At 105, the Rabbi Doesn’t Sleep Late:
A century of poring over ancient Jewish texts has carved deep circles under Rabbi Yehuda Chitrik’s eyes. Decades of Sabbath- table storytelling have left him speaking softly and seldom. At 105 years old, he seems almost mortal.
“He is not so good,” his daughter Shaindel Schneerson, 72, said the other night. “Right now, he’s saying his morning prayers” – she reported after dinner. “In the evening, he is doing this.”
But even at “not so good,” Rabbi Chitrik rises at 5 a.m. to study, attends synagogue at least twice a day, teaches a class and works with his regular study partner: a whippersnapper rabbi from Crown Heights named Meir Itkin, who is 95.
Rabbi Chitrik has learned directly from the last three leaders of the Lubavitch movement. He has a keen knowledge of Torah, the Talmud, and other texts that his relatives believe has contributed to his longevity. But it is his storytelling that has made him a fixture in the Lubavitcher community.
His grandson Ari Chitrik, 51, calls him “a walking encyclopedia of Hasidic tales.”
And a great-grandson, Eliezer Zalmanov, 25, says, “He can repeat stories word for word that he heard 50 years ago.”
