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Sunday, September 8, 2019

A Case of a Woman and Two Husbands - 1943 postcard - Canarsie, Brooklyn

You know how rabbis like to remark in their sermons "If only you knew of the things I have to deal with"? Sometimes it is really true.
Inserted in to a book with ownership markings of Rabbi Dov Yehuda Daina, I found this postcard addressed to him sent in 1943
The postcard reads:
Dear Rabbi Diner,
Since you are the Rabbi in charge of the four synagogues in Canarsie, and you heard that Adele Rosenblum has a husband and children in Europe. She is now married to another man on 81st st, his name is Dr. Foyer. In my name please do not permit it.
yours truly,
Harry Rosenblum



Presumably, this Harry Rosenblum is a relative of her "first" husband.

Rabbi Daina was born in Slutsk, where his grandfather Reb Zundl Salant was chief judge over religious matters [for the local Jewish community]. Zundl Salant was a cousin of Reb Yosif Zundl Salant of Jerusalem, who was in turn the teacher of [the famous] Reb Yisroyl Salanter When his grandfather passed away, Dov Yehuda Daina replaced him as judge and religious authority. He was raised in Slutsk during the first eleven years of his life and in fact began studying at the Slutsk yeshiva [unusual for a boy so young].
In 1917 this judge and religious authority of Slutsk left for Harbin, Manchuria, where he remained until 1925.

From his arrival in America until his death in 1945 he lived in Canarsie [Brooklyn, N.Y.]. Rabbi Daina also brought his young son Mordkhe to Harbin, where the latter learned the Russian language fluently, at a gimnazye [government high school]. In 1925 he and his father came to America, where the son entered Yeshivat Rabbeinu Yitzchak Elchanan [rabbinical seminary now part of Yeshiva University].
The young Rabbi Daina, upon ordination, became a rabbi in Syracuse, later in Brooklyn, until becoming a military chaplain in 1944.
Due to his knowledge of the Russian language, he was sent to Shanghai [a city of refuge for escapees from the Nazi invasion of Russia and of Eastern Europe in general]. There he was among the first American Jews to meet survivors from the European yeshivas.

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