Rabbi Shmuel Yitzchak Malov

Rabbi Malov died on the morning of Monday, 8 Cheshvan 5787, which was 19 October 2026, at his home in Nachlas Har Chabad, Kiryat Malachi. He was 51. According to COLlive and Israeli Haredi news sites, he woke as usual, washed his hands in the traditional morning ritual (negel vasser) and suffered a sudden cardiac arrest. Reports said he had been in good health with no known underlying illness. Emergency responders attempted resuscitation but pronounced him dead at the scene.

The funeral left his home at 12:30 the same day, passing the neighbourhood Talmud Torah and central synagogue, and continued to the Shamgar funeral home in Jerusalem, from where it departed at 15:00 for burial at Har HaMenuchot. Residents of Kiryat Malachi arranged a bus so that neighbours could attend the burial. His death was reported by COLlive, Chabad.info, Kikar HaShabbat, Behadrei Haredim and Babli.

Shmuel Yitzchak Malov was born in Bnei Brak, Israel, on 18 Tishrei 5736, which corresponds to 23 September 1975. He grew up in a Chabad Hasidic family.

His father, Rabbi Tzvi Eliyahu Malov, was a longtime Chabad communal activist in Jerusalem and died about six years before his son. His mother, Chana Chaya Malov, was a daughter of Rabbi Yaakov Moshe Hakohen Halperin; she died young, in Tishrei 5751 (autumn 1990), at the age of 40.

Malov devoted his working life to Jewish education in Nachlas Har Chabad, the Chabad neighbourhood of Kiryat Malachi in southern Israel. For many years he directed the neighbourhood's evening yeshiva program, in which hundreds of children gathered each night in the local synagogue to study Torah.

Around each Jewish festival he organised Kinusei Torah, communal Torah gatherings held in keeping with the Lubavitcher Rebbe's directive to hold study sessions close to every holiday. COLlive also reported that he served as the Rebbe's emissary, or shliach, in Kfar HaRif, a village near Kiryat Malachi.

Colleagues and friends described him as an accomplished Torah scholar, knowledgeable in both Nigleh, the revealed and legal parts of Torah, and Chassidus, Hasidic thought, who worked tirelessly to spread Torah learning.

Malov married Nechama Dina, a daughter of Rabbi Yitzchak Yehuda Yeroslavsky, the rabbi of Nachlas Har Chabad and of the Chabad community of Kiryat Malachi, and a member of the Chabad rabbinical court in Israel. The couple lived in Nachlas Har Chabad and had four children: Menachem Mendel, Shterna Sarah Kramer, Devorah Leah and Mushka.

Those who knew him remembered his pleasant manner, constant cheerfulness and readiness to offer a good word to everyone, and described him as a modest man who did acts of kindness quietly.

Malov is remembered in Nachlas Har Chabad as the educator who, night after night, brought the neighbourhood's children into the synagogue to learn, and who kept the custom of holiday Torah gatherings alive in the community. Reports of his death described him as a significant figure for hundreds of the neighbourhood's children.