R’ Yehuda Dickstein a”h was niftar in Atlanta, Georgia on 25 Tishrei. He had been living there with his son in law and daughter R’ Binyomin and Dena Friedman.

R’ Yehudah was born in Brisk, Poland in the early 1920’s. He attended cheder with R’ Refoel Soloveitchik.

As a child he displayed extreme devotion to Torah and his family saw to it that he was able to continue his learning even though his siblings went to work at young ages.

By age 12, he was learning in the Yeshiva in Pruzhin. It was there that he celebrated his bar mitzva. At Shalosh Seudos the Rosh Yeshiva announced Mazel Tov Yiddlel Brisker who just became Bar Mitzva. His father came to spend that Shabbos in yeshiva with him and gave him a watch. That was the entire Bar Mitzvah.

From Pruzhin the next step for aspiring Talmedei Chochomin was to move on to Baranovitch and the famed R’ Elchonon Wasserman HY”D. Sometime after Shavuos in 1938, R’ Yehuda decided that it was time to move on to the Mirrer Yeshiva. This was unusual because he was too young for the Mir because he was only 16 years old. Nonetheless, he wanted to be a part of the famed Mir Yeshiva. He convinced two chaveirim to join him. They hitched rides in farmers wagons and upon arriving in Mir presented themselves to R’ Lazer Yudel Finkle the Rosh Yeshiva. R’ Lazer Yudel gave them a farher and accepted them into the Yeshiva. R’ Yehuda would later explain that he didn’t feel that the Rosh Yeshiva was very impressed with his Torah but the clouds of war were gathering and he felt the safest place for a bochur was inside the Bais Hamedrash.

After those three were accepted, no new bochurim joined the yeshiva. For the next ten years R’ Yehuda started off in Mir then to Slabodka, then to Kobe, Japan and finally to Shanghai, China. R’ Yehuda remained the youngest Bochur in the Mir.

In the yeshiva, he joined the chaburah of R’ Aharon Kreiser zt”l with whom he developed a lifelong attachment. R’ Aharon Kreiser and his chabura engaged in vigorous debates with R’ Shmuel Birnbaum and his chabura. R’ Yehuda became the designated go between to deliver challenges and responses across the Bais Hamedrash between the two groups. R’ Yehuda can be seen in the famous Mirrer Yeshiva photo a few rows behind the bima (8-14his glasses glinting in the flash.) Those glasses became famous. On the seventh of Av near the end of the war, R’ Yehuda was sick and in bed in his 3rd story apartment building. An allied bomber erroneously bombed his building totally demolishing it. When R’ Yehuda came to, he was still in his bed but now in the basement of the building under tons of rubble. A man appeared and told him to follow him. He followed the man out of the building to safety. He was completely unharmed with the exception of his glasses that had been lost. After that he was know in the Mir as Zayin Av a day he celebrated annually with a seudas hodaah.

R’ Yehuda’s entire family; parents, grandparents, sibilings, aunts, uncles, and cousins were all destroyed in the Churban of Europe leaving him an orphan with no family to return to after the war.

After the war, R’ Yehuda emigrated to America with the yeshiva. He taught for the Mir in Brooklyn and it was there that R’ Kalmanovitz zt”l introduced him to Chava Beer a”h a graduate of the Bais Yaakov in Williamsburg. After spending some years teaching and working for shuls in Maulden, Massachusetts and Washington DC, the Dickstein family settled in Baltimore, Maryland where they raised their family.

Ten years ago, they moved to Atlanta Georgia. In Atlanta, R’ Yehuda became popular with the many baalei teshuva in his son in law’s shul who came to him regularly to learn Torah and experience the connection to a lost world. Whenever anyone came to visit, they always found him engrossed in a sefer.

R’ Yehuda was predeceased by his oldest child, Rochel Weissman a”h. He is survived by his children, Dena Friedman of Atlanta, Georgia, Gittel Cweiber of Flatbush, Heshy Dickstein of Frederick Maryland, Faygie Dasheff of Kensington, Chaya Lovett of Far Rockaway, Mendel Dickstein of Atlanta, Georgia, and Rivka Lipshutz of Atlanta, Georgia along with many grandchildren and great grandchildren bli a”h.

Yehi Zichro Baruch…

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