Five To Be Honored for Their Avodas Hakodesh At Upcoming Agudath Israel Dinner

At the most recent Daf Yomi Siyum HaShas, in 5765, a man could be seen expertly signing for hearing-impaired participants. It was hardly Shimon Katz’s first service to Agudath Israel. He served for many years as a branch leader and national officer of Pirchei, as an officer of Agudath Israel of Midwood and has signed for the hearing-impaired at Agudath Israel conventions.

Peeking into a COPE junior accounting program class, you might encounter an animated and engaging teacher and imagine, rightly, that he has earned the respect of his students and colleagues. What you wouldn’t know is that Rabbi Daniel Baumann not only teaches at COPE Institute but was instrumental in making it the thriving school it is today, that he is a managing partner at a respected accounting firm and that he delivers a Daf Yomi shiur.

If Yisroel Golding’s work phone has caller-ID, the number 212 797-9000 is probably worn into the display screen, so often do various divisions of Agudath Israel contact him to utilize his talents and get his advice in all things graphic design. And the callers, like everyone who has ever been on the other end of Reb Yisroel’s line, are all treated with his characteristic calm and good nature – even when it’s a last-minute job (being revised for the seventeenth time).

Walk into Agudath Israel of Long Island, Rabbi Yaakov Reisman’s shul, and you can watch a truly capable and caring gabbai hard at work. Baruch Rabinowitz not only performs his duties in an efficient and reliable manner, he does so with remarkable respect and sensitivity. And when not “on duty” at the shul or raising funds for the local Kollel Avreichim or overseeing maintenance and operation of the local mikveh, he is quietly doing what he can to help others in need, whatever the need.

And if you are one of the many people fortunate to receive Pirchei Agudath Israel’s impressive e-mail newsletter, which offers inspiring divrei Torah and hashkafa, you have likely long recognized that a tremendous amount of planning and work goes into its production. But you might not know that it was Yitzchok Eckstein’s work. Or that he is inspired in so much other good that he does, by the memory of his son Shaya Dovi Eckstein, z”l, who was tragically taken from this world last year at the age of 19, and whose short but full life was a veritable study in Kiddush Hashem.

Each of these five men will be honored with an Avodas Hakodesh award at the upcoming 88th Annual Dinner of Agudath Israel of America on May 9 at the New York Hilton (with Baruch Rabinowitz to receive the Wolf Friedman Young Leadership Award).

“Our community is a sky filled with stars,” says Rabbi Chaim Dovid Zwiebel, Agudath Israel’s executive vice president. “We are very fortunate to have among us so many Yidden who go about their daily lives concerned not only about themselves but about Klal Yisroel and its needs.

“And the Avodas Hakodesh awards are intended to give us the opportunity to recognize at least a few of those special people.”

While reservations for the upcoming dinner are pouring in at a rapid pace, Agudath Israel executive director Rabbi Labish Becker is still actively encouraging members of the community to join in the gathering.

“The more who are mishtatef in the Agudah’s annual dinner,” he says, noting how elected officials and other notables will, as always, be in attendance, “the greater the impact of our ko’ach ho’rabim – to the benefit of our mosdos, our concerns, our rights and our interests.”

Those interested in making reservations, he adds, can contact the dinner office at 212 797-8177.

{Noam Amdurski-Matzav.com Newscenter}