My beloved friend Rabbi Pinter combined a love of Yiddishkeit with tremendous wisdom and compassion. Since I heard of his death my heart bleeds and I can find no comfort. There will never be another like him.
Avruham Pinter was a Chasidic rabbi who claimed a direct lineage to the Baal Shem Tov. He was a Labour Councillor, the only person to ever beat Tony Blair in an election when they both stood for a seat on Hackney Council in 1982.
In the unique eco-system of Stamford Hill, home to the largest Chasidic community in Europe and which has since attracted devout Muslims from Kashmir as well as Christians from Nigeria and Ghana, Rabbi Pinter was crucial in keeping the peace.
His word was respected by all of them and he built durable coalitions around Kosher and Halal ritual slaughter, religious education and joint representation on medical boards concerning autopsy. He was also the driving force behind the Yisodey Hatorah School for Girls, the first Charedi School to receive state funding and work within the national curriculum.
Above all, and harder than all this, Avruham Pinter, for many years, was trusted by the different Chasidic groups and represented them on the Kedassia board, in the Union of Independent Orthodox Congregations and to the outside world.
To me, they all looked the same but when I stood with him, the differences between the Beltz, the Satmar, the Bobov and the Vishnitz were enormous. His work was accompanied by a permanent murmur of dissent, and accusations of betrayal, but he was respected by each of the Chasidic houses.
Tehilim for his recovery were recited in gardens across Stamford Hill in the fine weather we have had during this plague ridden Pesach. This one did not pass over Rabbi Pinter’s house, and I guess he got it pleading with Chasidim not to go to Shul. It took a couple of weeks for the message to get through. You could say that he gave his life so that others should live.
What I wanted to share with you, however, was not his tremendous ability and achievements as a community organiser, leader and educator but our friendship and the stories he told me.
He was faithful in all ways. Rabbi Pinter’s father, Shmelke, was a giant in the Chasidic community. He was one of those who rebuilt the institutions of Chasidic life after their decimation by the Nazis. They were Galitzian Chasidim but the family had migrated to Vienna.
Rabbi Pinter told me the story that his Dad was friends with the caretaker’s son in the block of flats where they lived. The boy started off as a communist but switched to becoming a Nazi. All contact ceased. One night the uniformed young man knocked on their door and said that they had to leave, immediately. That the brownshirts were coming for them and they would be killed that night.
Rabbi Pinter’s grandfather was crippled and could not walk. He demanded that Shmelke abandon him and escape with the family so that they could keep Yiddishkeit alive, keep Chasidism alive. The grandfather was alone in the flat when the Nazis came, and they shot him.
Shmelke Pinter was the Principal of Yisodey Hatorah and was instrumental in rebuilding the institutional forms of orthodoxy in Stamford Hill; the Kedassia, the Mikvahs, the schools. He built community alliances ranging from the Adass to the Bratslav. His Shteeble welcomed all factions with a never-ending minyan on Heathland Road. Rabbi Pinter was totally faithful to his father’s way. He nurtured and strengthened the inheritance he received.
He rebuilt the schools, he expanded the Kashrus and he represented the concerns and interests of the community to the outside world. I used to go to his house to light Chanukah candles every year and he sang the tune for Maor Tzur that he learnt from his father, which was not like ours at all.
He had a fine strong singing voice and he relished the cadences of the melody. There was something almost operatic in his flourishes. I used to go to his shteeble on Kol Nidre and for Neilah on Yom Kippur and I can bear witness that they preserved the pronunciation, the tunes, the atmosphere of the world that was destroyed.
They said ees for oos and oos for ohs and Rabbi Pinter was full of love for his congregation and the preservation of their own distinctive ways and for all the chasidim in their devotion to preserving what had been destroyed through maintaining their own minhagim. Shmelke Pinter made a promise and Avruham Pinter had kept it too. He upheld the covenant and this was also expressed in his family.
He was a faithful husband. When his wife died he was heartbroken. Theirs was a marriage that was based on equality and respect. Mrs Gitel Pinter was the headmistress of Yisodey Hatorah, and he was the principal. He was devoted and supportive of her career throughout their married life. I saw him defer to her in all educational decisions and he was proud of her accomplishments. They built a school together and they built a home together. All of their children follow in their path, and their grandchildren. They are Chasidim, they sing and they dance, they laugh and sometimes drink. She was from the Carpathian mountains, where Rabbi Pinter told me they were even wilder than the Galitzianers. He spoke of his wife with awe. I was a bit afraid of her, and I think he was too. When she died, he thought that he missed her too much. After the year of mourning was over he still felt grief and a yearning to be with her.
To deal with that he read the entire Gomorrah in her name. I went to the Siyum to celebrate its completion and we danced together, and drank to her memory with Slivovitz. He was a man of faith, he believed that they would meet again and when they did, he could look her in the eye say that he had done his homework.
Together they ensured that the education of girls in Stamford Hill was traditional and modern in an intense form. It was a tribute to their love. When I heard that he was in intensive care I could not shake the fear that he would take his chance to be with her once more. I read Tehilim with an impending sense of doom.
And he was a faithful friend. However late or distracted I was, he was always present to keep me company when I said Kaddish for my parents.
One year I received a text when I was walking over London Bridge to give a talk, wishing me a long life for my Mum. It was a leap year and I had got the date wrong. I rang up Rabbi Pinter to arrange to meet later that night in the shteeble. He told me that he was in New York for his grandson’s bar-mitzvah. I panicked and asked what I should do. He told me he would ring me back. Within half an hour he had rung his brother and arranged for him to meet me at 10.30 at night so I could say Kaddish with company.
That was one of many acts of friendship. He would drive me every year to my parents grave at Waltham Abbey. He would always give me Shmura Matzes on Pesach, that he assured me were hand baked and came from Jerusalem. Not easy to get, he would tell me. He came with me to Shivas, and even returned to visit my Aunty Marion in her year of mourning. I sat in wonder as they unburdened themselves of their grief to each other.
His ability to connect and establish trust with people from all parts of the community was a wonder to me. I had lunch with him, the last time I saw him, after the Megillah on Purim on March 10. I marvelled at the old fashioned costumes his grandchildren were wearing. The firemen had painted on curly moustaches unseen since the Hapsburg Empire. The nurses were out of the Crimean War.
When I wrote my story about visiting my grandfather’s shtetl for the JC last summer it was Rabbi Pinter who translated the Psalms himself when he considered my translations a bit wonky. He engaged with all his heart with being a faithful translator. And a faithful friend. When my wife was ill he rang every day and recommended doctors and told me to read six Psalms a day for her recovery. I was reading Psalm 41 when I was told that he had died. ‘Blessed is he who acts wisely for the weak’. ‘Ashrei Maskil el Dal’. That was him.
He used to say that we should see more of each other, study more together, do more together and the memory of that is a shame to me now. ‘It’s good to be together’ he used to say. It was. Very good.
On Tisha Be’av we used to read Eicho, the Book of Lamentations together sitting on low chairs in a dark candle-lit shteeble. ‘Behold the deserted City that was once so full of people’. And it feels like Tisha Be’av now. I know that the streets of Stamford Hill will soon be crowded once more but the man who mattered most to me will not be there.
I have lost him, and I do not have his faith that we will meet again. I only know that to be his friend was one of the great blessings of my life. The 19th of Nissan is now my third yoorzeit but where will I say Kaddish? And who will keep me company?
