A precious light dims with Yakar founder Mickey Rosen's death

By Raphael Ahren, Haaretz Correspondent



Tributes came in from all over the world for Rabbi Michael (Mickey) Rosen, one of the most popular and most revered Anglo rabbis in the country, who died Sunday in Jerusalem, aged 63.

Rosen had amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, the degenerative neurological disorder known as Lou Gehrig's disease. He had been in a coma for three weeks after sustaining serious injuries in a fall.

Best known for founding the Modern Orthodox Yakar communities in London and later in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, Rosen was also committed to social activism and political engagement in many different areas.
Advertisement

Yakar in Jerusalem's Old Katamon neighborhood is known for its soulful, Carlebach-inspired prayer services and is very popular with the city's English-speakers.

"Mickey's wife Gila is surrounded by a mob of people," Rosen's mother-in-law, Micheline Katzersdorfer, said yesterday about the shiva at the Rosen residence.

She wasn't exaggerating. At around noon the house was filled with around 100 people of all ages and religious orientations. Relative and visitors spoke animatedly, recalling fond memories of Rosen that touched on his deep spirituality and the respect and openness with which he greeted every person he met.

"At the funeral, so many people came up to me and told me that Mickey had completely changed their lives," Katzersdorfer said.

"It reminded me of when he was the rabbi of Sale, a suburb of Manchester, in the 1980s. Under his influence a whole group of people became so enveloped in yiddishkeit, that they all immigrated and moved to Jerusalem together. He was the hero of the town, but not because of that. They loved him because he played on the football team," Katzersdorfer said.

"For somebody who believed as deeply as he did and was so careful about Halacha, his openness toward secular wisdom, his seeing truth in secular wisdom and his progressive, liberal political understanding, were a special and valuable contribution to religious life in this country," Rabbi Levi Lauer, a close friend, said.

"In Israel, religion is often seen as something primitive, people either practice it even though they see it as primitive, or they don't do anything at all," Rabbi Yehoshua Engelman, who was the rabbi of Yakar in London before being recruited by Rosen to lead the new Yakar branch in Tel Aviv, said.

"Mickey was someone who passionately tried to show that the Jewish God is also an intelligent God. In Yakar, he showed that religion is not primitive, that it can be worthwhile, that it can classy, intellectual and serious and also spiritual, deep and challenging. Mickey always wanted people to challenge themselves."

Rabbi Rosen is survived by his wife Gila, six children and seven grandchildren.