All Named Avraham

Budapest, between 1899 and 1907. Rabbi Avraham Eliezer Eckstein, dayan of Budapest. A dayan is a judge in a rabbinical court — a beit din — which adjudicates matters of Jewish religious law, from marriage and divorce to commercial disputes. In this period Budapest housed one of the largest Jewish communities in Europe, with a Neolog majority and a substantial Orthodox kehilla. The dayanim of the Orthodox community served alongside the chief rabbinate in maintaining religious courts under the Habsburg-era communal arrangement.

Between 1919 and 1925. Rabbi Avraham Yehoshua Heshel of Mezhbuzh-Ternopil, in the center. To his right, Rabbi Meir Arik. To his left, his brother Rabbi Moshe. He was a great-grandson of the Apter Rov — Rabbi Avraham Yehoshua Heshel of Apta and later Mezhybizh, who died in 1825. The Apter Rov bore the title Ohev Yisrael, Lover of Israel, after the posthumous collection of his teachings. His descendants founded the Mezhybizh, Kopyczynce, Zinkov, and related courts, and many carried his name into the twentieth century. Mezhybizh, in present-day western Ukraine, was the home of the Baal Shem Tov, the founder of Hasidism in the eighteenth century.

Between 1929 and 1940. Rabbi Avraham Eliyashiv. He was the father of Rabbi Yosef Shalom Eliyashiv. Born in Šiauliai, Lithuania, in 1910, Yosef Shalom emigrated with his parents to British Mandate Palestine in 1922. He would live until 2012, and in the second half of the twentieth century became the leading halakhic authority of Lithuanian-tradition Jewry in Jerusalem. Avraham Eliyashiv was the son-in-law of the kabbalist Rabbi Shlomo Eliyashiv, known as the Leshem, whose surname the family adopted.

He was the father of Rabbi Yosef Shalom Eliyashiv. Born in Šiauliai, Lithuania, in 1910, Yosef Shalom emigrated with his parents to British Mandate Palestine in 1922. He would live until 2012, [short pause] and in the second half of the twentieth century became the leading halakhic authority of Lithuanian-tradition Jewry in Jerusalem.

He was the father of Rabbi Yosef Shalom Eliyashiv. Born in Šiauliai, Lithuania, in 1910, Yosef Shalom emigrated with his parents to British Mandate Palestine in 1922. He would live until 2012,

Warsaw, winter 1929. Rabbi Aharon Rokeach of Belz arrived in the city, second from the right, for a rabbinical gathering called to address Polish state decrees affecting Jewish religious life. The gathering took place against the background of pressure on shechita — kosher ritual slaughter — and on the autonomy of Jewish religious schooling under the Second Polish Republic. Restrictive legislation around shechita would intensify through the 1930s. From right to left: Rabbi Menachem Manish, the Rabbi of Ternopil, author of Chabatzelet HaSharon; Rabbi Aharon of Belz; the gabbai Rabbi Mendel Landman; Rabbi Avraham Chaim David Schreiber, president of the Galician group. Rabbi Aharon was the fourth Rebbe of Belz, leading the dynasty from 1926.

Lublin, June 27, 1938 — the 28th of Sivan, 5698. The Celebration of the Torah at Yeshivas Chachmei Lublin. From right to left: Rabbi Aryeh Tzvi Frumer of Kuzhiglov, author of Eretz Tzvi; Rabbi Menachem Ziemba; Rabbi Avraham Weinberg, author of Reishis Bikkurim; Rabbi Shmuel Shlomo of Radzin. Standing on the far left, a student: Mordechai Yehuda Lubart. Yeshivas Chachmei Lublin had been founded in 1930 by Rabbi Meir Shapiro, who is also remembered for originating the Daf Yomi program — a global cycle in which Jews study one page of the Talmud each day, completing the whole in seven and a half years. The yeshiva's library held some twenty-two thousand volumes; its building was the largest yeshiva structure in Europe. Rabbi Frumer became rosh yeshiva — head of the yeshiva — in 1934. In September 1939 the German army occupied Lublin. The yeshiva was closed and its library destroyed. Rabbi Frumer was deported to Majdanek and murdered there in spring 1943. Rabbi Ziemba was killed by German forces in the Warsaw Ghetto on April 24, 1943, during the ghetto uprising; he had been one of the few rabbinic leaders to call publicly for armed resistance.

he had been one of the few rabbinic leaders to call publicly for armed resistance.

Föhrenwald Displaced Persons Camp, between 1944 and 1949. Rabbi Avraham David Horowitz, Av Beis Din of Strasbourg, in conversation with Rabbi Yekusiel Yehudah Halberstam of Sanz-Klausenburg. Halberstam had lost his wife and eleven children in the Holocaust; he would later refound the Sanz-Klausenburg dynasty and establish the town of Kiryat Sanz in Netanya. Föhrenwald, in the Bavarian forest south of Munich, was one of the postwar camps that housed Jewish survivors. In October 1945, on the order of General Eisenhower, it was designated an exclusively Jewish DP camp; with Rabbi Halberstam and his followers present, it became the center of Hasidic life in the American occupation zone. It was the last DP camp in Europe to close, in 1957. Hebrew documents of the period called the survivors She'erit HaPleita — the surviving remnant, a phrase drawn from the books of the Prophets. Rabbi Horowitz survived the war after losing his family and would go on to rebuild the Adath Israel community of Strasbourg as its rabbi for over three decades, later serving as Av Beis Din — head of the rabbinical court — of the Edah HaChareidis in Jerusalem.

Halberstam had lost his wife and eleven children in the Holocaust; he would later refound the Sanz-Klausenburg dynasty and establish the town of Kiryat Sanz in Netanya.