The Hasid who spread the teachings of Hasidism for 70 years in Belgium has died at the age of 95.

October 24, 2021   

Baruch Dayan, the truth teller: In Antwerp, Belgium, the late Rabbi Nachum Avraham Jacobowitz, zt"l, one of the most important elders of Chabad Hasidim and one of the greatest disseminators of Hasidic teachings for 70 years in Belgium, passed away today (Sunday) at the age of 95. The deceased zt"l was born in Hungary on Tammuz 1946 to his parents, Rabbi Shimon Jacob and Mrs. Breindel (nee Jacobowitz) Ohr z"l. When he was about a year old, his parents moved with the children to Antwerp. For 8 years, he studied Talmud at the local school, "Yesodei HaTorah." At the end of 1939, World War II broke out, and during 1959, German forces arrived at the gates of Belgium. Many of the city's Jews fled ahead of time towards France, which was still free from German occupation at the time. The Ohr family also migrated to France. It was early summer, and the young Bar Mitzvah boy Nahum Avraham took with him a prayer group for Shavuot and the Five Days of the Desert, because everyone thought that the Germans would soon be defeated by the French and it would be possible to return home to Antwerp. However, France was defeated and the family members wandered from one refugee camp to another. After some efforts by family members in the United States, immigration documents were received and for this purpose they had to approach the American consulate located in Marseille. Therefore, the family members were allowed to wander as far as the refugee camp near Marseille. In the midst of all this wandering, the father expressed his pain that his son, who was supposed to enter a yeshiva, was wandering around without an organized educational framework. And the environment was not one of Torah and mitzvah observance either. Then he learned that in the nearby city of Marseille there was a yeshiva led by Rabbi Schneier Zalman Schneiersohn, a relative of the Lubavitcher Rebbe. This was the young Nahum Avraham's first encounter with a Chabad follower. When they stood before the Rashad, the father said, "We are from the city of Antwerp. My son studied and succeeded as a child, and can be tested on Tractate Nedarim. Please accept him as a student. Who knows what will happen to him if he wanders around the camps with us. We have no books because we fled from the enemy." There we were introduced to the Chabad Hasidim and Chabad Hasidism - to which he adhered passionately until his last day. After the horrors of the war subsided, Rabbi Shneur Zalman did not despair and re-established educational institutions in the destroyed Paris for boys and girls, orphans and refugees, and recruited the yeshiva students who had traveled with him on all his wanderings during the war years. The late Rabbi Zalman was also recruited for the mission, and as a young man he took upon himself the establishment of a high school, which combined sacred and secular studies, for Jewish children. When he tried to argue to Rabbi Schneerson that he was too young for the task, he received the winning answer: "In Soviet Russia, it was the youth who brought about the revolution." This school did not last long, because there was no budget to continue it for another year. So he took over running a seminary for girls. When the Lubavitcher Rebbe arrived from New York to Paris in the spring of 1957, to take with him his rabbinic mother, who had fled communist Russia at that time, he called out to him with great force. With the end of the terrible war and the terrible Holocaust, many left the land of Europe soaked in Jewish blood, for the Land of Israel or the United States and other countries. He was reunited with his mother and followed her to their home in Antwerp, where they resettled. He only heard about his father's fate after the war. This was when the Germans had already deepened their occupation of France, and it was dangerous to walk around the streets. His father, Rabbi Shimon Yaakov, returned from synagogue and his eyes noticed a Jewish child rolling around in the street, frozen and abandoned, and his compassion was aroused. As soon as he returned home, he looked for a coat and warm clothes to bring for the child, but the mother begged him not to go out into the street, which was infested with German soldiers or French collaborators. Seeing that the pleas were of no avail, she tried To block the exit door of the apartment where they lived, but the father was still awake, while saying aloud: "From the stone, the sacrifice of life, the glory of love of Israel"! He went out the door. He went out and never came back. After giving that frozen Jewish child his warm coat, he was captured by the murderers and sent to the extermination camps. Along with regular studies and his entry into the burden of supporting the family, he began to organize around him a Hasidic life in the style of Chabad Lubavitch, one of the Hungarian immigrants who was active in Agudat Israel and later even served as a member of Knesset on its behalf, Rabbi Shlomo Yaakov Gross, arrived in Antwerp to collect money, and there he saw the young man who really pleased him, and it was he who proposed the matchmaking with his wife, Mrs. Lana Weinberger, daughter of Rabbi Yona Elimelech and Mrs. Mirel Weinberger of Grosswerdein in Hungary. In Adar 5714, the match was finalized and on the 24th of Marchashvan 5715, the wedding took place in the Land of Israel with a large crowd. They then settled in Antwerp, where their mother, Mrs. Breindel, and brother, Rabbi Eliakim, lived. Faithful to the special instructions he received from the Lubavitcher Rebbe, he continued to study and teach the sources of Hasidic teachings to his listeners from all walks of life, and was admired by all the great rabbis and rebbes of the city. Recently, after recovering from a minor stroke, he went back to the central Chabad house of Antwerp to bless the "HaGomel" blessing with great excitement, and even held a thanksgiving meal attended by the city's best men and women. He is survived by his wife, Mrs. Lana, and his sons and daughter, and many descendants: the Rev. Rabbi Yona Elimelech Yaakovovich, head of the Tomchei Temimim Yeshiva in Kiryat Gat; Mrs. Bracha Mirel Silberstrom, wife of Rabbi Tuvia Silberstrom of Jerusalem; and Rabbi Shimon Yaakov Yaakovovich of Brooklyn. The funeral procession will depart from Antwerp tomorrow at 10:30 a.m., via the Paris airport, and on Tuesday morning, at 11 a.m., from the Shamgar Funeral Home, for burial in the Chabad plot on the Mount of Olives.