Mrs. Devorah Groner, pioneering matriarch of Melbourne Jewry, passed away Sunday. She was 92.
She was born in Smolensk, Russia, in the spring of 1926 to Rabbi Chaim Tzvi and Breina Konikov, devoted Chabad Chassidim. Having served as a community rabbi, and determined not to work on Shabbat, Rabbi Chaim Tzvi found piecework employment making clothing from home, one of the few professions in Soviet Russia that allowed a worker to set his or her own hours. Also blessed with mechanical skills, he soon found himself fixing the sewing machines and equipment of many other Chassidic workers who were engaged in similar trades.
His success aroused some jealousy, and he soon found himself the target of unwanted attention from the Soviet authorities. In 1929, armed with affidavits and tickets from relatives in the United States, the Konikov family immigrated to the U.S. and settled in New Jersey. Devorah was four years old at the time. She would later recall how difficult it was to acclimate to an American kindergarten where only English was spoken. Years later, when groups of Russian children came to Australia and enrolled in the schools her husband led, she reached out and was able to relate to them personally and ease their transition by empathizing with their immigrant experience.
In 1933, her father was appointed rabbi of the Tzemach Tzedek synagogue in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, N.Y. Besides for his official rabbinical duties, Rabbi Konikov was deeply involved in many aspects of Jewish education. He would gather children on Shabbat afternoon for treats, Torah thoughts and stories. He taught them basic Judaism after their public school days. He even released records in which he spoke and sang in Yiddish. These projects were often family affairs and Devorah and her brothers would each contribute to the efforts in any way they could.
Devorah inherited her father’s knack for teaching. In 1942, she began teaching the first class in the nascent Beth Rivkah school in Brooklyn, which was being founded by the Sixth Chabad-Lubavitch Rebbe, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn of righteous memory, and headed by his son-in-law and subsequent successor, the Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, of righteous memory.
At some point Devorah heard from her after-school charges (she taught during and after the school day in several institutions) that Catholic children in their public schools received an hour of religious training during the public-school day. Discussing it with her father, they consulted with the Rebbe, who strongly encouraged them to teach the Jewish children Judaism. These early efforts quickly grew into the Released Time Program directed by Chabad-Lubavitch’s National Council for Furtherance of Jewish Education, which was closely overseen and spurred on by the Rebbe. Thousands of Jewish children receive weekly doses of Jewish education and inspiration until this day from the program.
Devorah Groner's father, Rabbi Chaim Tzvi Konikov, center, and Rabbi Yitzchok Dovid Groner, right, at the couple's engagement.
As an older teen, she was sent by the Sixth Rebbe to teach in the Chabad-Lubavitch schools that were being founded across the East Coast. In an era when phone calls were prohibitive, this entailed significant hardship, often living alone far from family and friends.
In 1946, she married Rabbi Yitzchok Dovid Groner, a promising young scholar and communal leader, who had been sent to lead the school in Providence, R.I., where she had been teaching. In 1947, the newly married rabbi was sent by the Rebbe on a spiritual tour of Australia and New Zealand to assess the religious needs of the Jewish communities which were growing rapidly through in influx of European immigrants after the Holocaust. The trip to Melbourne took 55 hours.
“The task of inspiring people is a necessity, and this—awakening people—is ikar ha’ikrim [the main part],” wrote the Rebbe.
The trip to Melbourne was his first connection to a community that would end up adoring the Groners’ fearless and unabashed dedication to Jewish activism, and their boundless love for every Jew
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