Had he known a book would be written about his life, Reb Yehudah (Yudke) Paley would surely have told the author not to waste his time

Photos: Family archives

IT was just two hours before Yom Kippur. The levayah took seven minutes, and then only a sliver of shivah and a flash of shloshim before the Festival of Joy. But that was just the way Reb Yehudah “Yudke” Paley would have wanted it. No fuss, no eulogies, no memorials — just getting on with the music, the simchah of life.

Reb Yudke Paley, who was my own grandfather, was one of those larger-than-life personalities who helped chisel the current face of Jerusalem and practically every other city that established a frum presence over the last half-century, from Kfar Saba to Zichron Yaakov, from Kfar Chassidim to Petach Tikvah and Ashdod, from Teveria to Haifa. He was one of the prime movers of the Israeli yeshivah world as we know it, a bulwark of chesed and a single-handed social services department. A builder of neighborhoods for bnei Torah, and even —  as an alternative to secular media — of the very magazine you’re now reading.

Reb Yudke, who was 74 when he passed away, was the son of Rav Hillel Paley, one of the great baalei chesed of the Old Yishuv and the right-hand man of Israeli chief rabbi Rav Yitzchak Isaac Herzog. (In fact, Rav Hillel wasn’t even in the country when Yudke was born — he’d been sent on a mission by Rav Herzog to fundraise for the impoverished Jews of Jerusalem and only managed to return to the Holy Land when his son was three years old.)

Yudke, one of six children, seemed to have his father’s chesed in his genes from childhood. He’d give away his sandwiches to children who were even poorer, and one day as a teenager, he came home from yeshivah with an empty suitcase. He’d given one impoverished bochur a pair of socks, another a shirt… until he had nothing left.

Reb Yudke, known for his sharp business acumen, extensive communal activities, and his vast influence as a primary real estate developer, was actually a seforim publisher before moving on to building development. But really, Reb Yudke’s life was dedicated to the gedolei Yisrael, who knew he was a reliable agent capable of carrying out the most complicated missions during the decades when pressure to secularize was nearly insurmountable. He spent 15 years accompanying Rav Yitzchak David Grossman of Migdal Ha’emek on various missions to save Jewish youth on the fringe, and he became the address for hundreds of bochurim who felt disenfranchised long before the term OTD existed. He’d even take boys home from juvenile court. When he moved to Har Nof, the apartment below his on Rechov Shaulzon 2 became a designated haven for these boys.