Editor’s Note: This is the third and final installment of the biography of Rabbi Henry & Rebbetzin Esther Soille. Click here to read Part I and click here to read Part II.
By Avraham Dimenstein
LOS ANGELES — After World War Two, Jewish teenage girls arrived in Paris and asked if there were a Rabbi in the town. They were introduced to Rabbi Soille, and they explained that they had been hidden with a Gentile family before the war when they were still little girls. They had now grown up into young ladies and they no longer felt safe in the home. Rabbi and Mrs. Soille made inquiries regarding other Jewish children who had been hidden with Gentile families, and soon other children were discovered. They ultimately established an orphanage to accommodate these children.
At first the children were housed with different Jewish families in the city. As the children had spent the duration of the war in Catholic homes , they had adopted the Catholic religion. The children would pray with their rosaries, and the Jewish adults in the home attempted to confiscate the rosaries from them. The children reacted with hostility. Rabbi and Mrs. Soille realized they would need to raise all these children under their own roof. Families shared their apartments thereby freeing up some apartments for the children to live in. Under Rabbi and Mrs. Soille’s tutelage, the children reformed to the point where the worst threat they could be given was that they would not be allowed to go to shul on Shabbat.
The government provided them with all the carrots they wanted. When the children joined the orphanage and complained about the carrots, the other children would point to Rabbi Soille and explain, “He also dislikes carrots, but he eats them too.” Eventually the Jewish Joint Distribution Committee took over the orphanage, and Rabbi and Mrs. Soille moved to America.
Rabbi and Mrs. Soille first settled in Cleveland, Ohio, where he became the administrator of an after-school Jewish program. One of the former students at the school, Dr. Zalman Magid (A’H) told me that there were 600 students in the school by the time Rabbi Soille left the school.
The school started out with 60 students, and Rabbi Soille was there for at least ten years. Much effort went into the recruiting of the students. Dr. Magid recounts that his parents did not want to allow him to go. When the Soilles arrived at their home to talk to his mother, there was a piano in the Magids’ home and Mrs. Soille asked if she could play it. Mrs. Magid was so impressed by Mrs. Soille’s musical ability that she decided to enroll her son in the school.
Rabbi Soille had an aunt in San Diego. His aunt’s husband had passed away, and she invited Rabbi and Mrs. Soille to come help her manage her real estate empire there. By then the Soilles were in their 50’s, so Rabbi decided to give up the rabbinate and go into real estate.
The last 30 years of Rabbi Soille’s life were spent in San Diego. At first, he traveled around California managing his aunt’s real estate investments for her. This became very exhausting, and his aunt found him a position in San Diego where he would no longer have to travel. Eventually, his aunt passed away, leaving him the apartment complex in North Park.
For the first time in his life, Rabbi found himself interacting with people who were suffering from many things such as substance abuse and domestic violence. In Europe he had the opportunity to mix with the upper class of society, (part of the Rothchild family had been members of his synagogue in Paris) and this was a difficult adjustment for him. Rabbi Soille would offer monetary rewards to his employees, if they would agree to make positive changes in their lives. For example, he would buy them cars if they settled down and got married.
Rabbi Soille davened at the Beth Jacob synagogue which was located at the time in North Park. While the synagogue did not have a mechitza, Rabbi Soille would daven in the front area by the bimah which was surrounded by a metal rod iron wall. Rabbi Soille was very close with the Rabbi of the synagogue, Rabbi Baruch Stern, and they would eat over at each other’s homes on Shabbat.
Rabbi Soille maintained a strong connection to the teachings of the Ridbaz, Mrs. Soille’s grandfather. He had in his possession the silver kiddish cup of the Ridbaz, until it was stolen from him by a member of his household staff. He also had a copy of a poster that was displayed on the walls of a city in Israel in which the opinion of the Ridbaz against the “heter mechira” (permissibility of selling the land on the sabbatical year) was described. The Soilles had a picture of the Ridbaz in their home. Rabbi Soille would occasionally study the commentary of the Ridbaz at midnight while sitting near this picture.
Rabbi Soille was the financial treasurer of the Beth Jacob Synagogue while it was located in North Park, and he continued to serve in this capacity for several years even after it moved to the College area of San Diego which was about ten miles away. He took his job as financial treasurer very seriously. Although he did not move his residence after the synagogue moved to the College area, he would come to the Synagogue every Sunday to continue to review and sign the checks for the Synagogue. He could easily have signed his name on the checks in advance, and allowed the second person signing the checks to review the authenticity of the bills to be paid, but that was not how Rabbi Soille did things.
Another individual Rabbi Soille became close to was my father (A’H) Sam Dimenstein. Sam had real estate holdings in Tijuana, Mexico, and would occasionally daven at the Beth Jacob synagogue. A business opportunity opened up for Rabbi Soille, and he invited Sam to go in with him on a joint venture to buy up a large apartment complex near San Diego State University. Sam was very dedicated to Rabbi Soille, and I recall on one occasion when Rabbi Soille was ill, Sam brought him some soup from his home 20 miles away.
Rabbi Soille was also very close with Armand and Flora Cohen, who were also French speakers. Armand Cohen was an accountant, and Rabbi Soille chose him to be one of the three trustees for his estate. Rabbi Soille had a great deal of influence over the Cohen family, and both their children became “shomer Shabbat.” Rabbi Soille would occasionally give classes for the community. Mrs. Alice Moss recalls that she and her sisters attended a class given in French, about the Kuzari, by Rabbi Soille. He also occasionally would serve as a judge for the mitzva fair competition at the San Diego Hebrew Day School (now known as the Soille San Diego Hebrew Day School).
Rabbi Soille’s wife’s pre-deceasing him hit him very hard. (He had a nick name for her, “Puppilla” – my little doll, in Yiddish.) Sometime after her death, Rabbi Soille took his one and only trip to Israel along with the Beth Jacob Synagogue tour. Rabbi Langer, the Rabbi Emeritus of Congregation Beth Jacob, recalls that Rabbi Soille was fully familiar and felt at home with the politics and geography of every section of Israel. In keeping with his French tradition, Rabbi Soille ordered wine for the entire group at dinner every evening.
Rabbi Soille was a master at multi-tasking. I recall visiting him in his tiny apartment. He was sitting in an armchair with a Gemara in one hand, one eye occasionally checking out the stock quotes on his television, and another eye on the fax machine. His employees did not appreciate all the things he had done for them. Some of them forged his signature and cashed large amounts of money as forged checks. When he discovered what they had done, he told my father they would not get away with it. Soon after this incident Rabbi Soille suffered a massive stroke and passed away in a matter of days.
Rabbi and Mrs. Soille never had children, but they are remembered by all the people with whom they had contact. While a few bequests from his will were given to relatives, the rest of his fortune was left to various Jewish charities. May their memory be a blessing.
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Avraham Dimenstein is an 8th grade teacher at Toras Emes Academy in Los Angeles.