A man who carried the klal on his heart, and individual families on his mind.
Reb Binyomin Zev Koppel ז"ל was born and raised in Melbourne, Australia, in a home permeated with hachnosas orchim. The warmth of his mother and the enthusiasm of his father created a constant stream of guests. From his earliest years, chesed was not something Binyomin Zev did — it was something he was.
The intensity of this concern surfaced even as a young boy. On one sleepless night, his mother found him restless. "Today when I was in the city," he told her, "I saw poor people with their hands outstretched, wearing shredded clothes, and I am worried they are hungry." This was no ordinary child's response. It was the beginning of a lifetime.
R' Binyomin Zev was orphaned when his mother passed from illness before he was married. Yet the nisyonos of his youth only deepened his resolve. He married Sara, daughter of R' Yosef Reinitz, and together they built a home that carried on what his parents had begun — with sacred purpose and boundless generosity.
For more than three decades, R' Binyomin Zev served as Rosh HaKohol — President — of the Melbourne Kehila. Election followed election; he was returned every four years. Yet paradoxically, his position coexisted with a deep distaste for honor. He declined the designated seat at the front of shul. He stepped back from the dais. The kavod meant nothing to him. The work meant everything.
His involvement in kehilla life was total: the Talmud Torah, Beis Yaakov, Kashrus, shechita — for over twenty years. He served as Jewish chaplain to Melbourne's prisons. He worked tirelessly to cultivate achdus between neighboring kehilos, uniting Melbourne's Jewish community through the soft-spoken power of his manner and example.
The Koppel home was open to all — the table always extended, often for more than twenty guests on Shabbos. The Dushinsky Rebbe, the Toldos Aharon Rebbe, R' Shimon Gallei, and many others graced his table. Yet the most striking feature was that the downtrodden and the distinguished were treated with identical honor. Many guests stayed for weeks and months, given their own keys as if they were baalei habayis.
Three and a half years before his petirah, R' Binyomin Zev was diagnosed with a grave machala. The doctors gave him twelve months. On the advice of his Rov, he kept the diagnosis a secret — and was zoche to an additional three productive years, continuing his tzorchei tzibur throughout.
In those final years, R' Binyomin Zev made the move to Lakewood, New Jersey. Lakewood had the zechus and the honor of having him as a resident during this time — his presence felt and cherished by all who encountered him here. He was niftar at sixty-two and was buried on Har HaZeisim in Yerushalayim. Two shloshim gatherings, in Melbourne and in Lakewood, drew some two hundred people from all kehilos — a small indication of who this great man was.
His legacy does not end there. R' Binyomin Zev's family chose to ensure that his life's work of quiet, dignified chesed would continue — in the community he had come to call home. Oizer V'Soimech, Kupas Binyomin Zev, carries his name and his spirit forward, serving the families of the greater Lakewood area with the same commitment to dignity, discretion, and genuine care that defined every chapter of his life. Every family supported is a continuation of his story. Every act of tzedakah given in his name adds another line to a legacy that will endure.
