Rabbi Israel (Eliezer HaLevi) Rubin

Rabbi Rubin died at home in Albany on 3 October 2026, the night of Shemini Atzeres, shortly after taking part in the hakafos at Shomray Torah. He was 78. The family's obituary noted that he had continued learning and teaching Torah through a recent illness; no cause of death was made public. His death was reported by COLlive, Anash.org, CrownHeights.info and Israeli Haredi media.

Because he died on a festival, the graveside funeral was held on Isru Chag, 5 October, at Beth Abraham-Jacob cemetery on Fuller Road, near the Shabbos House he had founded. The coffin passed Shomray Torah and stopped at the Maimonides School so that students could join the escort. In keeping with the festival period there were no eulogies, only final respects. Arrangements were by Levine Memorial Chapel, and the family asked that memorial gifts go to the Maimonides School or Capital Chabad.

Yisroel Eliezer Rubin was born in Brooklyn, New York, on 9 May 1948, the son of Rabbi Moshe Rubin and Yocheved Miriam Rubin. The family moved to Montreal, where his father worked as a shochet and bodek, a ritual slaughterer and inspector, and where he grew up with his sisters Rochel, Esther and Sara.

He studied at the Tomchei Temimim yeshiva in Montreal, graduating in 1967, and continued at the central Tomchei Temimim yeshiva at 770 Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn, where he received semicha, rabbinic ordination, in 1971. He then studied in Kollel Menachem and taught at Yeshiva Chanoch LeNaar.

He later traced his approach to learning to a farbrengen in 1965, when as a fifteen year old visitor he heard the Rebbe explore the personal history of Rabbi Akiva to explain a passage of the Talmud. From then on he paid close attention to the people and circumstances behind each text. In the summer of 1970, as learning director at Camp Gan Israel Montreal, he and Rabbi Shmuel Greisman produced a daily one page sheet that presented the day's Torah study as news reports. The Rebbe read the bound pages, suggested a clearer name, approved the title Torah Times and contributed 600 dollars towards six months of printing.

In 1974 Rabbi Rubin and his wife moved to Albany as emissaries of the Rebbe, arriving on Sukkos. Their early work included a downtown kosher food cart and later a kosher pizza shop, public holiday programmes, classes and publications. In 1976 he founded Shabbos House for students at the University at Albany.

One of his first projects was a matchbook printed with Shabbos candle lighting times, and he went on to produce stickers, bookmarks, holiday publications and other materials that emissaries in other cities later adopted. In 1979, after he surveyed the Jewish communities of upstate New York for the movement's educational arm, he was directed to build a mikvah in Troy, which was completed in 1980.

In 1980 he was among the founders of the Maimonides Hebrew Day School in Albany, which he served for many years as dean and rosh yeshiva. He was also rabbi of Congregation Shomray Torah on New Scotland Avenue. Over the decades Chabad of the Capital Region grew into a network of centres and emissaries in Troy, Delmar, Saratoga Springs, Clifton Park, Schenectady, Bethlehem, University Heights, Colonie and on local campuses, with Rabbi Rubin as regional director for the Capital Region and northeast New York State.

Because Albany is the state capital, he worked for decades with governors and legislators, delivered invocations before the State Assembly, and started an annual Tu B'Shevat event at the Legislature.

He was a prolific author. His works included Marbeh L'Saper, known as the Albany Haggadah, which examines the five sages at the Bnei Brak Seder; writings on Pirkei Avos including Shem Avosai and Blossoms; the Hirhurei Torah series of scholarly booklets; and more than fifty editions of the Holiday Guide newspaper, syndicated to emissaries across the country. He also served on the steering and editorial team for Torah curricula of the Rohr Jewish Learning Institute. A manuscript of more than 600 pages of Hirhurei Torah remained unpublished when he died.

On Gimmel Tammuz 5731, in 1971, he married Rochel Piekarski, daughter of Rabbi Yechiel Michel Piekarski. She was his partner in shlichus for more than five decades, teaching at the Maimonides School from its opening and later serving as its principal. For more than fifty years the couple lived at 122 South Main in Albany.

They had eleven children. Their daughter Esty Cohen of Manchester, England, died before him. Ten children survived him: Mendel, Abba, Yossi, Shmuly, Devorah Leah Mathless, Rivky Cohen, Efraim, Simmy, Mushky and Mordechai, several of whom lead Chabad centres of their own in the Capital Region.

Over 52 years Rabbi Rubin turned a single emissary post in Albany into a regional network of Chabad centres, a Jewish day school and a campus presence, much of it now led by his own children. His creative outreach materials and his Holiday Guide series were used by emissaries far beyond the Capital Region, and his writing on the personalities behind Torah texts shaped generations of students.