DUBIN, MORDECAI

DUBIN, MORDECAI (1889–1956), *Agudat Israel leader in Latvia. Dubin represented his movement in the Latvian houses of representatives (1919–34). From 1920 until 1940 he was also the chairman of the Jewish community in Riga. He acquired a reputation among all sectors of the Jewish population as a negotiator and mediator (shtadlan) with the government on Jewish public matters and particularly for Jewish individual needs. An adherent of *Chabad Ḥasidism, in 1927 he played a decisive part in obtaining permission for Joseph Isaac *Schneersohn (the "Lubavitcher rabbi") to leave the Soviet Union. Even after the liquidation of the democratic regime in Latvia, Dubin, who was personally close to the dictator Ulmanis, continued to intercede with the government to obtain alleviation of anti-Jewish economic measures. With the incorporation of Latvia into the Soviet Union in June 1940, Dubin was arrested with other communal leaders and deported. He was released in 1942 and subsequently lived under police supervision and extreme poverty in Kuibyshev and Moscow. In spite of his personal plight he succeeded in extending help to many Latvian Jews who passed through these cities. In 1946 he returned to Riga, but was forced to leave after attacks against him were published in the local Communist press. Again arrested in 1948, he died in a concentration camp near Moscow. His remains were buried in the Jewish cemetery in Malakhovka, a suburb of Moscow.

bibliography:

Yahadut Latvia (1953), index; M. Bobe, in; He-Avar, 14 (1967), 250–61.

[Yehuda Slutsky]