In 1924, Moshe Ber Rivkin was sent by the Rashab to Palestine to be the dean of a rabbinical school, the Yeshivas Toras Emes in Jerusalem, where their son, Sholom, was born.
[2][3] Rivkin became a rabbinical scholar at the Yeshiva Torah Vodaath and Beth Medrash Elyon and was an exemplary student of Rabbis Shlomo Heiman and Reuvain Grozovsky.
[3] and a second, advanced semicha from Rabbi Moshe Binyamin Tomashoff, who, when he was ordained, called him "among the most gifted of his generation.
In 1970, they moved to Queens, N.Y., where Rivkin served as rabbi of Young Israel of Wavecrest and Bayswater.
[2][3][7] For the next 22 years, Rivkin presided as Chief Rabbi over the St. Louis Rabbinical Court and led the Vaad Hoeir of St. Louis, a council that supervises facets of Jewish observance ranging from kosher practice to education to religious divorce.
He was the final arbiter of all cases of Jewish law of the Rabbinical Court, and both his scholarship and care for others were noted as hallmarks of his term of office.
She was also a community leader, serving as a member of the board of directors of the Jewish Federation of St. Louis, the board and advisory committee of the St. Louis Jewish Light, and as a driving force behind the renovation of the community mikveh.
[1] Their daughter Yocheved (Jacqueline) Rivkin Rubin is a journalist living in New York City.
[1] Three memorial services were held: one at Young Israel in St. Louis, in keeping with the tradition that the funeral of the Gadol Ha’ir (the rabbinic leader of the city) take place inside a synagogue;[10] a second at Yeshivah Torah Vodaath in New York, and the third in Jerusalem.
Rivkin was buried next to his wife, parents and grandparents at the Mount of Olives Cemetery in Jerusalem.