All Children of One Chossid

By COLlive reporter

A rare group photo was taken this past Thursday in the Tomchei Tmimim Chabad Yeshiva in the Israeli city of Kiryat Gat.

The 21 bochurim and rabbis who stood together just recently discovered that they are actually distant cousins, descendants of the known chossid Reb Benzion Raskin OBM.

Rabbi Raskin was born in Belarus to a family that dates back to the Alter Rebbe, Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi, founder of Chabad-Lubavitch. He was a chossid of the Rebbe Rashab and later the Frierdiker Rebbe who once described his unique personality.

“There’s a Jew living in Moscow. Every day he wakes early at 4 AM to learn Torah, and before that he says Tehillim and sheds tears like water. And for what is he crying? He is asking for Hashem’s mercy that his children and grandchildren should go in the right path,” the Frierdiker Rebbe said of him.

And it seems like those heartfelt davening has helped – and they all happen to learn or teach in Kiryat Gat:

First row: Menachem Mendel Rabinovitch, Menachem Mendel Ashkenazi, Moshe Vishedski, Shmaya Katz and Moshe Yeruslavsky.

Second row: Rabbi Naftali Marinovsky, Menachem Mendel Raskin, Sholom Dovber Kubichek, Yitzchok Raskin, Menachem Mendel Mundshein, Avraham Marinovsky and Rabbi Zalman Yeruslavsky.

Third row: Hillel Sperlin, Aaron Treitel, Shmaya Marinovsky, Gershon Alperin, Simcha Gorelik, Menachem Mendel Pinson, Menachem Mendel Yeruslavsky, Moshe Vishedski and Avraham Zaklos.