How Boro Parker Rabbi Yitzchok Elefant of Dimona won the heart of this dusty development town

Photos: Elchanan Kotler

How did a Brooklyn-accented Boro Parker end up as the 40-year-long chief rabbi of a dusty Israeli development town most famous for a nearby nuclear plant? When you meet Rabbi Yitzchok Elefant, tall, imposing, a magnetic mixture of a Sephardi baba and town sheriff who’s gained the trust of the Sephardim, Russians, Black Hebrews, Gerrer chassidim and amcha who populate this corner of the Negev, you’ll know the answer

It’s precisely 5,722 miles from Boro Park to Dimona — and Rabbi Yitzchok Elefant, the Israeli desert town’s Brooklyn-born chief rabbi, is nothing if not precise. “Make a left at the city entrance and I’ll be at the bus stop at 10:45,” he’d said, and there he is.

After a long drive through the Negev — past Bedouin sprawl, an air-force base, and a largely-barren landscape — the town suddenly appears. One minute there’s desert, the next there’s Dimona.

Standing at the bus stop in his frock coat,  wide-brimmed Homburg, and electric-blue tie, Rabbi Elefant is a commanding presence — a fact that’s reinforced as soon as he folds his tall frame into the dinky car. “Shalom aleichem,” he says briskly in a New York accent that’s the bedrock of his fluent Hebrew. “Let’s go, we don’t have much time.”

It’s that unmistakable sense of New Yorkery that has brought me to this town of almost 40,000, to meet a phenomenon — or rather, to answer a set of questions about the sheer incongruity of it all.

How did a Boro Parker end up as the chief rabbi of a dusty Israeli development town most famous for a nearby nuclear plant? How did he succeed in gaining the trust of the colorful array of Sephardim, Russians, and amcha who populate this corner of the Negev? And, after more than 40 years in office, what drives him relentlessly on?

One thing is obvious straight off the bat. Here in town, the chief rabbi is no mere religious functionary. Rabbi Elefant knows everyone, and everyone knows him. Like some magnetic mixture of a Sephardi Baba and town sheriff, he attracts passersby. From a secular theater performer recently arrived from Tel Aviv to a teacher and semi-vagrant, they all cross the road for a warm greeting, hearty chuckle, and a chance to say hello to  “Kevod HaRav.”

As we drive across town to our first stop, Rabbi Elefant keeps up a running stream of instructions (“turn left,” “slow down,” “let this man pass”) together with the bare facts about his principality. It’s come a long way from the town with only a few scant shiurim that he arrived at in 1982; today the place has ten kollelim, 80 shuls, and mikvehs that ply a brisk trade. Population has doubled, housing prices are through the half-built roofs of the gleaming new neighborhoods on the town’s outskirts, and in this industrial hub, hi-tech is the hot new thing.

And whatever part he — Rabbi Elefant — has to do with that transformation, it’s because of a few basic principles of old-style rabbanus. Nothing flashy, no conferences — just the hard, gritty way. One Gemara shiur after another, one Mishnah Berurah class founded after another; one more kashrus inspection and then another. No frippery, no flights of fancy; just the basics, done well, year after year. Those are the time-tested principles that have made him a rabbi’s rabbi — active in spreading his model of rabbinics across Dimona and beyond.

“I tell young rabbanim: ‘Visit every shivah, be there for people when they need you, not when you want them,’” Rabbi Elefant counsels as we head for his downtown office. “Respect them and they’ll respect you.”