Newsday

The blaze that killed Chaim Weintraub, 74, also gutted his two-story brick building on 53rd Street, a block where Weintraub had lived for four decades, New York Fire Department officials said.

He was pronounced dead at the scene.

The semi-retired rabbi loved to teach the Talmud, lecturing to postgraduate students on Orthodox Judaism's sacred texts at a school he founded, friends and relatives said.

Many of his students paced the street and consoled each other in front of Weintraub's home Tuesday night as relatives collected his belongings. They carried out charred stacks of books Weintraub had mastered to tutor students, a vocation some said was his life's mission.

"A lot of people loved him," said Shuey Weintraub, 29, one of Weintraub's nine children. "He was a great, great man. He never lived for himself. He always lived for other people. That room that burned -- you know how many people have spent hours there?"

Fire officials said the fire broke out shortly before 2 p.m. and was extinguished in about half an hour. It is under investigation, but not believed to be suspicious, officials said.

Friends and colleagues of the rabbi, who grew up on the Lower East Side, said he touched many lives with his work.

"He was a man who could have taught many subjects, a very fine man," said Rabbi Israel Steinberg, a neighbor who had known Weintraub for more than 40 years.

Steinberg said Weintraub started his own school about 10 years ago after having taught at two yeshivas for many years.

The two scholars discussed prayers for Rosh Hashanah and the upcoming Yom Kippur holiday recently.

"I lost a good friend," Steinberg said. "He was a great guy. I love him and I'm going to miss him. It's a shame he has to go this way. It's a shock to the blood."