Chabad Beis Din Adds Canadian-Born Rabbi To Its Ranks

By COLlive reporter

Rabbi Yosef Hendel, Rabbi of the Chabad community in the northern Israeli city of Migdal HaEmek, is the newest member of Beis Din Rabbonei Chabad in the country.

He joins the Chairman Rabbi Yitzchok Yehuda Yaroslavsky of Kiryat Malachi, Vice Chairman Rabbi Menachem Mendel Gluckowsky of Rechovot, Rabbi Yochanan Gourarie of Holon, Rabbi Avrohom Michoel Halperin of Jerusalem, Rabbi Yosef Hecht of Eilat and Rabbi Moshe Havlin of Kiryat Gat.

In the last 2 years, Rabbi Hendel has been an active dayan in the top rabbinical authority for the Chabad-Lubavitch movement in the Holy Land.

He was born in Montreal, where his father Rabbi Yitzchok Hendel OBM was the Rov of the local Chabad community and Rosh of the Yeshiva Tomchei Tmimim Lubavitch (Zal) in the Canadian city.

Rabbi Yosef Hendel studied in that Yeshiva and later continued in the Central Tomchei Tmimim Yeshiva in Kfar Chabad and at 770 Eastern Parkway in New York.

In 5734, he married Toiba Freida, daughter of Reb Shmuel Isaac Popack, a chossid and baal Tzedaka in Crown Heights. The couple was then sent by the Rebbe as one of the select Shluchei Kodesh to the land of Israel.

Rabbi Hendel has been serving as the Mashgiach in Yeshiva Tomchei Tmimim in Migal HaEmek and the Rov of the local Chabad community, as well as giving kosher certification to companies.

“One of the central things the Rebbe instructed us about our Shlichus and what to do (in Israel) was the area of rabbonus,” Rabbi Hendel said in an interview with COL.org.il.

“I am happy to be joining the Beis Din and feel that it is a great responsibility,” he said. “The Rebbe said that the leadership of Chassidim in the Holy Land is in the hands of the Beis Din – and now I will enter and assist in whatever I can to fulfill this Shlichus.”