הגאון הגדול רבי זאב וואלף גינצלער זצ"ל הי"ד

My zeide was his talmid in Solgotarjan, Hungary. He's even in the yeshiva pic in Avrohom Fuchs'   ישיבות הונגריא בגדלותן ובחורבנן. So I'd hear the name a lot. That is whenever the zeide felt comfortable speaking about those times... Then later my zeide was in Fehergyarmat, where he married and had four children, all of whom were murdered by the Nazis. So why not share this with all of you. It makes me feel a part of society; that my zeide's Rebbe was a somebody.

   הגאון רבי זאב וואלף גינצלער זצ"ל הי"ד by Hirshel Tzig on Scribd

 Rav Gintzler's yeshiva in Salgotarjan. My zeide a"h is pictured, standing, third from right.

Memories of old Pupa

Hirshel:

I saw this yesterday in a Satmar shul. This is a book published by a Jew Ortner; (originally from Galicia) its in back of his sefer of sermons. He can quote from Reb Chatzkel Sarna to Rav Amiel, and everything in between. Looks like a cool jew who davened in meor hagolah Montreal by the Reb Shaye Yakov thé son of the Skulener, who gives a haskoma.  These 3 pages I send you say a whole lot. He and his brothers learned in Pupa. They were from Preshov, by the Galicia border. 280 boys learned there.  They had a list who goes to mikvah, and you didn't get hot soup if u did not go. Pupa Ruv gave שיריים then already, lit Chanukah licht like a real Rebbe, meaning very late, 2.5 hours after the z'man, with a few hundred boys looking on - more than he had in NY. Not before he went to an icy lake to toyvel beforehand. It seems that Ortner had no personal relationship with the Pupa Rebbe, Look at the schedule: 4:45am wakeup time. 5:30am by the גמרא already שוין נאך די מקוה. I don't see why they woke up the boys so early; The learning was not so great and important that they needed so many hours.  In Poland Jews were already almost all exterminated r"l, and in the Hungarian Yeshivos they served chicken and sometimes beef with shmaltz.   Not bad. The old Badansky bachi looked like a generous person, gave good food. Hungarian women may have been holy, but spoke no yiddish. But we knew that. All in all it seems like in the holy town of Pupa they emphasized chasidus more than Torah.

Click to enlarge. Read and enjoy!

Glimpses of life in Budapest post WWII

Source

און איר? זענט אויך געווען אין קערעסטיער?

MANY more pictures here

אייוועלט צענזארירט פאטאגראפיעס - לכאורה

אדער אפשר האט עס דער poster
אליין צענזארירט? איין באשעפער ווייסט . שווער צו זאגען גענוי

Ivelt Source
Original Pic
flip side
h/t Rabbi YD Miller

"Last" of the Sub-Carpathian Jews

Shimon putting on tefillin for his morning prayers while his Christian wife wakes up from bed. His mother told him he was Jewish only after he grew up, so he did not get any Jewish education, but he's trying his best to keep the traditions.

Alexander is the shochet (ritual slaughterer) of Mukacheve, and the last active one in the region. There aren’t many people who eat kosher around so he is thinking to move somewhere else, probably to Israel, where he could get more work.

In the Jewish cemetery of Khust: “She always acted with care, and read the book of Psalms with love. She married her daughters to students of the Torah, and always lend a helping hand in the house. She honoured Tisha b'Av with all her strength, and as a righteous woman went straight to the world beyond...”

Irshova has no Jewish community today, so there is nobody to keep the key to the old cemetery. The combination of numbers that opens the padlock is scribbled by the gate, but to be able to read it one needs to know gematria, the Jewish method of interpreting letters as numbers. 
















Aaron bakes challah in his Brooklyn Bakery in Uzhgorod. He grew up in a Jewish neighbourhood of New York and then moved here with his wife. He is fascinated by the region's Jewish heritage, and looks forward to showing his father that it is still possible to live a Jewish life here.

A religious Jew prays his morning prayer in Kolochava. He has been sent to help the local rabbi during holidays by Chabad, a Jewish religious organization whose mission is to bring Jews together and closer to God.

Vova, the president of the Jewish community of Khust, carries the Sefer Torah (Bible Scroll) during the shabbat prayers.

Jews gather in Mukacheve for the ritual of Tashlich. On the first day of the year, it is tradition to go to a river (or to a lake, as long as it has fish in it), and cast the sins and misconceptions of the past year into the water.


Source H/T Mottel

שלוחי אדונינו - אור לגויים

Young shliach Mendel Hurwitz speaks about growing up Jewish. The fact that this light unto the nations is emanating from Hungary, and is the product of the hard work of a Chossid מיוצאי אונגארן, only adds to the nachas. At least for me. We wish the Hurwitzes much continued nachas from Mendel און אלע אנדערע קינדער. On a technical note, if you're using the IE browser and are prompted to either see all or only secure content, click "show all content." That will bring the videos to your screen. With Google Chrome it does not seem to appear, hence the need for the links.



If the video does not show up in your browser click here for the link



If the video does not show up in your browser click here for the link

Monday Links and Goodies

Artist Zalman Kleiman - 20 years
Hespedim at the levaya of RRK
frum people using Reform Rabbis to fight Beis Din?!
TORONTO SAGES: Prominent rabbis of blessed memory
כיצד כותבים את ההיסטוריה של יהדות הונגריה בישראל

Summer Reading

  SZTE Religion Culture Society Glaesser

How Charedi publications often get it wrong when it comes to Lubavitch news...

Hi Hirshel 

Maybe you can post the attached with a comment, something like this: It's strange how some publications never get the facts correct when it concerns Lubavitch. I just read the story in Binah of 2 weeks ago, 25 Sivan 5775, by Suri Epstein, about a couple, where the wife studies medicine, who do so much kiruv work in Debrecin (or Debrecen), Hungary. Really unbelievable. But since I visit that city almost every year for Kivrei Avos, let me fill in some minor facts. The couple has left the city, I believe last year. So if you got the impression that you are reading a report about current life there, then you were fooled. The "Chabad couple" mentioned in the article is Rabbi Shmuel and his wife Rebbetzin Feigin. Rabbi Feigin is practically the Rov of the City, in charge of anything that has to do with Yiddishkeit. He has been there already for a few years with the typical Chabad Mesiras Nefesh. The picture in the article about the "first Hachnasas Sefer Torah since before the Holocaust" is in the Beis Chabad. The unidentified sofer in the picture is Rabbi Feigin's father from Kfar Chabad. The meals for the students mentioned in the article relate to the Seudos Shabbos that Rabbi Feigin and the rebbetzin organize for the Israeli and Hungarian students. So in short, most of the facts are correct, all that Binah missed out is to identify who is behind all this work. Rabbi Feigin and his wife are really doing a great job. Tremendous Kiruv. And I didn't even mention the Drashos in Hungarian that Rabbi Feigin give to the Baalei Batim in the Shul, that's a story in its own...

Thanks for listening.

  New Rabbi in Debrecen

Revelations about the Belzer Rov, his time in Hungary, and what the טיילונג proponents may not want you to know about שטטוס קוו

  Debrecen-Belz StatusQuo Rabbi

Box.com link

Belz - אור הצפון מהרי"ד

Box.com link

"ואת הנפש אשר עשו בחרן"

Hungarian Lubavitcher בעלי תשובה that we can all look up to

It may be hard for non-Hungarians to understand this, but to see this kind of rebirth in Hungary, after decades of Jews hiding their Jewishness, is nothing short of amazing. Little kids with yarmulkes, peyos and tzitzis speaking Hungarian? Holy Toledo!

How do these meeting minutes shtim with conventional Satmar wisdom re: what the Zionist leadership did and didn't do during WWII?

Yitzchak Gruenbaum, 1948

Minutes of Meeting May 25, 1944

I linked to the meeting minutes a few days ago but this deserves its own post

I have a hard time remembering all the rhetoric, but every Satmar kid knows the words "רק בדם תהיה לנו הארץ" which was said to have been said by Nathan Schwalbe, a low-level shnook in the Jewish Agency. The source was HaRav Michoel Ber Weissmandl in מן המצר. There is no other source. Which means that the Zionist leadership, David Ben-Gurion and friends, didn't care about the millions dying in Europe, since it would help them gain sympathy from the nations of the world and ultimately their coveted Jewish State. (Then there's the infamous Yitzchak Gruenbaum quote about a thousand Jews in Europe not being worth one cow in Palestine.) So therefore we need to oppose the מדינה. The problem is, that despite the fact that the Jewish Agency kept thousands and thousands of pages of minutes and other documents there is no mention of any such statement. But does the fact that there is no source for that statement keep thousands of otherwise semi-intelligent people from parroting it as the ultimate conspiracy? No. And if Schwalbe did say it, who is he anyway? From the minutes we see here it would seem that they acted pretty soon after the Nazis marched in to Hungary. We won't discuss whether or not the plan of giving trucks to Eichmann in exchange for Jews was a real and feasible one

Here's my predicament:

I'm not here to defend DBG or his buddies. Maybe if it was Begin I'd defend him. (just kidding) But what happens is that the other side, the zealots, start to believe the rhetoric, no matter the lack of sources or evidence. Not only do they believe it, but if YOU don't believe it you're a revisionist. You're somehow a traitor to the Jewish People. Read the Satmar Yiddish forums and you'll see the "כידוע האבען די ציונים געשטערט אז מ'זאל ראטעווען מיליאנען אידען און זענעם ערגער ווי כאמאס" discussions in abundance. Most of it based on R' Michoel Ber. It's not a question of if anymore. It's ידוע already. That would not be such a problem in and of itself, were it not for the fact that somehow wanting a strong Israel today is somehow dependent on what DBG did or didn't do some 70 years ago... or what Teddy Herzl had in mind over 100 years ago. Or the religious persuasion of TH's children. Or what Stephen Wise or Abba Hillel Silver did or didn't do. It almost sounds like those remind us every year what an awful country America is because of what Columbus did to the natives. It would be א האלבע צרה if al the quotes they attribute to them are true! But if they're the figment of somebody's imagination, am I required to believe it and act upon it? Am I missing something?

Nathan Schwalbe Source: USHMM

Who was ד"ר ב' קאהן and why was his name removed from the שו"ת ויען יוסף ?

If you look back at the Luach Pupa 1943 that we published this week recently you'll see the name ד"ר ב' קאהן mentioned as a source for zmanim, since he was a בקי in Astronomy. Makes perfect sense. Not much thought went into worrying about his Doktor Rabbiner status or which kehillah he belonged to - שטטוס קוו או ארטאדאקסית - he knows his stars so he can tell us when night falls. Yet as much as we think that we're continuing our glorious European traditions we seem to be VERY self-conscious about much of what went on there! At least twice in the new edition of ויען יוסף where they quote לוח פאפא תש"ג they omit his name and the fact that he was an "אשכנזי" - i.e. a learned Yekke.  What do today's Pupeners know that their esteemed Rebbe and mentor didn't? Why was it good enough for him and not for the folks on Bedford Avenue? See the final paragraph in the attached file, starting from ולענין זמן צאת הכוכבים. So, as far as the question we ask in the title: why was his name removed from שו"ת ויען יוסף, I guess we're protecting our children???

Who was Dr. B. Kohn? see 'סימן ל for a תשובה from Rabbi Dovid Tzvi Hoffman to the good Dr. Rabbiner.

He attended the Kenessiah Gedauloh and is mentioned in the 3rd paragraph as הרב ד"ר קאהן, ראוויטש

לוח פאפא החדש

ZSIDÓ HÍREK BUDAPEST

The "enlightened" ones like to point to the Bilgorajer Rov's parting droshoh in 1944 as proof that the Tzaddikim at that time had no idea what was coming. Even as late as Spring 1944. That the secular take issue with that is a given. Even the Belzers have a problem with it... See what the Lubavitcher Rav Oberlander says about that speech in the caption.

אשרי חלקו.

They had threatening Tznius posters in pre-War Hungary too!

  come to shul with short sleeves - or revealing clothing - and lose your seat and no refund on your dues!

סיפורו של המנהיג הניאו נאצי שחזר בתשובה - בזכות שלוחי כ"ק אדמו"ר זי"ע

אזוי ווי דער בעש"ט הק' בימיו - וויזשניצער רבי פארט ארום און איז מחזק אידן אין אונגארן - היום לפני 80 שנה

הביקור ההיסטורי בהונגריה לפני 80 שנה

Box.com Link

Saving Torah is most important?

Hirshel 

I saw this yesterday in a new sefer on Reb MD Weissmandel, put out by a einikel. It has original droshos and new bits of info. They have 2 articles of Nisan Gordon in the Moment (a Yiddish newspaper in that era) who interviewed him in the hospital before his passing. In the Moment, they also have a article by Reb Lazer Wiezel, (it's probably Eli the one and only Auschwitz survivor...) they hide it .... in the copy you see that he cried about the shas that was printed in 1944 by the US Vaad Hatzalah organization and the money it took to print could have saved Jews - even that late. I heard this legend and hearsay forever  - that he was mad at RAK for that - I never wanted to believe it but now I see... look at what Reb Reuven said on that shas! Even though I think that according to dry Halocha he was not too wrong....saving Torah is above all..... (It seems like this was said at a Nitra Yeshiva dinner in 1956, shortly before his passing, when Hungarian Jews were waiting to get over the border and into safety during the revolution there. - HT)

deh hooson in deh alle mehootoonim