Dear Rabbi YZKD@aol.com

By Noach Fox

As I sit devastated and saddened by the passing of my dear cousin and friend, hagaon hachosid Reb Yitzchok Zirkind ZA”L, it is hard for me to put into words the sadness and heartbreak I feel for his beloved family.

I’m not going to describe to you the great Hachnosos Orchim he and his Rebbetzin Shterna did for the thousands of guests over the years, making everyone from New York to as far away as Australia (her hometown) feel at home and like a family member.

I will not go at length into how he raised a wonderful family of children who learn and daven and cling to the derech their father showed them.

I am not going to delve into what I saw of his avodas hatefilah, what kind of yirei shamayim he was and his kiyum hamitzvos b’hidur, because this is between him and the One Above Who knows the truth.

I will not tell you how careful he was with kashrus or how he baked his own Matzah and made his own wine for Pesach.

I really do not want to talk about a person whose erlichkeit and decency knew no boundaries and that anyone who knew him could vouch for that.

And I cannot fully express how humble he was and what an example of ‘hatznei leches’ he was, making his way daily by foot on Eastern Parkway, left on New York Avenue, down to Beis Rivka on Crown Street to work as a bookkeeper in order to support his family in an honest manner.

What I did want to share with you is a few words about his knowledge and broad scope of Torah and halacha because in the opinion of many great Talmidei Chachomim, Reb Yitzchok was probably one of the few who knew the Alter Rebbe’s Shulchan Aruch, crystal clear from beginning to end.

He toiled over the halachas over and over, alone and with colleagues, and then he reviewed them again and again. Every diyuk, every line, every extra word the Alter Rebbe used was a Lumdes in itself.

To Reb Yitzchok, the Alter Rebbe’s Shulchan Aruch was much more than just the understanding of the Din but first and foremost how the Din in Shulchan Aruch would change his actions and lifestyle as a Chabad Chossid.

His grasp of halacha came to play in hundreds of posts on Torah forums on the web which discussed all areas of Torah. Who can imagine how many sleepless nights he had, researching answers for all of those topics.

Using his famous pen name YZKD@aol.com, he caused a great kiddush Lubavitch by answering and interacting with so many Lomdim from other backgrounds and from around the world, answering shaallos and writing Divrei Torah to hundreds of people.

To have a person like this living in our community and for this tragedy to happen, the pain is truly unbearable and insurmountable. About a person like Reb Yitzchok we can understand the opinion in the Gemarah that says ‘mutav shenivra meshelo nivra’ (it is better that he was created than not).

In conclusion – although a single article will never be able to conclude such a special life – I would like just to share a very short story that happened with him on Purim this year, a few days before his passing.

During my usual round of delivering Shalach Monos, I went to the Zirkinds and found Reb Yitzchok in his usual joyous and festive mood. What was different was the hundreds and hundreds of seforim that would fill his bookshelves and were now missing.

I asked him about the empty bookshelves and he explained that the wooden shelves were getting old and were starting to break. He had packed away all the seforim but didn’t know what would be the next step.

Why couldn’t he just buy a new bookshelf? He said there is an opinion that mentions a chashash (a doubt) that the bookshelves which held seforim have some kind of kedusha in them (tashmish d’tashmish d’kedusha) so there might be a problem just throwing them out.

On Motzei Shabbos he took them down to see if he could fix them.

He passed away the next night at the age of 57. The aron that carried him to his final burial was made from those holy bookshelves…