that was to last over 57 years.

In my childhood years, I remember my father as a towering figure, but one who had a soft spot for children. He had huge, strong hands, with which he could easily pick up any of us children, and he was always ready to entertain us – the children and our friends – with a variety of activities.

My father had a beautiful tenor voice, and on every Shabbos in our home, he would be leading any number of beautiful Shabbat melodies, with all of the children singing along. My father would often end musical pieces with a cantorial flourish, and could hold the final note of a given song long after the rest of us were out of breath.

For about 3 or 4 years I sang in the choir at Clanton Park Shul, and many of my father’s grandchildren have also inherited his love of and talent for singing. I also remember my father’s fondness for stories – for many years he would read to us stories and midrashim at the Shabbos table, from the Jewish Press, or from the  Bais Yehuda Chumash with the Yiddish commentary.

My father also had a gift for language. He had an excellent English vocabulary, he was a master speller, had a beautiful penmanship, and spoke a perfectly fluent Yiddish. Even though he was born and raised in Canada, and never attended a day school or a yeshiva as a young man, Yiddish was the language his parents spoke at home, and my father spoke the language with the ease of a native speaker from the old country. Taking after his father, he was also an avid stamp collector, and assembled a stamp collection that became one of the family’s most cherished possessions.

One of my father’s greatest loyalties was to be found right here, at the Clanton Park Shul, his second home. He had tremendous admiration for all the rabbonim who served here – Rabbi Gorelick, Rabbi Rabinowitz, Rabbi Kerzner (who became a close personal friend) and of course, Rabbi Weber. For years my father would stand here, right in the front row of the shul, and was one of the most recognizable people at Clanton Park.

After shul, if you came to wish my father a Good Shabbes and to shake his hand, you would be greeted with a smile, a twinkle in his eye, a humorous quip, and the firmest hand-shake you could possibly imagine.

My father was all smiles after davening. But for those who liked to talk during davening, my father had no qualms about reminding people about the appropriate decorum during davening. It is my understanding that since my father stopped coming to Clanton Park on a regular basis, the ambient noise at shul has gone up by at least a few decibels.

My father had a very strong and honest work ethic – he worked every day of the week, including Sundays, except for Shabbos, and brought home work in the evenings as well. But every year, we would take off two weeks, and the entire family would go to Wasaga Beach, a tradition my brother Shmuel still adheres to.

After my father retired, his work ethic still held strong. But he channeled his energies into spending more time learning – Daf Yomi became his passion, along with collecting more tsedaka for Rabbi Meir Baal Haness. (My father began his Daf Yomi minhag with Rabbi Uri Mayerfield with whom he studied for many years, and also attended a shiur with Rabbi Pam after he retired.)

And, up until only a few months ago, as most visitors can attest, my father’s handshake was as firm as ever.

The last number of years of my father’s life were not the easiest. He began to lose his independence, eventually being confined to a wheelchair. Finally, in October of last year, his health had deteriorated to the point where he required the full time care that only an institution like Baycrest could provide.

I remember observing that each time my father had a visitor, whether at home or at Baycrest, he would invariably make a point to thank them for coming.

So in my father’s tradition, I would like to express my thanks for all those who made my father’s life easier over the last number of years:

To Rabbi Weber, who has been such a source of unwavering support to my parents, since assuming the role of rabbi at Clanton Park.

To the staff at Baycrest – the nurses and the doctors – too numerous to mention, whose care for my father was exemplary. It has been said, a society is judged by how it treats its most vulnerable members, and I think the Jewish community should feel proud that it has created an institution that provides such kind and compassionate care to its elderly population. (Prior to Baycrest, my father received treatment at numerous hospitals, including Mt. Sinai, North York General, Sunnybrook and Etobicoke General, where Dr. Jack Sandler, also a member of Clanton Park, took such excellent care of my father.)

To Judy Clodman, who over the last few years, has been helping my mother take care of my father, and, with her charm and humor, somehow would always manage to get a smile out of my father.

To my siblings, Debbie and Shmuel, and their spouses, Michael and Laya, who were there for my father every step of the way, even though they had their own large families to take care of.

And, of course, our greatest gratitude, needs to be expressed to our dear mother, upon whose shoulders the lion’s share for the care of my father fell.

For 5 plus decades my mother basically oversaw the day to day running of the family home, took care of the children and looked after all of my father’s needs.

When my father became increasingly ill, and required more and more medical attention, my mother accompanied my father to every doctor’s appt, to every hospital visit – even while she was battling her own health challenges – and while he was still at home, arranged for a steady stream of care-givers to attend to all of my father’s growing needs. About a year ago, my mother single-handedly packed up the entire family home on Faywood Avenue, and moved her and my father to the condominium on Covington Rd. And, once my father moved into Baycrest a few months ago, my mother was there every day except for Shabbos, making sure every one of my father’s medical requirements were taken care of.

Since his early 80s, my father had multiple illnesses and was in extremely fragile state for a number of years – that he lived as long as he did, is a tribute to my mother’s dedication, commitment and – there are no other words for it – simply superhuman efforts. (I was thinking of using the phrase Eishes Chayil, but even that would have been an understatement.)

About a week or so ago, my father suffered a turn for the worse. The last time I was able to communicate with him, he was clearly struggling, but I knew he could hear me. Knowing his love of stories and singing, I asked him if he wanted to hear a Chasidic story, or listen to me sing a Jewish song.

My father still had enough strength to say one word at a time between breaths…so he would gather his energy, and say either: “story” or “song”. My father first asked me for a song, and when I finished, he asked for a story, and then asked for another song.

Amazingly as I approaching the end of the last song – I think it was “Borchi Nafshi” by Shlomo Carlebach – my father joined in with me for the last lines of the song with his usual finishing flourish, with his own voice, still beautiful and authentically his, after all these years.

When I went to say good-bye, before I shook his hand, I asked him to squeeze a little more gently than he usually did – for his sake and mine. And my father obliged, and shook my hand, still firmly, but a little lighter than usual.

My father passed away some time after sundown last night, but I will always remember and cherish his smile, his firm hand-shake, his clear, unmistakable voice, and his commitment to the religion and faith of his father, to Torah and to the Jewish people.

These memories and values will live on in me, and in all of us who knew and loved him.

May his memory always be for a blessing.