Lives Lost: London rabbi worked to end community's isolation

LONDON (AP) — Rabbi Avrohom Pinter gave his life to save his neighbors.

When the British government ordered a lockdown to slow the spread of coronavirus, Pinter went door-to-door in northeast London to deliver the public health warning to the ultra-Orthodox Jews in his community. Within days, the 71-year-old rabbi had caught COVID-19 and died.

His sacrifice was just the last chapter of a life spent forging links between the often-isolated community in Stamford Hill and wider British society, whether by working with an Anglican priest to build a community center or visiting the local mosque to grieve when a gunman killed 51 Muslims in New Zealand.

“He served as a bridge in a broader sense,″ said Chaya Spitz, a protege of Pinter's and CEO of an umbrella organization for Orthodox Jewish charities. “What he did around COVID was typical of his approach more generally.”

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EDITOR’S NOTE: This is part of an ongoing series of stories remembering people who have died from the coronavirus around the world.

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The path to becoming a rabbi respected by non-Jews wasn’t easy for a man who grew up in Stamford Hill in the 1950s and ’60s.

Europe’s largest ultra-Orthodox community was founded by Jews fleeing pogroms in Russia, and it grew with the addition of ones who escaped Germany's Nazis during World War II. The experience of anti-Semitism left many Stamford Hill residents suspicious of authority: they paid taxes but sought nothing in return.

Pinter believed total self-segregation was a mistake, especially when it came to education.

He became active in the community, waded into politics and won a seat on the local government council as a member of the Labour Party in 1982.

But his vocation was improving educational opportunities for Orthodox Jewish girls....