The Jewish history of independent Latvia between the wars (1918-1940), is closely intertwined with the life of Mordechai Dubin (1889-1957)1, the leader of the Riga Jewish community. As a member of the national assembly that voted for Latvian independence following the end of World War I, he played a prominent role in Latvian Jewish life from the beginning of the country’s autonomous rule.
As the leader of the Agudas Yisroel party2 and a deputy in the Latvian Saeima (parliament) for the duration of its existence, Mordechai Dubin stood on guard for Jewish interests, battling discrimination against the Jewish minority.3 He was also a Lubavitcher Chassid, and was charged twice with the great task of taking a leading role in the rescue of the sixth Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn, of righteous memory, from certain death at the hands of the Bolsheviks in 1927, and the Nazis in 1939.
Following the May 1934 coup led by Karlis Ulmanis4 and the subsequent dissolution of the Saeima, Dubin remained the widely-acknowledged representative of Latvian Jewry—in the eyes of the authorities and the Jews themselves.
A Brief Introduction
I first met Mordechai Dubin in the spring of 1928, while still a student in the oldest class of the Torah VeDerech Eretz gymnasium.5 From the beginning of 1929 and until the Soviet occupation of Latvia [in 1940], I worked as personal secretary to this leading European Jewish communal figure.
Aside from me, Dubin had two other secretaries: Lazar Golovchiner6 and Gershom Tulbovich. They worked in a separate office, operating under Dubin’s direction to deal with various government institutions and official papers, while I was placed near Dubin himself, recording requests lodged by visitors to our office and handling the vast flow of letters he received from Jews throughout the country. Dubin also used us as couriers to fulfill his assorted instructions.
Mordechai Dubin’s workday began early in the morning. He always prayed at the first minyan at the Chabad Chassidic synagogue in Berg’s Bazaar, and after prayers would study a chapter of Mishnayos together with the other congregants. On Shabbos he was baal koreh, the Torah reader, at this synagogue.
The first of his daily visitors were already waiting for him at the synagogue, most often Jews from the provinces who arrived in the city that morning and came straight to the synagogue from the train station, which was close to the synagogue. After prayers Dubin returned home, where he was greeted by yet more Jews in need of his help with government problems. Local Riga Jews usually visited him in the evenings at the offices of the Jewish community, where we, Dubin’s secretaries, helped them fill out official paperwork and the like. Dubin always tried to fulfill a request the same day he received it, especially when it was on the behalf of a Jew from the provinces, for whom every extra day spent in Riga was an added expense.
He fulfilled his responsibilities as community leader systematically, and each morning laid out a daily work schedule. Some issues could be solved over the telephone and others through his secretaries; nevertheless, every day there were things he had to tend to personally, and would himself call on the various institutions of government as well. Even in the summer, when he was at his dacha outside of the city, tens of Jews waited for him at the train station in Riga hoping to meet him and have their problems with the government resolved.
For Mordechai Dubin there was nothing more important in life than helping a fellow Jew, and he rendered assistance no matter who was asking. He never denied anyone help, even if that person was, for example, a Communist who might just recently have publicly denounced him.
In 1931 the Soviet-Jewish writer David Bergelson7 visited Riga and took part in an illegal meeting of an ultra-left-wing Jewish organization. The political police followed the trail easily and arrested all of the meeting’s participants, including Bergelson. The editor of the Frimorgn [Zeev] Latski-Bertoldi, who in his time had served as a minister in Petliura’s8 cabinet, woke Dubin in the middle of the night begging that he help free Bergelson. Latski-Bertoldi had on a daily basis attacked Dubin in his newspaper, but now the conversation was about saving a fellow Jew and all arguments and differences of opinion faded away. By morning Dubin was knocking on all necessary doors and Bergelson was soon released.9
That very same Mordechai Dubin, the leader of the religious political party Agudas Yisroel and a fiery follower of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, successfully opposed attempts by the Ministry of Culture to diminish government subsidies to a Jewish theater. As a member of the parliamentary budget committee, Dubin demanded from the government that on the contrary, the committee actually increase its assistance to the theater. I personally witnessed how the director of the theater came to thank Dubin for his help.
“How to explain your energetic fighting for us, even though you yourself have never even been to our theater?” asked the director, with a smile.
“It’s true, I’ve never once been in your theater, and will not go henceforth, either. And the fact that I fought for you also does not mean that I approve of what the theater is doing... At the same time, I maintain that we should receive to the fullest everything we deserve from the government, just like every other minority,” Dubin replied.
At his request, however, from that point on the theater did not operate on Shabbos or on Jewish holidays.
The Seventh Day Adventist Christian sect had become very popular in Latvia at the time. Its members mark Saturday not Sunday as a holy day, and therefore it was written into the country’s defense laws that if necessary for religious reasons, soldiers could be excused from their military duties on Saturday, although instead of serving the 15 months prescribed by law they had to serve an additional three months. On the basis of this law Mordechai Dubin arranged for all Shabbos-observant Jewish soldiers to serve together in one regiment and one place. In this way Jewish soldiers could take leave of the barracks on Shabbos and spend it either at home or together with other Jewish families. In Riga itself, Dubin organized a kosher kitchen to serve the Jewish soldiers.
Dubin’s political opponents liked to spread rumors that he was a close companion of President Ulmanis. Dubin certainly had free access to Ulmanis, but as Dubin’s personal secretary I can attest to the fact that he was not in any way Ulmanis’ crony, and the only activities he took part in were on behalf of Jewish causes.
Dubin’s own personal affairs were of the least concern to him. I was often at his working meetings with colleagues; entrepreneurial and commercial activities were never of top concern for him. When the Saeima ceased to exist and the former deputies received the right to draw a government pension, Mordechai Dubin was the only one to turn it down. Understanding that soon he would be forced to sound the alarm like never before, he wanted to be free of any obligations to the authorities before whom he’d have to argue for Jewish communal concerns.
As a member of Riga’s city council, Dubin had the right to ride for free not only on municipal transport but even on privately-owned lines, the owners of which had received the rights from the city council. Dubin refused this right as well, always paying for his own tickets.
Without anyone knowing about it, he generously distributed alms and donations. He did not limit himself to using his skills to secure funds for distribution from the government treasury, but helped many organizations and private individuals from his own pocket.
Mordechai Dubin actively participated in the first three world conferences of the Agudas Yisroel party and was one of the few people who sponsored the third gathering. He was a member of the executive committee of the World Agudas Yisroel Organization, and shone with joy seeing the level of respect accorded to the Torah giants and scholars who were present. He honored them greatly too.
In 1929 Mordechai Dubin accompanied the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn, on his first visit to America, which took place not long after the latter was freed from the Soviet Union. Together with the Rebbe, Dubin was honored with an audience with the American President Herbert Hoover.10 But the needs of Latvia’s Jews did not let him rest, and Dubin did not allow himself to remain in America for long. As a member of a number of parliamentary committees, among them the budgetary one, he felt he needed to be in Riga so as to be able to protect the Jews from any oppression or harassment. (It’s worth noting that non-Jews often turned to him for help as well, whom he also never turned down.)
His work to save the Rebbe from Soviet imprisonment is famous throughout the Jewish world, but he saved the lives of many other, lesser-known Jews too. In America and Israel today there are countless individuals who owe their lives to this giant of a man and his warm Jewish heart, which constantly beat in unison with the sorrows and hardships of the Jewish nation.
Having saved so many others, he was unable to save himself or his family. His son Schneur Zalman Dovber perished in the German concentration camps,11 his wife Fania and daughter-in-law Idel (who was from the rabbinical Pappenheim family of Vienna12) died in the Riga Ghetto. He himself died in 1957 in a Stalinist labor camp.13
His majestic image is constantly before my eyes. I imagine him at the dais in the Saeima, at the Jewish community board, or in the hall of the city council. Sometimes I see him, with a tallis over his shoulders, at the minyan of the Lubavitcher Rebbe. And at other times I see him at a conference of the World Agudas Yisroel in Marienbad, surrounded by the great Polish and Lithuanian rabbis, and at the same time by simple, poshuteh Jews. This is why I feel not just a debt, but an inner obligation, to tell the Jews of the entire world how great of a man—and how great a Jew—was Mordechai Dubin.
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