Wednesday night found several hundred Arad residents making their way towards the Central Synagogue of the city to mark 30 days since the death of the Chief Rabbi of Arad, Rabbi Benzion Lipsker , zt'l, three days prior to Yom Kippur. Children were playing in the yard outside the synagogue, where tables of soft drinks, fresh fruit and baked goods had been set up -- one for the men and a separate one near the women's entrance. As men prayed the evening service, women slowly trickled into the building, some wearing long skirts and hair coverings ranging from scarves and hats to stylish wigs. Sephardic accents mixed with Ashkenazi greetings. A young girl slipped past to allow an elderly woman to reach out to the rabbi's wife. Gripping her hand, the old woman's eyes filled with tears before she brought the touch of the Rebbetzin's hand to her lips in the traditional Sephardic gesture of respect before moving away. The Sephardic Chief Rabbi of the State of Israel, Rabbi Shlomo Amar, led the list of top rabbinical leaders who spoke at the memorial service. Rabbi Naftali Lipsker, the rabbi's nephew and currently director of the Chabad-Lubavitch Youth Organization branches in Israel, directed the ceremony. He related a quick anecdote about a woman in an airport who was unwilling to believe the news that Rabbi Lipsker had died after demanding that a Chabad emissary she encountered call him on the phone. "No way," she exclaimed. "Rabbi Lipsker is a man filled with life! He cannot be dead." Rabbi Yehuda Yaroslavsky, Chief Rabbi of Kiryat Malachi and who served with Rabbi Lipsker on the Chabad Rabbinical Court, also spoke, as did the current Chief Rabbi of the city, Rabbi Yosef Albo -- and Rabbi Meir Druckman, Chief Rabbi of Kiryat Motzkin. "It is simply unbelievable that three months ago -- three months ago! -- I was talking to him on the phone, I in the north, he in the south," Rabbi Druckman told the crowd. "We were very close. But I noticed then that his voice was shaking, and asked him, 'What's wrong?' And he told me that his medical situation wasn't good." The rabbi, who said that he had been determined to attend the memorial service despite the distance -- Kiryat Motzkin is hours away from Arad -- also noted that he had another purpose in mind. "Rabbi Lipsker could not tolerate the world of lies," Rabbi Druckman said. "Whatever he thought, he said. And sometimes it cost him dearly. There is no doubt that it also cost him his health. But there comes a time when one must state the truth as one sees it, regardless of the consequence. That is the legacy of Rabbi Lipsker," Rabbi Druckman said. "People, you must allow [his successor] to do his work," he warned. "You must allow Rabbi Yankele Mendelson to do the work without breaking his health." Rabbi Yaakov Mendelson, about whose health Rabbi Druckman expressed such concern, closed the program with a story about his father-in-law, the rabbi whose shoes he now must fill. "What did we lose?" he asked. "A woman who came to the hospital [to visit] was heartbroken to discover that she was too late, and demanded nonetheless to have a few moments alone with him, which we allowed. We had no idea who she was. "'You don't know who Rabbi Lipsker was,' she told us. Yad L'Achim (a Jewish outreach organization) brought a woman with three children to Arad at the last minute before the Sabbath eight years ago, and dropped her off without any provisions. The rabbi got a call -- 'Can you help? There is no food!' And he responded, 'No problem.' 'She didn't believe him, of course. She didn't believe any rabbi could put together an entire Sabbath in two hours -- how could that be? And yet within two hours, there he was at her door, with grape juice and challah and kugel and everything else she needed to make the meals for the entire Sabbath, with panim yafot ("a beautiful face").' 'That is who your Rabbi Lipsker was,' she told us. "He blessed the children of the city on the first day of every Hebrew month, wearing his kittel (white robe for Yom Kippur) -- why? Because, he told me, 'For me, it's Kol Nidre (the first prayer of the Yom Kippur service) that the children should learn Yiddishkeit, that they should know about their Judaism.' "He was a man of truth," Rabbi Mendelson stressed. "Whatever he thought, he said -- but with love."