TORONTO — In addition to the three children, 13 grandchildren and three great-children he left behind, Aron Frankel left a strong community legacy, says his daughter, Esty Edell.
On June 1, Bnei Akiva Schools will honour the late Frankel, one of the founders of Bnei Akiva’s affiliate Orthodox high schools Yeshivat Or Chaim (for boys) and Ulpanat Orot (for girls), with the Aron Frankel Legacy Dinner.
To be held at the Terrace Banquet Hall in Vaughan, the event will include the dedication of the Aron and Miriam Frankel Beit Midrash at Ulpanat Orot – a newly refurbished beit midrash funded by Miriam Frankel and family – and will also feature a number of speakers, including Edell, who will speak on behalf of her family.
Dinner co-chair Eli Rubenstein will give a tribute to Frankel, while the keynote speaker will be Rabbi David Stav, chief rabbi of the Israeli town of Shoham and co-founder of the alternative Orthodox rabbinical organization Tzohar.
Frankel, a Holocaust survivor and an immigrant to Canada from what is now Ukraine, passed away in 2008, leaving behind his wife Miriam.
Frankel was an avid community-builder and strong proponent of modern Orthodox Jewish education.
He helped found Yeshivat Bnei Akiva Or Chaim, the boys’ division of the school, in 1973, and he helped establish the girls’ division, Ulpanat Orot, in 1975, both in accordance with the Bnei Akiva principles of aliyah and love of the Land and People of Israel – values to which he was steadfastly devoted, his daughter said.
Hailing from a long line of scholars, Frankel was raised in a traditional chassidic family in Galicia and was forced into hiding along with his parents when the Nazis occupied Galicia in 1941.
Though his father was killed by the Nazis, Frankel and his mother managed to survive the war. In 1948 they moved to Toronto, where he studied under Rabbi Avraham Price, embarked on an accounting career and met his wife Miriam, with whom he had three children: Mark, Ralph and Esty.
A founding member of Clanton Park Synagogue, Frankel and Miriam became heavily involved in growing the local Jewish community and fundraising for Jewish educational and other initiatives, in Toronto, across North America and in Israel.
He helped to establish Or Chaim with a vision of integrating Torah education and love of Israel with a strong secular education, Edell said.
He saw this as a way of fostering future community leaders in North America and Israel.
A year or so after helping to establish the boys’ high school, Edell was of the age to begin high school, and Frankel pushed to establish a girls’ version of the school, one that would also emphasize Torah and love of Am Yisrael and Eretz Yisrael, said Shaindy Cohen Goldstein, who helped organize the legacy dinner.
“I’m very proud,” Edell said. “My parents came here as ravages of the Holocaust, with nothing, just an indelible spirit and a strong need to succeed and create a family steeped in Jewish values, as well as a community steeped in the values of religiosity, education and commitment to make the world a better place.”
The event begins at 6 p.m. and tickets are $180 per person.
For more information, contact [email protected].
