The Melbourne kehilla gathered on Sunday to celebrate the 105th birthday of the beloved Reb Berysz (Berish) Aurbach. Surrounded by mispallelim of the Caulfield bais medrash and many friends from across the community, the occasion was marked with a l’chaim and divrei chizuk from a Yid who has lived through one of the darkest chapters of Jewish history and continues to inspire others with his steadfast Yiddishkeit.

At the gathering in his home, Reb Berish addressed the crowd, reminding them that there is no contradiction between living in the world and remaining wholly faithful to Torah and mitzvos. He shared that although he learns Sfas Emes every day, when people ask him for a vort, he prefers to encourage them to open the sefer themselves and learn the words of emes directly.

Born on Gimmel Elul 5680 (1920) in Biala Podlaska, Poland—a town with deep ties to the Gerrer Chassidus—Reb Berish was raised in a home suffused with warmth, Torah, and mesorah. Together with his siblings—three older brothers, a sister, and a half-brother—he imbibed the spirit of chassidus and the foundation of Yiddishkeit that would carry him through the years ahead.

He recalls learning as a child in the local Talmud Torah, vivid memories from a world that would soon be consumed by Churban Europe. In a miraculous neis, he was among the very last Yidden to be smuggled out of the Warsaw Ghetto before Pesach 5703 (1943), mere days before the uprising and the unspeakable destruction that followed. Tragically, with the exception of one sister who had reached Eretz Yisroel before the war, his entire family was murdered al kiddush Hashem.

Left bereft of family and home, Reb Berish reached out across the seas to an uncle in Australia. That relative secured a visa, enabling him to come to Melbourne, where he would rebuild his life.

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