Rabbi Yitzchok Dovid Groner, the chief rabbi of Melbourne’s Chabad-Lubavitch community, died July 7 following a long illness. He was 83.
Michael Danby, a Jewish member of the Australian government and Groner’s local lawmaker, said, “No spiritual leader of the Australian Jewish community has had a bigger effect on the postwar generation, both in terms of the restoration of spiritual life and educational institutions.”
During the past 50 years, Groner built an Orthodox community of thousands of Lubavitchers and a network of institutions in Melbourne: two schools that annually educate more than 1,500 pupils; a men’s kollel; a women’s seminary; several mikvahs; and a cluster of Chabad houses throughout the city, three of which are run by the rabbi’s sons or sons-in-law.
Born in Brownsville, N.Y., in 1925, Groner was first sent to Australia and New Zealand by the Lubavitcher rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson, in 1947. He returned in 1953 before the rebbe requested he become his emissary to Australia in 1958.
Groner is survived by his wife, Devorah, his brother Leib, his eight children and dozens of grandchildren and great-grandchildren.