Rabbi Yisroel (Israel) Rubin, 78, Innovative Scholar Who Led Chabad in New York’s Capital Region

by Motti Wilhelm – chabad.org

“My Name is Yisroel Rubin,” the flyer blared in large, stylized letters.

The year was 1975, and Chaim Potok’s My Name is Asher Lev, about a boy from a fictional Chassidic group in Brooklyn, had recently appeared in a mass-market paperback edition. The book was everywhere, and anyone seeing the flyer would have known exactly what the young Chabad-Lubavitch emissary was referring to.

“But unlike the fictitious Asher Lev of the bestseller book,” his flyer continued, “I feel Chassidism is relevant and can offer much to the contemporary scene.” This was followed by details of Rubin’s weekly discussion group on campus at the University of Albany (then known as SUNY Albany), and how to reach him directly.

Rubin and his wife, Rochel, had arrived in Albany, N.Y., just a year earlier, in 1974. The capital of the state home to the largest and most prominent Jewish community in the world, Albany in fact had a Jewish history stretching back to the 1830s. But when the Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, of righteous memory, sent the couple to establish Chabad in the city, they found little by way of vibrant Jewish life. The new generation of Albany’s Jews was largely unaffiliated, and the classic Jewish communal institutions were not being very successful drawing them in.

So Rubin got creative. In fact, he didn’t even begin with a synagogue or a community center. He went with matchbooks and a hot dog cart.

The matchbooks, a popular promotional item in the 1970s, carried messages encouraging Jewish women and girls to light Shabbat candles. The hot dog cart, serving strictly kosher hot dogs, gave Jewish legislators at the State Capitol, university students and local residents an opportunity to enjoy a kosher meal. Above the cart was a “mitzvah umbrella,” emblazoned with the words “For Heaven’s Sake, Do Something!” alongside messages encouraging students to perform a mitzvah.

This was an era when Chabad’s outreach model was still taking shape. There was no extensive network of centralized programming to draw upon, no established playbook to guide his mission of bringing fellow Jews closer to Judaism. So Rubin helped write the playbook, developing new ideas, putting them into practice, learning what worked and building on each success.

The matchbooks and hot dog cart were only the beginning. Over the years, Rubin launched dozens of major initiatives and countless smaller projects that would leave a lasting impact on generations of Jews in Albany and beyond.

In time Rubin spearheaded the establishment of more than a dozen Chabad centers and institutions serving New York’s Capital District, along with numerous additional Chabad centers across northeastern New York. He also authored and published Torah works that reflected his distinctive approach to learning, offering fresh perspectives on familiar texts.

Rubin passed away on the evening of Shemini Atzeret, Oct.2, at the age of 78, shortly after participating in the traditional hakafot celebration at Congregation Shomray Torah, the Albany synagogue he led. His passing came almost exactly 52 years after he first arrived in Albany, a half-century during which he built dozens of community institutions, touching thousands of lives in the Capital Region and far beyond.

“Rabbi Rubin leaves behind a tremendous legacy, serving as a Chabad emissary for the Capital Region for 52 years and playing an instrumental role in shaping the region’s Jewish community,” New York Gov. Kathy Hochul told JNS. She recalled his visits to the governor’s residence to celebrate Chanukah and to her office to mark the Rebbe’s birthday. “May his memory forever be a blessing.”

“Rabbi Rubin was truly an original,” said Rivkah Goldstein, who worked with him for over a decade and now serves as development director of TheYeshiva.net. “He combined the depth of a serious Torah scholar with the imagination of an innovator, the energy of a pioneer, and the humility of someone whose ambitions were never about himself.

“He leaves behind institutions, publications, programs, and generations of people touched by his work,” she said. “But perhaps one of his greatest legacies is the example he set: that being deeply rooted in Torah need never limit one’s creativity; that the Rebbe’s vision of reaching every Jew invites endless possibilities; and that true leadership is not only about what one accomplishes, but about what one inspires others to accomplish. Rabbi Rubin showed us what was possible. And, just as importantly, he helped us discover what was possible within ourselves.”

Making Torah Colorful

Yisroel Eliezer Rubin was born in Brooklyn, N.Y., in 1948 (he often rendered his name Israel in English.) His parents, Rabbi Moshe and Yocheved Rubin, had married the previous year, after his father, a native of Poland, escaped war-torn Europe, found refuge in Shanghai alongside thousands of other Jewish refugees and eventually immigrated to Montreal.

Shortly after Yisroel’s birth, the family returned to Montreal, where Rabbi Moshe Rubin worked as a shochet, a ritual slaughterer. But his true passion was the study of Chassidut, to which he devoted every spare moment, along with hours of prayer marked by intense fervor and devotion.

It was that devotion to prayer that brought young Yisroel into his first encounter with Albany, long before he could have imagined that the city would one day become his life’s work.

At the age of eight, he accompanied his father on a train journey from Montreal to New York to attend the Rebbe’s farbrengen marking 19 Kislev, the anniversary of the first Chabad Rebbe’s release from a Czarist prison. On the return trip, as evening approached, Rabbi Moshe Rubin stood up to daven mincha, the afternoon prayer. Just then, the train pulled into Albany station, where an unexpected announcement informed passengers that their car was being detached. Everyone aboard had just two minutes to move to another car.

But Rabbi Moshe, deeply engrossed in his prayers, did not budge. His young son stayed beside him, anxiously watching as the other passengers hurried off, fearing they would be left stranded in Albany. Yet the train did not depart. For another 15 minutes, Rabbi Moshe continued praying, oblivious to the commotion around him. Only when he had finished and the two had made their way to another car did the train finally begin to move.

As a child and young teenager, Yisroel studied at the Chabad yeshivah in Montreal, which had been founded and was led by his father’s fellow refugees who had also escaped Poland and found refuge in Shanghai.

Throughout those years, he also traveled regularly to New York to spend time in the Rebbe’s presence and attend farbrengens marking significant dates on the Chassidic calendar. It was at one such farbrengen that he experienced a revelation that would help shape his distinctive approach to Torah study and, ultimately, much of his life’s work.

“I remember standing at the Rebbe’s farbrengen, a fifteen-year-old on a visit to New York,” Rubin recalled in a 2018 interview with Jewish Educational Media’s (JEM) Here’s My Story oral history project. “During that winter night of 1965, I found myself holding onto the chain-link fence overlooking the back of the main synagogue at 770 Eastern Parkway, straining to hear, hanging on to every word.”

At that farbrengen, the Rebbe discussed a passage at the conclusion of the Talmudic tractate Makkot, which recounts how Rabbi Akiva laughed upon seeing the site of the Holy Temple in ruins. The Rebbe explored Rabbi Akiva’s personality, background and life experiences, drawing on them to illuminate the deeper meaning of the episode and its lessons about exile and redemption.

“The Rebbe’s voice was filled with emotion, and as he spoke, I couldn’t believe my ears. I had never before heard Torah presented with such a multidimensional perspective,” Rubin recalled. “With a deep understanding of the biographies of the people in these stories, the Rebbe analyzed who they were as individuals, their interpersonal dynamics, and how this related to their teachings. This unique method of Talmudic study led the Rebbe to ask questions that no one else asked and to give answers that no one else answered.

“For me, it was a game changer. Bringing the whole Torah to life — making it vivid, colorful, and relevant — became the focal point of my studies, and of so much else in the years since I heard that talk.”

The first of Rubin’s “official” projects, which he traced directly to that formative experience came five years later.

In the summer of 1970, he served as learning director at Camp Gan Israel near Montreal. Looking for a way to make Torah study more engaging for the campers, he produced a daily newspaper presenting the stories and teachings of the day’s Torah portion as breaking news.

He wrote the articles in the style of newspaper reports, deploying attention-grabbing headlines and modeling the nameplate’s typography on The New York Times. One edition, covering Moses’ defeat of the biblical kings Sichon and Og, carried the headline “Giants Clobbered,” a playful reference to the Giants baseball team.

The newspaper proved so popular that, by the end of the summer, there was talk of continuing its publication during the school year for distribution to Jewish day schools.

Before proceeding, Rubin wrote to the Rebbe seeking his approval and guidance. The Rebbe endorsed the initiative but suggested changing its name. The original title, Daily Chitas, referred to the daily study cycle of Chumash, Tehillim and Tanya, a practice that was not yet widely familiar outside Chabad circles.

Rubin then proposed calling it Torah Times, a name the Rebbe approved. The Rebbe then contributed $600 to cover the publication’s printing costs for its first six months.

Bringing The ‘Real Thing’ to Albany

In the summer of 1971, Rubin married Rochel Piekarski. He continued his studies, while his wife taught at the Beth Rivkah girls’ school in Crown Heights. At the same time, the young couple began exploring opportunities to join the growing ranks of emissaries the Rebbe was sending around the world.

That;’s when Albany came onto their map. Until shortly before then, a Chabad Chassid named Rabbi Isser Brickman had lived in Albany, where he worked as a shochet. During his time there he had exerted a profound influence on Jewish students in the city, inspiring a personal revival of their Jewish identity and observance. After he left the city, the students turned to the Rebbe, asking him to send someone to continue Chabad’s work there.

In 1974, the Rebbe dispatched the Rubins to Albany.

One of the rabbi’s early initiatives was a series of stickers modeled on Coca-Cola’s instantly recognizable logo and typography. But instead of promoting a soft drink, they carried the message: “Enjoy Torah: It’s the real thing.”

Then of course there were his matchboxes, which particularly caught the Rebbe’s attention. The Rebbe even requested several matchboxes for himself, which he later distributed to individuals involved in promoting the Shabbat candle-lighting campaign.

Rubin organized Jewish cultural fairs that drew more than 5,000 people in New York’s Capital Region, brought New York City-style kosher food to the streets of downtown Albany, and arranged holiday celebrations involving legislators and government representatives.

In the summer of 1975 the Rebbe launched the Kosher Campaign, explaining that its laws have an acute impact on a Jew’s spiritual health and calling upon Jews to place a special emphasis on kosher. At the time, the Rebbe formed a special fund to offset the costs incurred by an individual going kosher, and Chabad activists set about creating a mechanism to help people kosher their homes. The groundbreaking Lubavitch Women’s Cookbook, known since the 1990s as the Purple Cookbook, was likewise an outcome of the Kosher Campaign.

Up in Albany, Rubin was ready to think big. Having already operated a hotdog cart, he took the idea one step farther: he opened a full-on kosher pizza and falafel joint.

“These are photos of the restaurant this past motzei Shabbat kodesh parshat Vayeitzei—it should be a good beginning,” Rubin wrote to the Rebbe in a short note accompanying a few black and white images showing the pizza shop in action. “Hundreds of people came, although in truth the grand opening isn’t scheduled” until a week later. “It has made a very positive impression upon the city.” Sensing this was no silly undertaking, the date Rubin chose for the formal opening was 19 Kislev, the New Year of Chassidism.

In its profile of the place a few years later, The New York Times noted that aside from the four kosher-observant state law makers, it was popular with non-Jewish representatives as well. “I ate like a—I hate to say the word—pig there,” Assemblyman Angelo Del Toro told the Times.

The paper describes the kosher restaurant’s managers “fastidiously preparing vegetarian, strictly kosher dishes” and stopping to explain to customers what exactly falafel is “(a Middle Eastern concoction of shredded salad fixing and crunchy balls made of chick peas, fava beans and assorted herbs and spices served on pita bread).”

But the food was only a part of the story. Sitting beneath signs bearing slogans like “Do a mitzvah today,” the Times observed many patrons lingering long after they’d consumed their meals, taking a moment “to read the restaurant’s small lending library, explore its bulletin board, laden with tidbits of information about Jewish holidays, or browse for Jewish gifts … at the store.”

“We figured that, rather than build another synagogue,” Rubin told the paper of record, “this would be the best medium to get the Jewish spirit across in a comfortable, easy way. It’s more like a cultural center than a commercial establishment.”

Always Innovating

A commemorative journal published by Capital Region Chabad to mark the 50th anniversary of its founding includes a timeline offering a glimpse of the remarkable range of initiatives Rubin launched over the decades.

There were mobile sukkahs, exhibitions featuring the work of Chassidic artists, “Noah’s Ark Coffeehouse” evenings, an anti-missionary bumper sticker campaign, a hospital visitation program and a Sunday morning radio show called “Shema Yisroel.” There were concerts, a “Yeshiva for a Week” program, and dozens of other initiatives, each reflecting his determination to find new ways to reach Jews wherever they were.

“These were more than clever ventures. They reflected his conviction that Jewish life should be accessible, visible, and woven into everyday experience,” Goldstein says. “Rabbi Rubin relished meeting Jews on the street, greeting them with a cheerful countenance, sharing one of his trademark outreach materials…. He understood the power of a simple, tangible reminder of Yiddishkeit, and his extraordinary energy and ingenuity brought a Jewish message to the most unexpected places.”

What made these initiatives all the more remarkable was that Rubin was not operating with the resources of a large, well-funded organization. He had a talent for stretching every dollar, accomplishing with limited means what others might have required far greater budgets to achieve. His resourcefulness even prompted Rabbi Chaim Mordechai Aizik Hodakov, the Rebbe’s chief of staff, to remark to a colleague, “What it takes you $10, Rubin does with $1.”

In 1975, Rabbi Rubin established Shabbos House, a dedicated Chabad Jewish student center at the University at Albany. And when the idea arose to produce Jewish calendars that could be distributed by Chabad emissaries in communities across the country, Albany was the first to step forward.

Today, these, and many other similar projects, are familiar features of Chabad activities around the world, supported by established networks and shared resources. But when Rubin was pioneering these efforts, there were few precedents to follow and no guarantee of success. Each new initiative required imagination, initiative and a willingness to take risks.

Even as he continued to lead and expand Chabad’s activities in Albany, overseeing the establishment of Chabad centers in more than a dozen surrounding communities, Rabbi Rubin remained deeply devoted to Torah study and teaching. He authored several Torah works, including a 700-page manuscript that was being prepared for publication at the time of his passing.

“Rabbi Rubin had a fertile mind, constantly finding ways in his writings to connect Torah’s ancient wisdom with contemporary life and make Chassidus’ timeless messages relevant to Jews of every background. Harry Potter and Purim. American Gothic and Chanukah. His ideas were endless,” Goldstein says.

“Yet beneath the clever titles and imaginative presentations was a man deeply immersed in Torah learning. His creativity was never a substitute for substance. Instead, it opened doors, making profound ideas accessible to people who might otherwise never have encountered them. He understood that the eternal truths of Torah could be presented in fresh and unexpected ways without sacrificing an iota of their depth.”

In 1980, Rabbi and Mrs. Rubin founded Maimonides Hebrew Day School, which would go on to educate generations of Jewish children.

“One time a reporter asked my father what the most important word in education is,” recalls his son Rabbi Mendel Rubin, who co-directs the Shabbos House with his wife, Raizy. “He said: ‘Relevance.’ It had to be relevant. That was his guiding light.”

“I had the merit to learn Torah from Rabbi Rubin for over 45 years, most often during his weekly Shabbos talks at Congregation Shomray Torah. His vast Torah knowledge was evident as he shared his new and original insights in all areas of Torah,” says Ruvain Kudan, a longtime Albany resident. “What I will remember most, however, was his enthusiasm and joy when learning and teaching Torah. I recall smiling broadly and feeling genuinely happy many times as Rabbi Rubin would resolve the many questions he had raised.”

For his son, it was precisely the combination of intellectual depth and practical action that made Rubin such an unusual figure.

“My father wasn’t a bold, brazen type of leader. But he did make big moves with very little resources. He launched centers, he opened yeshivahs, he did things fast,” Rabbi Mendel Rubin says.

“And what makes this more remarkable is that he was a person who loved learning, a person who was intellectual and an author of Torah works. And at the same time, he was deeply devoted to the practical, to getting another Jew to do one more mitvzah. It was this mix that made him so distinctive.”

In addition to his wife, Rabbi Rubin is survived by his children, Rabbi Mendel Rubin, Rabbi Abba Rubin, Rabbi Yossi Rubin, Rabbi Shmuly Rubin, Devorah Leah Mathless, Rivky Cohen, Rabbi Efraim Rubin, Rabbi Simmy Rubin, Mushky Rubin and Rabbi Mordechai Rubin, as well as grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Several of his children continue his work, serving in leadership roles at Chabad centers throughout the Capital Region.

He was predeceased by his daughter, Esther Aidel Cohen, in 2010.