Monsey Memories: Rabbi Isaac Minsky

Monsey Memories: Rabbi Isaac Minsky

Yitzy Fried 

In the Congregation Sons of Israel section of the Monsey Cemetery, lies the kever of Rabbi Yitzchok Minsky, who served as Rov in the Songs of Israel congregation of Spring Valley. 

Rabbi Minsky hailed from Lida, in Belarus, where he was born in 1884. His father was Mordechai. in 1905, he came over to America, and he was instrumental in bringing over his family members to the United States. 

He married Rose Jacoby from Throop, Pennsylvania, in the year 1926 and soon took a position as the rabbi of Sons of Israel in Spring Valley.

“My father loved Spring Valley," recalled a son, Raphael Minsky, in a conversation with Rockland Daily.

Raphael is the 94-year-old son of Rabbi Minsky, and despite the 85 years that have elapsed since the passing of his father, he remembers his father vividly, in the fondest way. 

“He was the most loving father…he took me everywhere with him,” he recalled tearfully. 

“On the first day of kindergarten, the teacher asked us to raise our hand if we knew the alphabet. I raised both my hands, and the teacher asked me, ‘why did you raise both your hands?’ and I answered, ‘because I know two alphabets.’ My father had taught me the Hebrew alphabet while I sat on his lap.” 

Around 1930, he took a position as a rabbi in Wilmington, North Carolina.

“They loved him in Wilmington, and they gifted him a few dunam of land in Israel. He always intended to retire and move to Israel, my mother told us,” Raphael said.  

Together with his father, Rabbi Minsky opened a series of Hebrew schools in New York. 

Sadly, he suffered an aneurysm at Penn Station and was niftar shortly thereafter. He was interred in the Monsey Cemetery, and despite the decades that have elapsed, his children have kept his memory in their hearts to this very day.