Monsey Memories: The Dinkels Family

Yitzy Fried

This week, Mrs. Rivkah Hammer (Dinkels) left this world at the age of 91. Hailing from a family of staunch Gerer Chassidim, she came to Spring Valley in the 1970’s, and lived in Spring Valley and the Monsey communities for a number of years before relocating to Boro Park.

But we will begin from the beginning, with the birth of her husband, Reb Yosef Dinkels in America of 1926. It was a different time in the United States when it was not at all certain that children would go in the ways of Yiddishkeit.

Reb Simcha Bunim Schatz, a distinguished and prominent Gerer Chossid from Lodz, lived in Missouri. He had a daughter by the name of Rivka. (Reb Simcha Bunim later lived in Mexico and was niftar there in 1958).

Rivka was born in Lodz in 1932, and in 1935, her parents heeded the call of the Imrei Emes that whoever could make it to Eretz Yisroel should do so. They made Aliyah with Rivka and her brother. When she was seventeen, her father became ill, and the family moved to America.

Being a shochet, Reb Simcha Bunim made his way to the Midwest, and Rivka and Yosef were married in Jackson, Missouri, in the year 1951.

The Dinkels’ moved to Omaha, Nebraska, where Reb Yosef found work as a shochet, but by 1957, some children needed a Torah chinuch which was not so readily available in Omaha. So, they moved to Spring Valley, New York and later to the fledgling community of Monsey.

Monsey of the 1950’s was a far cry of what it is today, and the Dinkel’s were part of the fabric of that small community. Mrs. Dinkels taught in the Beis Rochel school during the early days, and she also embroidered paroches curtains for aron kodeshes around Monsey.

Eventually, they moved to Boro Park in 1979. Reb Yosef was known as a prominent Gerer chossid, for his ehrlichkeit and his avodas Hashem, until his passing in 1985.

Until her passing at the age of 91 this week, Mrs. Dinkels (who was remarried to Reb Yekusiel Hammer) was known as never having a word of complaint about anything she went through in her life.

“Everything that Hashem does is for the best,” was her mantra. A son-in-law related that she had no one bad word to say about anyone in all the years that he knew her.

With her passing, a link has been lost to the worlds of pre-war Lodz and to the early days of the development of the Monsey community.