Yitzchok Sufrin
| Yitzchok Sufrin
| |
|---|---|
| Image | 
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| Born | February 1940 (Companies House); obituaries say late 1930s London |
| Died | 3–4 February 2026 (17 Shevat 5786) London |
| Nationality | British |
| Occupation | Rabbi; Chabad shliach |
| Known for | Lubavitch Friends of the Small Communities; Concord (magazine); Highgate Synagogue; Enfield and Winchmore Hill Synagogue |
| Spouse(s) | Miriam (Nachum) Sufrin (d. June 2025); communal reports also name Tzipporah / Tzipora |
Yitzchok Sufrin (also Yitzchak and Yitzchok Tzvi; known as Icky or Ikki) was a London-born Chabad-Lubavitch shliach and United Synagogue minister. From 1963 he ran outreach to small Jewish communities in England and Scotland for the Lubavitch Foundation. He was youth minister at Cockfosters and North Southgate Synagogue from 1980, minister at Highgate Synagogue for about 14 years until 2008, and part-time minister at Enfield and Winchmore Hill Synagogue from August 2008 until a retirement reception in December 2024. He died on the night of 17 Shevat 5786 (3–4 February 2026), aged 87 in the Lubavitch death notices.[1][2][3]
He is not Elimelech Yitzchak Sufrin (Companies House date of birth January 1970; officer ID PXSBCXxXLZ-4Sp1kMsnC1qwFdKo), director of Tzivos Hashem UK and chair of Chinuch Development Trust.
Early life
Sufrin was born in London to Yosef Chaim Sufrin and Fayge Sufrin. During the bombing of England the family moved to Buntingford, Hertfordshire. Anash says many members of his mother’s family were killed in the bombing.[1]
In a 2009 interview for Chabad.org he said he was doubly orphaned: his mother died when he was a child and his father when he was almost 14. He then lived at the Manchester yeshiva from 14 to 17 and spent nine months at the Gateshead yeshiva until he turned 18.[4] The 2026 Anash obituary, which is less precise on dates, says he met Yitzchok Dubov at the Manchester yeshiva, that Dubov brought him to Lubavitch, and that he later stayed on at Gateshead as a house master after the Rebbe told him to remain in a mosad chinuch. The first-person account is the better source for the 1950s chronology.[1][4]
In September 1958, at 18, he arrived in New York on a student visa and studied for four years at 770 Eastern Parkway. In the summer of 1962 he became engaged. The Rebbe told him to look for work in Manchester, London, Montreal and New York. London was chosen. Sufrin later said there had been no job waiting: the post was created because the Rebbe had named London.[4]
The same audience produced the “vanishing loan”. Sufrin listed a bride’s present, wedding costs and tickets to England, totalling $1,200, to be repaid at $50 a month. After a few payments he could not continue. He wrote for a blessing for sustenance and received no further reminder. Years later the secretaries’ office had no record of the debt.[4]
Lubavitch small communities
He returned to London as a shliach in 1963. Anash says he taught at Beis Lubavitch, where he met Miriam Sufrin (née Nachum), who was also teaching there.[1] His standing role was responsibility for remote communities in England and Scotland: weekly visits, religious articles, and what the obituary calls the first mobile kosher food truck.[1]
He edited Concord, a bi-monthly outreach magazine. A reader in the Jewish Chronicle in October 1984 wrote that “much of this activity is under the direction of Rabbi Yitzchok Sufrin who, besides doing this work almost single-handedly, edits the excellent bi-monthly magazine Concord”, and described counselling and resettlement work, including a case in Nottingham and a young Israeli woman in Horley.[5] Anash says he once stopped the magazine and was telephoned by the Rebbe’s secretary Chaim Mordechai Aizik Hodakov, after which he resumed it.[1]
In October 1987 the Chronicle listed him among contributors to “The Week” as “Rabbi Yitzchok Sufrin, director of the (Lubavitch) Friends of the Small Communities”.[6] In July 1995, a year after the Rebbe’s death, Shlomo Levin of the Edgware centre called him “Rabbi Yitzchok Sufrin, administrator of the Lubavitch Foundation”, and quoted him on the movement’s girls’ seminary in Bournemouth: “In the past, most of our girls had to go abroad. Now we’re plugging the gap.”[7]
In July 1997, as “director of the Lubavitch’s small communities operation”, he argued in the Chronicle that mikveh immersion is spiritual rather than physical, and that men should use the mikveh.[8]
Anash says he placed shluchim in the towns he had served, ran Lubavitch Friends of the Small Communities, rang those shluchim on each Rosh Chodesh, worked on “deprogramming” people who had joined cults in the 1970s and 1980s, and worked on “anti-shmad” cases aimed at stopping intermarriages.[1] Chabad.org’s notice on his death called him director of Chabad Lubavitch UK’s Friends of the Small Communities and editor of Concord.[9] A comment on the December 2024 Enfield reception, signed in his name, said he had retired from only one post and had not retired from shlichus at Lubavitch Foundation UK headquarters.[10]
Public visits recorded in the Chronicle include Kent University in February 1969, with Shmuel Lew, a director of the Lubavitch Foundation, Stamford Hill — Sufrin’s first visit to that Jewish society — and a Cambridge Jewish Society meeting the same week at which Lew spoke.[11] In April 1993 he and Lew were named in the launch of a Lubavitch “Moshiach awareness” campaign at Stamford Hill, with cars, posters and a plan to visit 12 centres.[12] In March 1996 he was the guest speaker at Hull’s first Shabbaton, billed as minister of Highgate.[13]
The Chabad Lubavitch UK small-communities biography, as cited on the existing Powerbase page, said he was a member of the BBC Ethnic Relations Forum and received the Community Relations Award in the European Year Against Racism.[14]
United Synagogue posts
Cockfosters and North Southgate
He arrived in 1980 as minister at Cockfosters and North Southgate Synagogue. In November 1982 the Chronicle reported a row over the youth-service mechitza. Sufrin said negotiations with the London Beth Din had gone on in his absence, accused the youth of treating him as a “door mat” since 1980, and warned that the Beth Din issue would be “the final straw”.[15] In March 1988 he was still “youth officer to Cockfosters and North Southgate Synagogue”, and with his wife spoke at a Shabbaton at the Gants Hill Chabad Lubavitch Centre.[16] Literary agent Jonny Geller, interviewed in 2006, said he had been strongly influenced by Sufrin as a youth rabbi at Southgate and during a year on the Habonim shnat sherut scheme.[17]
Highgate
He was minister at Highgate Synagogue for about 14 years. The Chronicle in April 1995 reported a Friday-night supper he had organised, with attendances trebled.[18] On 11 July 1997 it pictured the dedication of the community’s first new Sefer Torah, written at the home of David Shiner, with Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, Sufrin and Irving Taylor.[19] The same week he said he had not known that David Lincoln, who spoke at a Highgate bar mitzvah, was a Conservative rabbi and president of the Assembly of Masorti Synagogues: “Had I realised, I would have referred it to the Chief Rabbi’s office.”[20]
In December 2007 the Chronicle reported that he would retire after 14 years, to be succeeded by Nicky Liss.[21] The same month, in the Lubavitch cash-crisis report, he was named as a trustee of the Lubavitch Foundation who had passed on donor complaints about spending at the Gaon Club in the West End.[22] His valedictory was in August 2008. He called himself an “unorthodox Orthodox minister”. United Synagogue leaders paid tribute to him and his wife Tzipora. More than 100 members wrote a book of good wishes.[23] The architect David Stern, in a 2003 obituary, was described as a supportive member of Highgate who formed a close relationship with Sufrin.[24]
Enfield and Winchmore Hill
Enfield and Winchmore Hill Synagogue appointed him part-time minister in August 2008. The post had been vacant since January. Chairman Alan Sless said that after almost 15 years at Highgate, “where both he and his wife Tzipora were much loved”, the board expected the same at Enfield.[25] JewishGen lists Rabbi Isaac (Yitzchok) H. Sufrin, part-time, from 2008 until December 2024, followed by Mendel Hurwitz from August 2025.[26]
In October 2008 he and Zipporah led a Tashlich cruise from Regent’s Park to Camden Lock.[27] In June 2009 Jonathan Sacks spoke at the synagogue’s 60th anniversary; Sufrin thanked the community for its welcome “since joining last year”.[28] A 2015 synagogue profile named him and Zipporah as leading a community of about 200, and recalled his Highgate and Cockfosters posts.[29]
In April 2009 the Chronicle reported that he had been asked to help a United Synagogue rabbi whose home was said to be haunted. The reports, which he declined to comment on, identified the minister as Sufrin, part-time minister at Enfield, who spent weekends in the flat above the synagogue in Wellington Road and weekdays in London. Levy Yitzhak Raskin told the paper Sufrin had noticed “a foreign presence in his home”.[30]
In February 2013 he was guest speaker at a Catford and Bromley dinner for the late Judah Rockman and Celia Rockman.[31]
A reception on 16 December 2024 (15 Kislev 5785), attended by Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis, marked 17 years at Enfield for him and Rebbetzin Tzipporah Sufrin. He continued at Lubavitch House.[10]
Colel Chabad
Sufrin is a trustee of Colel Chabad (UK) (charity 327485, registered 30 June 1987), with Menachem Salek (chair) and Daniel Wolffe. The register describes the charity as raising funds for Colel Chabad’s food programme in Israel. It operates throughout England and Wales and makes grants to organisations.[32] A 2015 Colel Chabad page listed two day-care centres in Beitar Illit, an Israeli settlement in the West Bank.[33]
Companies House
One appointment on the February 1940 file: director of Chabad Lubavitch South East Counties Ltd (07652293) from 31 May 2011 to 15 September 2011. Correspondence address 167 Chase Side, Southgate, London N14 5HE. Nationality British.[3] Electoral rolls place him at that address from 1998 to 2018.[34]
Family
The rebbetzin is named differently in the two sets of sources. United Synagogue and Jewish Chronicle reports from 1988 to 2024 call her Tzipora, Zipporah or Tzipporah Sufrin, including the Eshet Chayil listing for Enfield and Winchmore Hill Synagogue on 6 October 2017 and the December 2024 retirement reception.[35][10] Lubavitch notices call her Miriam Sufrin (née Nachum). Anash says he met her while both were teaching at Beis Lubavitch, and that she died in June 2025.[1][36] A comment on that notice called her Inga. The June 2025 notice names the same husband and the same nine children as the February 2026 notice for the rabbi. Taken with the early-1960s marriage, that is the same person: Miriam Tzipporah Sufrin, née Nachum, also called Inga.
She was buried at Adath Yisroel Cemetery, Silver Street, Cheshunt. A comment on the notice called her a shluchah as well as the matriarch of the family.[36]
Children named in the February 2026 notices:[1][2]
- Rivkah Turner (Crown Heights)
- Yanki Sufrin (Crown Heights)
- Aryeh Moishe Sufrin (Crown Heights)
- Shloimie Sufrin (London)
- Chaya Sara Berns (also spelled Chaya Sorah Burns; Crown Heights)
- Mendel Sufrin (Crown Heights)
- Levi Sufrin (Boca Raton, Florida)
- Dina Press (Gainesville, Florida)
- Chana Brochah Shifrin (Thousand Oaks, California)
He is also survived by a brother and three sisters.[1] The levaya left Schonfeld Square, Stamford Hill, on 4 February 2026, passed Lubavitch House, and went to the same Cheshunt cemetery.[2]
Posts and outputs
| Place or output | Role | Dates |
|---|---|---|
| Buntingford | Childhood evacuation | 1940s |
| Manchester yeshiva | Student | about age 14–17 |
| Gateshead Yeshiva | Student; Anash also says house master | about nine months to age 18; house-master dates not fixed |
| 770 Eastern Parkway | Student | September 1958 – about 1962 |
| Beis Lubavitch | Teacher | early 1960s |
| Lubavitch Foundation / Lubavitch Friends of the Small Communities | Shliach; director; administrator | from 1963; still claimed in 2024 |
| Concord | Editor | from the 1960s; still cited in 1984 |
| Mobile kosher food truck | Started, per Anash | date not stated |
| Cockfosters and North Southgate Synagogue | Minister / youth officer | from 1980; still in post March 1988 |
| Highgate Synagogue | Minister | about 1993/94 – August 2008 |
| Enfield and Winchmore Hill Synagogue | Part-time minister | August 2008 – December 2024 |
| Chabad Lubavitch South East Counties Ltd | Director | 31 May 2011 – 15 September 2011 |
| Colel Chabad (UK) | Trustee | on the register in 2015 and 2026 |
See also
Notes
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 1.7 1.8 1.9 Rabbi Yitzchak ‘Icky’ Sufrin, 87, AH, Anash.org, 3 February 2026.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 BDE: Rabbi Yitzchok (Ikki) Sufrin, 87, OBM, CrownHeights.info, 4 February 2026.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Yitzchok SUFRIN personal appointments, Companies House, officer ID 9hKXiHzUDukoK168MCD_dkOAwfM, date of birth February 1940.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 Rabbi Yitzchok Sufrin, The Vanishing Loan, Chabad.org, interview January 2009.
- ↑ C. M. Hotter, “In the middle of nowhere”, Jewish Chronicle, 5 October 1984, p. 19.
- ↑ Jewish Chronicle, 16 October 1987, p. 25.
- ↑ Simon Rocker, “Expansion plans as local Lubavitch leaders try to fulfil the vision of Rabbi Schneerson”, Jewish Chronicle, 7 July 1995, p. 10.
- ↑ Eliane Glazer, “Taking the plunge”, Jewish Chronicle, 4 July 1997, p. 29.
- ↑ Chabad.org, notice of the death of Yitzchok ‘Icky’ Sufrin, 4 February 2026.
- ↑ 10.0 10.1 10.2 British Shul Honors Rabbi Yitzchok Sufrin Upon Retirement, COLlive, 16 December 2024.
- ↑ Lionel Simmonds, “Lubavitchers break Kent ice”, Jewish Chronicle, 21 February 1969, p. 42.
- ↑ Caroline Dembovsky, “Mitzvah tanks lead the Lubavitch drive on the road to nationwide ‘Moshiach awareness’”, Jewish Chronicle, 16 April 1993.
- ↑ Rosalind Pearlman, “First-ever Shabbaton”, Jewish Chronicle, 8 March 1996, p. 18.
- ↑ Chabad Lubavitch UK, Small Communities, as cited on Yitzchok Sufrin, Powerbase, accessed 25 August 2015. Page returned 403 on 1 October 2026.
- ↑ Daniel Fleischman, “Dissent in Cockfosters”, Jewish Chronicle, 12 November 1982.
- ↑ Jewish Chronicle, 18 March 1988, p. 4.
- ↑ Jenni Frazer, “Writing: is it good for the Jews?”, Jewish Chronicle, 8 September 2006, p. 45.
- ↑ “Highgate”, Jewish Chronicle, 7 April 1995, p. 20.
- ↑ Jewish Chronicle, 11 July 1997, p. 14.
- ↑ Simon Rocker, “Masorti man at US”, Jewish Chronicle, 11 July 1997, p. 15.
- ↑ “Highgate”, Jewish Chronicle, 7 December 2007, p. 48.
- ↑ Simon Rocker, “Cash crisis tears apart Lubavitch”, Jewish Chronicle, 28 December 2007, p. 1.
- ↑ “Highgate”, Jewish Chronicle, 8 August 2008, p. 36.
- ↑ “David Stern”, Jewish Chronicle, 14 February 2003, p. 25.
- ↑ “Enfield Synagogue appoints Sufrin”, Jewish Chronicle, 15 August 2008.
- ↑ Enfield and Winchmore Hill (United) Synagogue, JCR-UK.
- ↑ Jewish Chronicle, 17 October 2008, p. 35.
- ↑ “Enfield”, Jewish Chronicle, 19 June 2009.
- ↑ “Welcome to our shul! This week – Enfield and Winchmore Hill Synagogue”, Jewish News, 23 April 2015.
- ↑ Simon Rocker, “Kabbalist takes on shul ghost”, Jewish Chronicle, 3 April 2009, p. 3.
- ↑ “Catford”, Jewish Chronicle, 8 February 2013.
- ↑ Colel Chabad trustees, Charity Commission, 327485, accessed 1 October 2026.
- ↑ Colel Chabad, Daycare Centers, as cited on Yitzchok Sufrin, Powerbase, accessed 25 August 2015; settlements statistics, B’Tselem.
- ↑ UK Electoral Registers, Yitzchok Sufrin, 167 Chase Side, Southgate, N14 5HE, 1998–2018.
- ↑ Jewish Chronicle, 6 October 2017, p. 25, Enfield and Winchmore Hill Synagogue, Eshet Chayil: Rebbetzin Tzipporah Sufrin.
- ↑ 36.0 36.1 BDE: Mrs. Miriam Sufrin, OBM, CrownHeights.info, 27 June 2025.