Yitzchok Zilber

Rabbi Yitzchok Zilber died in 2004, on the eve of Tisha b'Av (the Ninth of Av), the greatest day of tragedy in Jewish history.

He was available to everyone who came to seek his advice, which led to his fame in certain circles as "the father of Russian Jewry." Rabbi Zilber taught in Russian organizations such as Dvar Yerushalayim, Torat Haim, the Russian division of Ohr Somayach, Shuvu, and Shvut Ami. In 2000, he established the Toldos Yeshurun organization to provide Jewish education to the secular Russian Jews, which continues his work today, under the guidance of his only son, Rabbi Ben Tzion Zilber.

After World War II, Rabbi Zilber was imprisoned in a gulag for a technical accidental crime (a fellow Jew left some illegal papers by him, and a search revealed them. He did not want to tell to police whom had left the papers by him and so he was consequently imprisoned. Ironically, the owner himself regretted Rabbi Zilber being imprisoned for him and went to the police to admit his responsibility. As typical to Russia at the time, they happily admitted him to prison as well, leaving Rabbi Zilber there as well). He was forced to do heavy menial labor, but later attested to having never violated the Jewish Sabbath and other Torah commandments. Indeed, he taught Torah to other Jewish prisoners. Rabbi Zilber received amnesty after Stalin's death in 1953, and returned to Kazan. While not openly violating state rules, in 1960 the KGB started harassing him, making a cover story about the sorry children of a religiously fanatic father who makes them suffer for Jewish laws etc. A large gathering was announced in the school where he taught and in the school where his wife taught. He was barred from his teaching job, and the KGB also attempted to take his children away from him, and promising his wife an apartment and a quiet life if she would agree to a divorce. When he received an invitation for an interview in the KGB, Yitzchok Zilber fled from Kazan, and after a long journey stayed in Tashkent and was able to move his family there a short time later. The family tried to emigrate to Israel, but was refused for years, until they finally received permission and emigrated in 1972.

Rabbi Yitzchok Yosef Zilber (1917–2004) was a Russian, later Israeli-Russian Haredi rabbi and a leader of the Russian baal teshuva movement.

Rabbi Yitzchok Zilber was born in Kazan, Russia, several months before the Bolshevik Russian Revolution in 1917. His father, Rabbi Ben Tzion Chaim Zilber (originally Tsiyuni), a respected rabbinic scholar and rabbi of the city of Kazan, refused to send his son to an anti-religious Soviet school and taught him privately at home, teaching him Jewish law and tradition as well as secular knowledge. By the time young Yitzchok Zilber was 15, he was giving classes in Judaism across the town, despite the fact that this was against the Soviet law. His brilliance gained him entrance to the faculty of Mathematics of the University of Kazan despite never having attended public school. Rabbi Zilber married Gita Zeidman, and they had four children – Sarah, Ben Tzion Chaim, Chava, and Fruma Malka.