Tragedy: Chabad emissary traveling to distribute 'saved matzah' killed in car accident

March 16, 2021   

Tragedy in the Crown Heights neighborhood: Chabad emissary Rabbi Chaim Gurvitz, z"l, who was injured in a car accident on Sunday, while on his way to distribute 'reserved matzah' to relatives - died today (Tuesday), at the age of 62, from his injuries. You don't have to be a volunteer at an emergency organization to save lives. You can too. ‘'Against experimental vaccine, coronavirus': How many people has the anti-vaccine pike killed? The late, who was a member of the board of the charity organization 'Kollel Chabad', where he worked for many years, was critically injured in a highway accident in the state of New Jersey. He was taken to a hospital, where doctors fought for his life, but this morning (New York time), they had no choice but to pronounce him dead, to the heartbreak of his extended family and many friends. He is survived by his wife, Mrs. Freida Tebdelha, who lost both of her parents in the past year to the coronavirus, sons and daughters who serve as Chabad emissaries around the world, mother, brothers and sisters. The late, a resident of the Crown Heights neighborhood in Brooklyn, was born in the city of Tashkent, Uzbekistan, as the eldest son of his father, the late Rabbi Shmuel Gershon Nissan Gurvitz, and his mother, Mrs. Beila, daughter of the late Rabbi Avraham Shmuel Lebenaretz. The father, who during his years living in the Soviet Union was an activist in the Chabad underground that existed in the country, educated his son in the ways of Hasidism underground. On the 2nd of Tishrei 1967, the father's friend, the legendary Chasid Rabbi Eliezer Nans, zt"l, during a gathering, turned to the Lubavitcher Rebbe and asked for a blessing that the members of the Gurvitz family would be allowed to leave the Soviet Union. After pleading several times, the Rebbe told him: "They are on their way here." About a week before Hanukkah of that year, the family members arrived in Israel. The family members settled in a Chabad village and the father was appointed director of the local Talmud Torah. His son Chaim, z"l, studied in the Talmud Torah and in a small yeshiva, and later went to study in the yeshiva in the courtyard of the Lubavitcher Rebbe at the Chabad World Center-770. After marrying his wife, the daughter of the late Rabbi Ephraim Rosenblum of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, he went on a mission in the state of Connecticut, and a few years later, he moved to New York and began his mission at the Chabad Kollel. His brothers are Rabbi Elimelech Gurvitz - Chabad Missionary in Yorba Linda, California, Rabbi Yosef Yitzhak Gurvitz - Crown Heights, Governor Rabbi Menachem Mendel Gurvitz - Crown Heights, his brother-in-law Rabbi David Friedman - Kfar Chabad, and Rabbi Elchanan Dov of Rozov - Kfar Chabad.