And then, one Friday night before Succos, the Rav’s home was destroyed in a devastating fire
The Tenke Rav was a talmid of the Atzei Chaim of Sighet, and he was a distinguished talmid chacham and rav before the Holocaust. He was one of those rare chassidishe rabbanim who chose to build their little shuls — embassies of the vanished worlds of Galicia, Romania, and Hungary — in the Flatbush hub of Ashkenazim and Sephardim, rather than in Boro Park or Williamsburg. Rav Yoel Teitelbaum had offered him the position of rosh yeshivah of Satmar in Williamsburg, but he declined, preferring to serve Hashem and lead a small kehillah in the relative obscurity of tree-lined Flatbush.
And then, one Friday night before Succos, the Rav’s home was destroyed in a devastating fire.
The Rav and Rebbetzin recovered from their injuries, but there was no longer a shul. So my father, the founder and rosh yeshivah of Mikdash Melech, the first Sephardic yeshivah gedolah in the Western Hemisphere, made a decision with little deliberation: He invited the Tenke Rav to reopen his shtibel in Mikdash Melech’s dining room. The dining room was used by the bochurim only for meals, and there would be no disruption of the sedorim from the arrangement.
The Rav and Rebbetzin accepted. The Tenke shtibel was now in a Sephardic yeshivah, and the Rav moved into a new home two doors away.
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