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Rabbi Dr. Abraham N. Zuroff addresses the audience at his 90th birthday celebration held in Jerusalem in 2012
Rabbi Dr. Abraham N. Zuroff passed away peacefully at the age of 92 in Jerusalem on Sunday August 3rd. He is widely remembered as the legendary founding principal of BTA (Brooklyn Talmudic Academy, or Yeshiva University High School for Boys in Brooklyn, NY).
Rabbi Zuroff built one of the rare educational institutions that was able to synthesize deep authentic Jewish learning with modern cutting-edge and culturally successful American education. In that specific period of American Jewish history, it took the steadfast and uncompromising devotion of the American born Abraham Zuroff to demonstrate that the two could be combined in a way that would attract Jewish youth to the unique fusion of authentic Jewishness and authentic wordliness (rather than a watered down version of either). He was among the few American Hebrew day school principals of his day sympathetic also to Yiddish.
But in modern Litvak collective memory, there is perhaps one incident, that took place one day before, that will be remembered even more. The Lithuanian delegation was met by a picket line of Holocaust survivors near Yad Vashem. One elderly survivor, Y. Brosh, whose entire family was murdered at Ponar, made his feelings known robustly. Like the other survivors who protested, he was wearing a yellow star on his jacket. President Brazauskas went over to to the man, hugged him and kissed him.
