Rav Eliezer Zusia Portugal of Skulen

Early years

Rav Eliezer Zusia Portugal zy"a, the first Skulener Rebbe, was born in Skulen (Sculeni), in what is now Moldova, on 1 Cheshvan (17 October) 1898. His father, Rav Yisroel Avrohom Portugal, was the Rav of the town. The young Eliezer Zusia became a prominent follower of the Shtefaneshter Rebbe.

He was only seventeen when his father passed away, and he was appointed Rav of Skulen in his father’s place, his first public position. He did not become a Chassidic Rebbe until he was well into his sixties.

Torah and leadership

In Skulen, Rav Eliezer Zusia was successful with both young and old because of his unusual warmth and compassion. He was especially effective with the Jewish youth of the town, who were rapidly drifting away from mitzvah observance. Rather than give up on them, he drew them close with love and with discussions about the deeper meaning of Yiddishkeit, and many came back to their heritage.

The Sadigerer Rebbe, Rav Mordechai Sholom Yosef Friedman, visited Skulen and saw what Rav Eliezer Zusia had achieved. He urged him to move to the much larger city of Czernowitz, in Bukovina. Its Jewish population of about 21,500 out of 68,400 residents was also suffering from widespread assimilation. The religious Jews of Czernowitz, together with the nearby Chassidic courts of Sadigura, Vizhnitz and Boyan, appointed him as their Rav so that they might preserve what they could. He lived in Czernowitz through the Second World War. The city was annexed by the Soviet Union in 1940 as part of Northern Bukovina, then occupied by German and Romanian forces, until the Soviet army liberated it in April 1944.

Beginning in 1945, Rav Eliezer Zusia took dozens of war orphans into his care as his own children and looked after hundreds of others. When he was able to move to Bucharest, Romania, he brought his family of children with him and adopted still more, setting up an orphanage for them. In his will he asked that his children show their appreciation by staying loyal to Yiddishkeit and learning Torah at every possible moment.

In 1959 the Communist government of Romania accused him of spying for Israel and the United States, and he was imprisoned together with his only son, Rav Yisroel Avrohom. Mr. Harry Goodman, Rav Eliezer Silver and the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rav Menachem Mendel Schneerson, led an international effort to free them, and through the intervention of the United States Department of State they were released in August 1959.

Later years and passing

Rav Eliezer Zusia immigrated to the United States in 1960. He later explained that he chose America over Israel so that he could better help those who remained in Romania. He settled in Crown Heights and continued his work for the underprivileged. As the Jewish population there thinned, his followers moved to Boro Park and Williamsburg, but he stayed in Crown Heights out of respect for the Lubavitcher Rebbe’s request that the community remain. Because his davening was so long, and there were few Skulener chassidim nearby, a daily minyan was formed in his home with talmidim from Lubavitch. He later moved to Williamsburg.

When others urged him to open a yeshivah, he asked, “What would my yeshivah add to all the others? A person who wants to do a mitzvah must ask how he can give the most pleasure to Hashem.” Instead he established a network of schools called Chesed L’Avrohom. In Israel these schools competed with secular leftist schools for the children of new immigrants.

In 1961 he visited Israel for the first time. He took a side trip to a leftist kibbutz in order to forgive a Romanian socialist who had been one of his fiercest opponents years earlier. It is told that the man’s descendants became observant Jews.

Rav Eliezer Zusia passed away on 29 Av 5742 (18 August 1982) and was buried in the Vizhnitzer cemetery in Monsey, New York. His only son, Rav Yisroel Avrohom Portugal, succeeded him as Skulener Rebbe.

Legacy

Rav Eliezer Zusia is best remembered for his tireless efforts to rescue Jewish orphans and refugees in Eastern Europe before, during and after the Second World War, and for his continuing support of them. He was revered by his followers in Russia, Romania, Israel and the United States for his personal warmth and his care for hundreds of Jewish youth and war orphans, whom he personally adopted. The Chesed L’Avrohom schools he founded continue to this day.

He is the author of the seforim Noam Eliezer and Kedushas Eliezer. Those who merited to be in his presence were astonished by the length of his tefillos and by the beauty and intensity of the niggunim he composed, many of which are now sung around the world.