Rabbi Yitzchok Lowenbraun, or Reb Itchie as he was affectionately called, wasn’t just a rebbi for his students — he was a father. He and his wife, Rebbetzin Miriam Lowenbraun a”h, changed the lives of hundreds, if not thousands, of public school youth and their families
Reb Itchie’s father, Reb Yosef Hersch Lowenbraun a”h, was born in Bochnia, Galicia. He learned alongside Rav Shlomo Halberstam ztz”l, the third Bobover Rebbe, and the two developed a lifelong friendship. In 1939, he left his wife and two sons behind in Poland to visit his parents who had settled in Brownsville, Brooklyn. The war suddenly broke out in the middle of his visit and he was unable to return home to Europe. His first wife and sons perished at the hands of the Nazis y”sh.
After the war he remarried Edith Eichenbaum (a relative of Sara Schenirer) and opened up the famous Lowen’s Bakery in Crown Heights. The Lowenbrauns had three sons — Benzion, Yitzchok, and Shloime. All of the boys attended the Bobover cheder in Crown Heights.
When Rav Shlomo Halberstam came to America in 1946, Mr. Lowenbraun greeted him at the port. “He was one of the first Bobover chassidim in America at the time,” his oldest son, Mr. Benzion Lowenbraun, recalled. “But he was more than a chassid. I heard many times from the Rebbe that my father was one of his closest friends.”
Reb Yosef Hersch passed away suddenly in 1959, when Itchie was only 10 years old. The Bobover Rebbe’s driver said that he never saw the Rebbe cry so much for a chassid before. After their father’s death, the Lowenbraun boys had an open door to the Rebbe’s house.
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