Linda Kahn

Yoel Petashnik

Rabbi Yehuda D. Goldman

Donnies and Susan Kates

Rabbi Alex Goldman

Judy Mendelson

In the afternoon I cut down a tree in my backyard.  I fell off the ladder when the tree was cut and landed on my backside.  Boruch Hashem nothing happened.

At 5:00 PM, I picked up dinner from Tel Aviv Kosher Pizza for Linda Kahn.  Linda had her right foot amputated.  She is in great spirits but in pain.  I picked up excess food, thinking that Linda could have the food for tomorrow.  Boruch Hashem this thought was put in my mind. I bought three portions of eggplant parmesan, a whole falafel, two halves, and a large salad.

I arrived at her place at 5:50 PM at 336 W. Wellington, of course, an hour late.  Her sister Susan Kahn was there along with their cousin’s kid, Yoel (Joel) Petashnick.  The Kahns are from Milwaukee and his family made Aliyah in 1978, when Yoel was 10 years old.  Linda and Susan Kahn are first cousins to Bert Kahn, who I sat with in Daf Yomi for years.  Bert was a dignified person.   

I spent a delightful hour with Yoel.  He is interested in the writings of the Ishbitzer, Rabbi Mordechai Yosef Leiner, 1801-1854, and the Radzin dynasty.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mordechai_Yosef_Leiner.

Dr. Yoel Petashnik is a PHD professor at Bar Ilan University and lives in the Golan.

We touched upon many subjects, talked history, talked about Kotzk and I told him about my ancestors.  We played Jewish Geography.  His wife is a Kates (daughter of Donnie and Susan Kates).  Donny’s mother, Eileen Kates,  was the daughter of Rabbi Yehuda D. Goldman.  The Kates family was one of the first families to make Aliyah to Israel in the 1970s,  Rabbi Goldman and his wife, Sarah Esther nee Rubenstein lived in East Rogers Park.  

I used to take my grandfather, Sholem Sklar, to Rabbi Yehuda  Goldman’s Shul at Devon and Damen.  We lived at that time at Rosemont and Western a 5 block walk from the Shul. Zedi and Rabbi Goldman would schmooze about the west side  and Europe.  For a few years, I took Rabbi Goldman to the Brisk Dinner.  I found the below book written by Rabbi Alex Goldman, the son of Rabbi Yehuda Goldman and a great uncle of Yoel Petashnik’s wife, Sari Kates (named for Rabbi Goldman’s wife). Yoel’s first son, Yehuda David, is named after Rabbi Goldman.

The book My Father, My Self: “ A Son’s Memoir of his father Rabbi Yehuda D. Goldman, America’s Oldest Practicing Rabbi” has Chicago Jewish history and great history of the Jewsih world.  He brings alive some of the HTC Rabbis of the 1940’s.  The book came out in 1996.

I think the late Judy Mendelson is part of their extended family.

Boruch Hashem I am able to bring alive the past and present while involving Linda Kahn.

1981 HaPardes

The next page is a book given to Judy Mendelson when she recovered from an  illness in 1980.  I found this book at Beth Sholem Agudas Achim, Reb Moshe Soloveichik’s Shul at 5655 N. Jersey.  I took the book for the people who signed the page below and not for the book itself.  I started reading the book and I did a study of Tanach because of this book, In the Footsteps of the Prophets. It was written by Moses Perlman.  In my website Kotzk.com, I have an entire write up of this book.