Rebbetzin Rivka Rubashkin, Matriarch of a Chabad Family, Dies in New York

Rebbetzin Rivka Rubashkin, the matriarch of a well-known Chabad family and mother of the famous prisoner Sholom Mordechai Rubashkin, died in New York on Sunday, Rosh Chodesh Tammuz, at the age of 98 or 99. She was one of the most familiar and beloved figures in Borough Park, Brooklyn, and news of her death brought mourning across Chabad communities in the United States and around the world.

She was the wife and longtime partner of Rabbi Avraham Aaron Rubashkin, who died in 2020 and was considered a pioneer of kosher and glatt-kosher meat in America. Together they built a large business and philanthropy network in Borough Park, where their home on 55th Street became known as an open house for rabbis, rebbes, yeshiva students, and needy families. Her late husband’s business, started with Rabbi Alter Liberman on 14th Avenue, later grew into the Rubashkin meat empire.

Born Rivka Chazanov in the Chabad town of Novol in Russia, she fled with her family after the Nazi invasion in July 1941 and reached Samarkand, Uzbekistan. After the war, she and her husband passed through Lviv, refugee camps in Austria, and Paris in 1947 before immigrating permanently to New York in 1953. From the early 1960s, she also ran the legendary Crown’s Deli on 13th Avenue, which locals remember as a quiet charity operation that served hot kosher meals to anyone who was hungry, poor, or homeless, often without taking payment.

The article says the couple also supported Torah institutions, charitable causes, Jewish immigrants from the former Soviet Union, widows, orphans, and wedding expenses for struggling families, often anonymously. She leaves behind many children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, including Sholom Mordechai Rubashkin. Her funeral was scheduled for Monday in New York, with processions passing her Borough Park home at 12:15 p.m., the Chabad world headquarters at 770 in Crown Heights at 2:15 p.m., and burial at 3:30 p.m. near the Lubavitcher Rebbe’s ohel.