Rabbi Tzemach Yehoshua Cunin, founder and co-director of Chabad of Century City, Calif., a beloved spiritual leader who devoted himself to his community and to Jewish education, passed away suddenly on July 5. He was 43 years old.
The child of Rabbi Shlomo and Miriam Cunin, pioneering Chabad emissaries to the West Coast, Tzemach Cunin was involved in sharing the joys of Judaism from early childhood.
As a teen, he joined his father in Russia, where he was part of the effort to return the “Schneersohn Library” to its rightful owners, the Chabad-Lubavitch community.
In 2000, he married Ada Wilschanski and the young couple settled in Los Angeles, where they founded Chabad of Century City, a tony district known for sleek high-rise hotels, condos and offices. Yet his signature smile and warm hug spread far across the sprawling city.
Streaming into the shiva home by the hundreds, grief-stricken visitors tell of his warmth, genuine concern for every individual and humble lack of pretense.
Just last week, Cunin co-hosted “An Evening With the Rebbe,” at the Beverly Hills Hotel, a grand tribute commemorating the 25th anniversary of the passing of the Rebbe—Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, of righteous memory. In addition to his efforts at the Chabad center, he was deeply invested in the building and flourishing of Beis Chaya Mushka, a Chabad-Lubavitch school for girls in Los Angeles.
Despite being involved with major building projects and social events for Chabad of California, he was best known as an affable, loving individual who saw the same in others.
In addition to his wife and parents, he is survived by five children; his parents-in-law, Rabbi Zalman and Esther Leah Wilschanski; and siblings.
A fund has been launched by friends and congregants to help his family.
I will never forget the night Rabbi Cunin invited me in for Shabbos dinner.
I had moved to a big city for the first time and I was having a very rough time just getting by day to day. I also had had a night where someone had been very harsh with me. I’ll never forget, I was crying on a street corner in the rain, thinking of jumping in my car and driving back to my hometown that night. Rabbi Cunin was walking out in the rain and he invited me to walk with me. He didn’t ask me anything about who I was or what was wrong. He didn’t even say where we were going. He just brought me into his home and made everything feel like it was going to be ok.
You meet people along the way in life who are so good that you can’t imagine them being gone. He was one of them. That was the only time I met him, if I knew he was going to be gone this soon, I wish I would have seen him again. Baruch Dayan Emet.