Like Fathers, Like Sons

By COLlive staff

We doubt the assigning officer in the Israel Defense Forces knew he was recreating history when he sent two young rabbis for duty in an army base in Northern Israel.

The picture of a Lubavitcher chossid and a religious Zionist was more than uniting Jews from different background for the safety of the Jewish people.

When Rabbi Moshe Bistritzky, the Chabad Shliach in the Haifa area town of Kiryat Yam, met Rabbi Yinon Eliyahu, who has completed studying the entire Gemara last year, they were both reminded of their fathers.

Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu and the late Rabbi Levi Bistritzky have been a rare and unique pair in the rabbinical landscape in Israel in their roles of Chief Rabbis (Sephardi and Ashkenazi, respectively) of the holy city of Tzfas.

Despite their different backgrounds, one growing up in a Sephardic Zionist home and the other in a chassidic home in Brooklyn, they both shared a love for Torah and a fierce loyalty to halacha.

The junior Bistritzky and Eliyahu, who know each other from childhood, said they were delighted to meet up again for a noble cause.