When Madison native Dan Weinstein’s father, Jewish philanthropist and activist Laurence Weinstein, died about seven years ago, Weinstein wanted to say Kaddish for a year.
So Rabbi Yona Matusof, head of the Chabad Lubavitch operation in Madison for the past 25 years, started a daily minyan that not only helped Weinstein say Kaddish, but has been running out of the Chabad House there ever since.
And this is just one way that the rabbi and his wife Faygie have made a difference in many Jewish lives during their quarter-century in the state’s capital city, where until last April they were the only Orthodox Jewish resource and organization.
“They’ve done so many things for so many people,” Weinstein told The Chronicle in a telephone interview. “I think they’ve been a wonderful presence in the community.”
Judith Kornblatt, associate dean of the University of Wisconsin-Madison graduate school and a professor of Slavic languages and literature, sent her son and daughter to the Matusof-run preschool, Maon Yeladim. Her husband and son also regularly attend prayer services there.
“Our children and we have learned a lot from them just by their example,” Kornblatt said in a telephone interview. “They provided us with opportunities [for Jewish learning and experience] that might not have been here at all if they weren’t here.”
Steven H. Morrison, executive director of the Madison Jewish Community Council and Jewish Social Services, wrote in an e-mail to The Chronicle that the Matusofs “have been wonderful resources for the Madison Jewish community for the past 25 years.” Moreover, “I personally treasure [them] as colleagues and friends.”
‘Outposts’ everywhere
Rabbi Yisroel Shmotkin, director of Lubavitch of Wisconsin, certainly feels he made the right decision when he hired Rabbi Matusof for Madison 25 years ago.
“I knew when they came that they were going to be there [for life], and be persistent; that they would work and work; and they would reach people and make an impact,” Shmotkin told The Chronicle. And they succeeded “beyond any of my dreams.”
Indeed, Rabbi Matusof himself commented on the wide reaches of his work. “I have outposts all over the globe” in the “couple of hundred” Jews who “started their journey to Yiddishkeit” with him and Faygie in Madison.
Rabbi Matusof himself traveled a long way to get to Madison, but came to his job practically from birth. He is a native of Casablanca, Morocco, and his parents were the Chabad emissaries there.
He lived there until he was 12, and had little contact with the world beyond the Jewish community, attending the day school his parents started and maintained until most of the Jewish community migrated, he said. He then went to France to attend a Chabad yeshiva in a Paris suburb.
After about six years there, he went to the Brooklyn headquarters of the Chabad movement, where he received his rabbinical ordination. He also met Shmotkin, who recommended and hired him for Madison.
And he met Faygie Popack, who was born in Pittsburgh, but raised in Brooklyn. They married in August 1980, seven weeks before they moved to Madison.
Rabbi Matusof saw his task as “to be available for the Jewish students [at the University of Wisconsin-Madison] and the community in whatever way it will be needed” and to do whatever they could to “raise the consciousness of Yiddishkeit in Madison.”
He and his wife have done this in formal ways, by running worship services, holiday celebrations and classes; and in informal ways such as handing out Chanukah menorahs to Jewish students on the campus, visiting Jews in area hospitals and nursing homes, and studying with people “one-on-one,” he said.
Weinstein emphasized that while the Matusofs encourage observance, they don’t press it. “They’re not people who tell people what to do,” Weinstein said. “I’ve never known them to try to recruit people to become Lubavitchers.” Instead, “they encourage Jews to get in touch with their Judaism on whatever level or basis that person feels comfortable with.”
Matusof acknowledged that living an observant Jewish life in Madison is a problem some feel they can’t solve. Many of those who have come to Jewish observance through the Matusofs ultimately leave Madison because the city lacks “some staples” of such a life, like a Jewish day school.
“Not everybody will send their kids at age 7 or 8 to Chicago” for a day school education, as the Matusofs themselves did for their 12 children, the rabbi said.
But this has not discouraged the Matusofs. “We came with intent to stay for life” and “there’s no change of plans,” the rabbi said.
In fact, they seem to be creating a dynasty in Madison. Their son Rabbi Mendel and his wife Henya have come to Madison and, beginning this fall, started a Chabad operation devoted to the UW-Madison campus, freeing his parents to concentrate their work on the rest of the city.
“We love what we do,” said Rabbi Matusof. “We know what we’re doing, we know there’s a need and we try to fill the need.”
There will be a celebration of the Matusofs and their 25 years of work in Madison, but details have not yet been put in final form. Rabbi Matusof said the event “will probably happen in March.”
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