A Tribute to Rabbi Jacob Kret {1909-2007}
Profile The Diminutive Giant: A TRIBUTE TO RABBI JACOB KRET {1909-2007} Photo courtesy of Norman Kret By Chava Willig Levy o,when are you hannouncing?” from the moment my husband-to-be, largest Jewish community. But when “She asked me. soon after we began dating, introduced Rabbi Kret became its spiritual leader in I loved talking with—and listen- us on February 26, 1983. (He asked 1950, he struggled mightily just to ing to—Rabbi Kret. There were superfi- when we were hannouncing eight round up a minyan, or quorum of ten cial reasons for this: As a wheelchair weeks later.) men, for services. His smile never left user accustomed to speaking to people’s him. He was happy to be alive. stomachs, I found it a pleasure to con- An eyewitness to World War II verse with Rabbi Jacob Kret, who meas- “The Krets’ hospitality (and World War I, for that matter), ured little over five feet tall. Talking Rabbi Kret lost his parents and all of his with him meant never having to strain taught me a fundamental siblings—in fact, over 120 close rela- to gaze at his face. And as a wordsmith, truth: Some people have tives—to Hitler’s henchmen. A brilliant I was amused by his fractured English everything and give noth- Talmudic scholar, he shepherded his (in one sermon, he referred to a tele- Polish yeshivah eastward, always one scope as a microphone) and counter- ing; others have nothing step ahead of the Nazis’ claws. In 1940, Cockney accent (or, as he would have and give everything.” he was imprisoned and sent to a forced called it, haccent).
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