Rabbi Moshe Freedman, longtime Chabad emissary to Bahia Blanca, Argentina, passed away on July 28. He was 57 years old.
He was born in Jerusalem to Rabbi Akiva Yosef and Chana Feiga Freedman, scions of venerable Chabad families in the holy city. His father was a mohel and a shochet.
As a child, he studied in Yeshivat Torat Emet. At 15, he came to New York to study near the Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, of righteous memory. After learning in Morristown, N.J., for several years, he was sent to Montreal to bolster the yeshivah there. By the age of 20, he received rabbinic ordination from Rabbi Pinhas Hirschprung, the late chief rabbi of Montreal. He subsequently returned to New York, where he remained at the Central Chabad yeshivah in Brooklyn. Among his friends, he was known as a devoted student and passionate Chassid.
In 1985, following his marriage to Sarah Alevsky, the couple moved to Bahia Blanca, a small city 500 miles south of Buenos Aires, to help bolster Jewish life by opening a Chabad center there.
Although neither spoke Spanish, the Rebbe encouraged the couple to move to the small community and take up the position.
They discovered an aging Jewish community that had been founded in the late 19th century by Baron de Hirsch in order to help European Jews find financial stability and freedom in the New World.
In the decades since they settled in the city, the Freedmans re-energized the spiritual and communal life there. Their accomplishments include the construction of a mikvah, a sign of active Jewish life.
When the economic crisis hit Argentina in 2000, they responded with financial and moral support for hundreds of working- and middle-class Jewish families in Bahia Blanca.
In addition to his wife, the rabbi is survived by his children: Rabbi Yossi Freedman (Cleveland); Rabbi Mendy Freedman (Lyndhurst, Ohio); Rabbi Levi Freedman (Munich); Rochel Kalmenson (Ningbo, China); Rabbi Shloime Gavriel Freedman (Brooklyn, N.Y.); Mushki Freedman (Brooklyn, N.Y.); Shmuel Freedman; Nochum Freedman; Sholom Freedman; and Aidel Freedman. He is also survived by his mother; parents-in law Rabbi Leibel and Devorah Alevsky; siblings Ita Kramer, Yaffa Rivkin, Rabbi Mendy Freedman and Rabbi Dovid Freedman; and grandchildren.
The levaya will take place on Friday morning in New York, leaving from Shomrei Hadas Chapels at 1 p.m. and passing by 770 Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn at 2 p.m. on its way to Old Montefiore Cemetery in Queens, N.Y.
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