Aba Dunner facts for kids
Aba (Avrohom Moshe) Dunner (born November 13, 1937 – died July 17, 2011) was a very important person who worked to help Jewish communities in Europe. He was a social and religious activist. He started as an assistant to Rabbi Solomon Schonfeld. Later, he became the Secretary for the British office of Agudat Israel, which is a Jewish organization. In his later years, he was the Executive Director of the Conference of European Rabbis. Aba Dunner was born in Europe, but he lived most of his life in England. There, he was active in both community work and business.
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Aba Dunner's Early Life
Aba Dunner was born on November 13, 1937, in Königsberg, which is now called Kaliningrad and was part of Germany back then. His father was Rabbi Josef Hirsch Dunner. He came from a well-known family in Cologne. In 1936, his father became the chief rabbi of East Prussia. Aba's mother, Ida, was the daughter of Dr. Wilhelm (Zev) Freyhan. He was a leader in the Jewish community of Breslau. He also helped start Agudat Israel in 1912. Ida's mother was from the important Hackenbroch family in Frankfurt-am-Main.
Moving to England for Safety
During a terrible event called Kristallnacht, Aba's father, Josef Dunner, was arrested by the Nazis. He was the official Jewish religious leader of East Prussia. The Nazis wanted to send him to a concentration camp in Germany. However, Poland would not let them move prisoners through the Polish Corridor. While the Nazis were deciding what to do, Aba's mother, Ida, contacted Rabbi Solomon Schonfeld. He helped them get a special visa for rabbis. This allowed their small family to travel to England through the Netherlands in December 1938.
When they arrived in London, the Dunner family first settled in Golders Green. Soon after, Josef was asked to be the rabbi of Westcliff. In 1940, he was briefly held as an enemy alien on the Isle of Man. After he was released, Josef became a rabbi in Leicester for Jewish immigrants and people who had been moved from their homes. The family stayed in Leicester until 1947.
Growing Up in Stamford Hill
In 1947, Rabbi Schonfeld helped the Dunner family move to Stamford Hill in north London. There, Josef started and ran the Beth Jacob seminary for girls. In 1960, he took over from Schonfeld as the rabbi of the Adath Yisrael Synagogue. He also became the head rabbi of the Union of Orthodox Hebrew Congregations. This was the highest religious position in the strictly orthodox Jewish community in the UK.
Aba went to Yesodey Hatorah School. He finished high school at the Gateshead Jewish Boarding School. Some of his classmates became important leaders in Jewish education. After school, Aba studied in a yeshiva (a Jewish religious school) in Kapellen, Belgium. Then he went to Luzern, Switzerland, where he studied with Rabbi Moshe Soloveitchik. Aba stayed in touch with Rabbi Soloveitchik for the rest of his life.
Starting His Career
In 1957, Aba got sick and had to come home from yeshiva. He spent several months in a hospital in the East End of London. After deciding not to go back to yeshiva, Aba tried different jobs. He sold fabric and worked in a butcher shop. He was a great salesman, but he really wanted to help the community.
So, in 1959, Rabbi Schonfeld hired Aba as his personal assistant. Within a few months, Schonfeld sent Aba across Europe. His job was to see if they could create an organization to bring all the strictly orthodox Jewish communities in Europe together. Schonfeld then sent Aba to the new State of Israel. He wanted Aba to see if they could build small synagogues, called community centers, in the many non-religious kibbutzim (communal settlements) there. To get to Israel, Aba drove a Land-Rover from London to Naples, Italy. Then he took a ship to Israel, arriving in Haifa just in time for the Independence Day celebrations in 1959.
Family Life and Marriage
In 1960, Aba married Miriam (1941–2006). She was the daughter of Arthur "Adje" (Uri) Cohen (1910–2000) from Rotterdam. During World War II, Arthur Cohen was a leader in the Dutch Underground resistance movement against the Nazis. After the war, he helped rebuild the Jewish community in the Netherlands. In the 1970s, he even started a school for strictly-orthodox boys and girls in Amsterdam.
Aba and Miriam first lived in Stamford Hill, near Aba's parents. In 1976, they moved to Golders Green. They had five children: Yitzchok (born 1961), Benzi (1962–2008), Hadassa (born 1963), Zev (born 1967), and Pini (born 1970). After his first wife passed away, Aba married Charlotte Howard, and they spent his final years together.
Working for Jewish Communities
In 1960, Aba started working for the British branch of Agudat Israel. This is an international organization that works for strictly-orthodox Jewish interests. Over the next ten years, he became involved in many international Jewish projects. He worked closely with important orthodox Jewish figures. These included Harry Goodman and Simcha Bunim Unsdorfer in the UK, Rabbi Shlomo Lorincz and Rabbi Menachem Porush in Israel, and Rabbi Moshe Sherer in the United States.
Aba was the main contact person for the World Agudah Movement in Europe. If something needed to be done, he was the one who organized it. Aba also became close with many leading rabbis of his time. He asked them for advice and offered his help. These rabbis included Rabbi Leib Gurwicz, Rabbi Avrohom Babad, Rabbi Yitzchok Hutner, Rabbi Moshe Feinstein, Rabbi Eliezer Menachem Schach, and Rabbi Yosef Kahaneman. When Rabbi Aron Kotler, a respected rabbi from Beth Medrash Govoha in Lakewood, New Jersey, was in London raising money for Chinuch Atzmai (Jewish education), Aba drove him around. He also did the same for Rabbi Eliezer Silver, a senior rabbi from the US.
In the 1960s, Aba became a leader in the Kiruv (Jewish Outreach) movement. This movement grew a lot in the next decade. Aba started an organization to teach Judaism to the children of many Holocaust survivors. These survivors had settled in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden after World War II. Many parents had lost their connection to religion, but their children were often curious about their Jewish heritage. Aba and his wife organized weekend trips in England and Sweden. Because of their efforts, many of these children reconnected with their Jewish religious traditions.
Working in Business
In 1970, Aba became the executive director of a charity started by William Stern. Stern was a property businessman and a generous giver in London. In this role, Aba was in charge of giving large amounts of charity money to many Jewish causes around the world. He did this while also working for Agudat Israel. In 1972, he started working full-time for Stern, both in his charity work and his business ventures. In the 1980s, Aba began working in West Africa. He exported everyday goods and factory machines to countries like Nigeria, Gabon, and Togo.
Helping Jews in Eastern Europe
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Aba started working with Jewish communities in Eastern Europe. Agudat Israel began a project called Operation Open Curtain. Aba volunteered to help with this project. He traveled regularly to Russia. He helped appoint rabbis like Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt in Moscow and Rabbi Yaakov Bleich in Ukraine. He also supported starting a yeshiva in Moscow, as his childhood teacher Rabbi Moshe Soloveitchik had wanted.
Aba knew a lot about European communities. He was also very good at diplomacy and organizing things. Because of this, Lord Immanuel Jakobovits, the former Chief Rabbi of Great Britain, asked him to work full-time for the Conference of European Rabbis (CER). Lord Jakobovits was the President of the CER. In 1997, Aba became the Director of Community Affairs for the CER. In 2003, he took over from Rabbi Moshe Rose as the executive director.
The CER was founded in 1956. It used to be a small group that held conferences for rabbis every few years in different European cities. Aba's vision helped it grow and become more important to governments across Europe, especially within the EU. Because of his leadership, the CER now has an office in Brussels. It is the only Jewish religious group recognized by the EU.
Aba also worked hard to build connections between Jews and moderate Muslims. He traveled to meet with Muslim religious leaders, including an important visit to Kazakhstan.
In his last years, Aba faced many sad losses. He lost his wife, his son, and both his parents. He also had health problems that sometimes made him very sick. But even with these difficulties, he stayed active in Jewish affairs. He traveled around the world as an ambassador for orthodox Judaism and its followers. In 2008, he remarried. For the last three years of his life, his wife Charlotte helped him with his many projects.
Aba Dunner's Passing
After Passover in 2011, Aba was admitted to a hospital in London. He had been feeling very unwell during the holiday. He was quickly diagnosed with terminal cancer. He passed away at the London Clinic with his family by his side on Sunday, July 17, 2011. The next day, he was buried at the Adath Yisrael Cemetery in Enfield, north London. Many important Jewish figures and organizations shared tributes after his death. The World Jewish Congress, a leading group representing Jewish people around the world, said: "[Aba Dunner] was one of the most important activists for Orthodox Judaism in recent decades. He was respected throughout the Jewish world. He was key to building and strengthening Jewish institutions in Europe. Within the World Jewish Congress, Rabbi Dunner and the Conference of European Rabbis – which he led for many years – actively worked to address the concerns of Jews and Jewish communities. He also strengthened discussions with other religious groups. He was a dedicated fighter for peace and freedom for all people, no matter their background, religion, or ethnic group."
