Community Magazine August 2016

42 COMMUNITY MAGAZINE B orn in Marrakech, Morocco on March 5 th , 1951 to Eliyahu and Soulika Abisror, Rabbi Hanania (Henry) Abisror comes from a long line of distinguished descendants. His family’s ancestry dates all the way back to Mordechai Ha’Yehudi and his surname bears ties to Shaul Ha’Melech and the tribe of Binyamin. “I’m very proud of that,” the Rabbi says. Rabbi Abisror learned by example how to blend a pious nature with the heart of a leader. Both his father and paternal grandfather were learned businessmen. The latter, however, was also a sheikh , a revered man who successfully governed Jews and Arabs together. His maternal grandfather, whose last name was Danan, was also a prominent Jew in his province. Perhaps it is from his grandfathers, then, that Rabbi Abisror gets his diplomatic nature, unreservedly greeting Jews of every nationality, granting them empathy as well as wisdom from our sages. At the age of 10, the Rabbi traveled from Morocco to France to learn in the Novardok Yeshivah under Rabbi Gershom Liebman, zt”l. The Yeshivah focused heavily on mussar, as the Rosh Yeshivah was a student of the teachings of Rabbi Yisrael Salantar, zt”l, the father of the mussar movement. As a teenager, Rabbi Abisror went back to Morocco and studied at the Etz Hayim Yeshivah in Tangier. Even more influential, however, was his decision, in 1966, to pilgrimage from Morocco to New York to learn in Brooklyn’s Mir Yeshivah. While there, he developed a close relationship with the Rosh Yeshivah, Rabbi Shraga Moshe Kalmonowitz, zt”l. “I used to spend Shabbat in Rabbi Kalmonowitz’s home and I’m very friendly with his children,” Rabbi Abisror says. There was one instance in particular, the Rabbi remembers, that truly revealed the character of the Rosh Yeshivah. “I had Rabbi Hanania (Henry) Abisror A True Torah Leader: KELLY JEMAL MASSRY