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Rabbi Uri Dasberg

הרב אורי דסברג.jpg

Uri was born on January 17, 1946, in Hilversum, Holland. His parents had managed to recover all four of their children alive and well from their hiding place during the Holocaust, and also to find two daughters of their friends. Additionally, they brought back another thirty orphaned survivors to join their home and family. Uri was the first baby born in this home/institution after the Holocaust, and his birth brought hope and joy to all the children.

 

In 1949 the family immigrated to Israel, and the rest of the children of the institution also moved to Israel, with the aid of the Youth Aliyah organization, to live with their relatives, or to kibbutzim or institutions. After staying in various places on a temporary basis, the family settled in Kfar Batya following the appointment of Uri’s father, Rabbi Natan Dasberg, as director of the Youth village. The family lived in Kfar Batya for twenty-five years. Uri studied at the Nechalim high school yeshiva, before moving on, in 1967, to Yeshivat Merkaz Harav. Already at that age he was a scholar of great depth, with an impressive breadth of knowledge. In those pre-computer days he organized everything he learned, from novelties to general topics, on index cards, and he summarized every class with great insight. His synopses of the lessons given by Rabbi Zolty on Saturday nights were passed among all the students during the week, until the rabbi eventually requested them himself in order to publish them in book form. Uri was present at the famous party on Independence Day, when Rabbi Zvi Yehuda Kook, the Nazir (Rabbi David Cohen), Rabbi Yisraeli and the “youth,” Hanan Porat, all spoke. As he did for all his lessons, he wrote summaries of their speeches, and it later turned out that he was the only one who had recorded their comments (he subsequently published them).

 

 

After the Six-Day War, Uri decided to enlist in the army and to that end he sought a “Hesder” framework. He therefore moved to Yeshivat Kerem B’Yavneh, where he remained for three years. In 1962 he married Yehudit, nee Ganz, and established his home in Even Shmuel. Later he moved to Jerusalem, where he continued to study at Merkaz HaRav, while in the afternoons he learned in the kollel near Kiryat No’ar. He received his rabbinical ordination from Rabbi Zolty, Rabbi Yisraeli and Rabbi Avraham Shapira.

 

In 1973 he moved with his family to Toronto for three years on shlichut [emissary for Israel], and together with his friend Rabbi Yehuda Felix he set up a Zionistic yeshiva high school, and an Ulpana for girls the following year. They encouraged all the students to come to Israel to learn for a year after high school, an idea that was a novelty at the time.

 

In 1976, the family returned to Israel and made their home in Alon Shvut, Gush Etzion, where Rabbi Uri lived with his family until his last day, May 24, 2011. Tragically, on June 9, 1996, his daughter Effi and his son-in-law Yaron were shot and wounded by terrorists. Following that calamity, the rabbi and his wife educated the surviving children Dvir and Yishai in their home in Alon Shvut.

 

In 1977 Rabbi Dasberg began working for the Encyclopedia Talmudit, diligently preparing the index for the first seventeen volumes. In May 1988 he left his job at the Encyclopedia and joined the Zomet Institute, which stands for Tzevtei Mada veTorah (“Teams of Science and Torah”). There he made use of his originality and technological skills, as he invented solutions for milking on Shabbat; the Holiday Gas Timer (Chagaz), a spring-operated mechanical which turns off a flame at a preset time; the “Shab-et,” or Shabbat pen, whose ink does not last more than 24 hours, and therefore may be used on Shabbat in cases of urgent needs, for doctors or the police. At Tzomet he also edited the weekly “Shabbat Beshabbato” bulletin, as well as the halachic yearbook Tchumin.

 

In 1989 he was again invited by Rabbi Hutner to take charge of the editorial board and the work needed for the encyclopedia. He initiated the publication of subsidiary books of the encyclopedia, such as: The weekly parasha in Halakha; a Passover Haggadah; a Treasury for Hanukkah; volumes of entries in accordance with various Talmudic tractates, and more.

 

On Tuesday, May 24, 2011, Rabbi Dasberg was killed in a car accident. He had just completed a trip on which he explored his roots and visited the graves of his ancestors in the Netherlands, from where he had returned that very morning.

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