Rabbi Yehuda “Yudi” Dukes, a Hasidic father of six who became sick with COVID-19 in late March and spent nearly 10 months in the hospital as he struggled with the effects of the disease, died Thursday. He was 39.
Dukes’ wife, Sarah, announced his death in a Facebook post Thursday morning hours after she exhorted her many followers on social media to pray for her husband.
Dukes became a symbol of the toll of the pandemic to many in the Chabad Hasidic community and around the world as Sarah documented his condition in Facebook and Instagram posts throughout his hospital stays. People around the world performed mitzvahs — Jewish rituals and good deeds that including saying prayers and learning Torah — in his honor with the hope of contributing to his recovery. A crowdfunding campaign has raised well over $500,000.
The rabbi and his wife, a music therapist, frequently sought spiritual meaning in his struggles with COVID.
“This has not been done to me,” Dukes told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency from the medical intensive care unit at NYU’s Langone hospital last summer. “It’s been done for me.”
Before the pandemic began, Dukes had been healthy and served as the director of the Jewish Learning Network, or JNet, a worldwide Chabad program that pairs people to study Judaism together.
THANKS SO MUCH,, IT MEANS THE WORLD TO US IN THESE DIFFICULT TIMESֱ