Memory Lane: Gustave S. Roth, Philanthropist and Torah Supporter

Birth of a Patron 

Gustave S. Roth, a native of Ratzky, Poland was a scion of the old Ratkowsky family. His father, Reb Volf, was a large land owner in the old country where he reared a large family eight. The Ratkowsky’s lived on a sprawling farm, where he was born in the summer of 1862. Prior to his coming to America he dwelt in Germany for a year and a half, arriving in New York in 188—where he married Devorah Pesha Rubenstein of Russia, and went into business.

Building Boro Park Institutions 

Mr. Roth was instrumental in the building of Yeshiva Eitz Chaim, and in Israel Zion (also known as Maimonides Hospital, in 1919. He was prominent in supporting Yeshiva Rabbeinu Yitzchok Elchanan—and in countless other causes, large and small. 

Many of these organizations and institutions held dinners in his honor, as we read in newspapers of the time. 

“The beautiful Shomray Emoonah Synagogue in Borough Park is a lasting monument to his services for the cause, for he literally built the synagogue and is its president today. A leading factor in the Borough Park Talmud Torah he is also a director of the War Relief work in the Borough Park section, and is a liberal contributor to most of our established causes while his unostentatious and unrecorded charity is away beyond what would be expected of him/

“Mr. Roth married Miss Dora Rubinstein in New York city in 1885 In addition to their son Philip who married Miss Chernosky of Augusta Me they have a daughter Mrs. Hattie Rubinstein He has imbued his children with the same religious and charitable spirit and that they are staunch Israelites is hardly a matter of wonderment.” 

The Yiddishes Taggeblatt notes in 1916 what an examples Mr. Roth was, “to the young people who tell themselves that one cannot get on in America if one is religious. Mister Roth was never mechalel Shabbos. Both in good, as well as bad times, he strictly clung to the tradition of our fathers—and this did not prevent him from being successful. 

“Now is he fully devoted to charitable causes, and in Shomrei Emunah, where he is active in its Talmud Torah. In addition to his kindheartedness, he is a soft-spoken man who is interested in Yiddishkeit from the most idealistic standpoint.” 

Finally, in the very year that it opened, Yeshiva Eitz Chaim tendered a dinner in Mr. Roth’s honor. On March, 12, 1922, the Morgen Zhournal announced that “the directors of the Yeshiva Eitz Chaim of Boro Park have at their last meeting decided to give a banquet in the honor of Mr. Gustave S. Roth. He is a noted donor and philanthropist, and has helped to build up the institutions of Boro Park—but his greatest energies he has devoted to the yeshiva, which he sees as the Crown jewel of his achievements.” 

He was niftar from Pneumonia at the very hospital which he was so instrumental in building, in the year 1938. He was interred in Cypress Hills Cemetery following a lifetime devoted to building Yiddishkeit in Boro Park.