Shiloh Israel Children’s Fund

I grew up in the United States, where both Mother’s and Father’s Day are important holidays. Now an observant Jew living in Israel, I often reflect on the importance of those days, but not just once a year. The Ten Commandments that were given to Moses and the Israelites on Mount Sinai well over 3,000 years ago featured a commandment to “Honor your father and your mother”. Half of the Ten Commandments are considered to be commandments between people and people, while the other five are between people and G-d. Interestingly, the commandment to honor one’s parents is listed as being between people and G-d, in order to emphasize the crucial role that one’s parents play in this world. One of my professors in Teachers Colllege at Columbia University once aptly referred to education as “the responsibility of parents that is shared with the schools”. Likewise, the Torah clearly was teaching about the central and primary role of parents in the education of their children. We parents don’t own our children, but they are expected to honor us, and we have the responsibility and privilege of raising them up to be honorable and moral adults.

Which brings me to Ruby Rubin. These days when I speak or write about Ruby Rubin, I am almost invariably speaking or writing about my now ten year old son, who was wounded with me in a terror shooting attack in Israel seven years ago. From the trauma of that attack emerged the Shiloh Israel Children’s Fund, my non-profit organization to help Israeli children, which was and is my response to the terrorists.

Yet there was another Ruby Rubin who was central in my life, and that was my father of blessed memory, who returned his soul to his Creator over twenty years ago. He lived a life that was dedicated to children, not just his own, but many thousands of others. As a dedicated teacher in Brooklyn, NY for some 30 years, he taught with a gentleness and patience that I often admired, especially in my many years of teaching, many years later. He taught in one public school, educating children of all races and religions in the era of deteriorating neighborhoods and high crime in Brooklyn. He was mugged at gunpoint while supervising his school’s lunchroom, but he refused to stop teaching there after the mugging. 

Ruby also ran a summer camp for children in a large bungalow colony in the Catskill Mountains in upstate New York. Through the years, he always had a vision of what he wanted to accomplish in that camp, always keeping in mind both the short-term and long-term needs of the children who were entrusted in his care for those crucial two months of the year. Often it was sports activities, or a very comprehensive “color war”, which taught the values of creativity and cooperation combined with intense competition. Then there were the activities of a more spiritual realm —- getting in touch with nature through hikes and camping out, or trying to gently inspire the children with Jewish tradition with a Sabbath evening service, to the extent that he thought they could handle it and to the extent that he sensed that their parents would desire it.

Although I am sure that I inherited my father’s love for children and his passion for educating the next generations of children, the one thing that stands out foremost in my mind about him is the constant sense of optimism and idealism which was the prism through which he viewed life.

Those were the values that he hopefully succeeded in passing along to the thousands of children whose lives he touched, and I am honored to have been touched by him as well. Happy Father’s Day to all!

David Rubin

Shiloh, Israel