Yisachar Shlomo Teichtal
Encyclopedia
Orthodox Judaism
Orthodox Judaism , is the approach to Judaism which adheres to the traditional interpretation and application of the laws and ethics of the Torah as legislated in the Talmudic texts by the Sanhedrin and subsequently developed and applied by the later authorities known as the Gaonim, Rishonim, and...
to support an active effort to settle the land of Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
. He was murdered on a transport train during the closing days of World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
.
Early life
Yisachar Shlomo Teichtal was born in HungaryHungary
Hungary , officially the Republic of Hungary , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine and Romania to the east, Serbia and Croatia to the south, Slovenia to the southwest and Austria to the west. The...
in 1885 from a family of well-known rabbis and Jewish leaders. His parents were Gittel and Yitzchak Teichtal. His father was a scholar, teacher, and a chasid
Hasidic Judaism
Hasidic Judaism or Hasidism, from the Hebrew —Ḥasidut in Sephardi, Chasidus in Ashkenazi, meaning "piety" , is a branch of Orthodox Judaism that promotes spirituality and joy through the popularisation and internalisation of Jewish mysticism as the fundamental aspects of the Jewish faith...
of the Rebbe
Rebbe
Rebbe , which means master, teacher, or mentor, is a Yiddish word derived from the Hebrew word Rabbi. It often refers to the leader of a Hasidic Jewish movement...
of Sanz. At thirteen years of age, Teichtal began his yeshiva
Yeshiva
Yeshiva is a Jewish educational institution that focuses on the study of traditional religious texts, primarily the Talmud and Torah study. Study is usually done through daily shiurim and in study pairs called chavrutas...
study under Rabbi Shalom Weider who was the av beit din (town rabbi) of Nyrdhaa, Hungary. At age fifteen he moved to Gavne, Poland
Poland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
, where he was a student of Rabbi Shalom Unger.
Teichtal returned to Hungary and at the age of twenty-one he received rabbinic ordination (semichah) from the Rebbe of Talisheva. He received another ordination a year later from Rabbi Shmuel Rosenberg and a third ordination the same year from Rabbi Mordechai Leib Winkler. Teichtal first married when he was 19 years of age to Freidl Ginz. When Freidl died at a young age, he married Nechamah Friedman.
In 1921 Teichtal became the av beit din and Rabbi of Pishtian
Pieštany
Piešťany is a town in Slovakia. It is located in the western part of the country within the Trnava Region and is the seat of its own district. It is the biggest and best known spa town in Slovakia and has around 30,000 inhabitants.-History:...
, a city famous for its mineral baths, in Czechoslovakia
Czechoslovakia
Czechoslovakia or Czecho-Slovakia was a sovereign state in Central Europe which existed from October 1918, when it declared its independence from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, until 1992...
. Remaining in Pishtian for 25 years, he established the Moriah Yeshiva
Yeshiva
Yeshiva is a Jewish educational institution that focuses on the study of traditional religious texts, primarily the Talmud and Torah study. Study is usually done through daily shiurim and in study pairs called chavrutas...
.
World War II
Czechoslovakia was invaded in 1938 while Teichtal was still residing in Pishtian. As the Nazi oppression increased he found himself along with ten other family members in hiding at the local beit midrash (house of learning). From his hiding place he witnessed many atrocities including the mass deportation of friends and neighbors.The Chief Rabbi of Slovakia
Slovakia
The Slovak Republic is a landlocked state in Central Europe. It has a population of over five million and an area of about . Slovakia is bordered by the Czech Republic and Austria to the west, Poland to the north, Ukraine to the east and Hungary to the south...
in Nitra
Nitra
Nitra is a city in western Slovakia, situated at the foot of Zobor Mountain in the valley of the river Nitra. With a population of about 83,572, it is the fifth largest city in Slovakia. Nitra is also one of the oldest cities in Slovakia and the country's earliest political and cultural center...
sent messengers offering refuge for Teichtal and his family. In the month of Elul
Elul
Elul is the twelfth month of the Jewish civil year and the sixth month of the ecclesiastical year on the Hebrew calendar. It is a summer month of 29 days...
1942, he and his family escaped into Hungary to go into hiding in Nitra
Nitra
Nitra is a city in western Slovakia, situated at the foot of Zobor Mountain in the valley of the river Nitra. With a population of about 83,572, it is the fifth largest city in Slovakia. Nitra is also one of the oldest cities in Slovakia and the country's earliest political and cultural center...
. After much wandering he finally ended up in Budapest
Budapest
Budapest is the capital of Hungary. As the largest city of Hungary, it is the country's principal political, cultural, commercial, industrial, and transportation centre. In 2011, Budapest had 1,733,685 inhabitants, down from its 1989 peak of 2,113,645 due to suburbanization. The Budapest Commuter...
where he remained for nearly two years. In Budapest he completed his seminal work, Eim HaBanim Semeichah after working on it for a little more than one year.
In 1944 Hungary was invaded by the Nazis. Thinking that Slovakia might be safe, the Teichtal family returned there to wait out the end of the war. At the time the Nazis stepped up their efforts to find remaining Jews. Teichtal and his family were captured and transported to Auschwitz.
Death
As the Soviet army advanced through Poland, in January 1945, the inmates of Auschwitz, including Teichtal and his family, were transported deeper into Germany. Teichtal died in a train on his way to the MauthausenMauthausen-Gusen concentration camp
Mauthausen Concentration Camp grew to become a large group of Nazi concentration camps that was built around the villages of Mauthausen and Gusen in Upper Austria, roughly east of the city of Linz.Initially a single camp at Mauthausen, it expanded over time and by the summer of 1940, the...
concentration camp on the 10th of Shevat
Shevat
Shevat is the fifth month of the civil year and the eleventh month of the ecclesiastical year on the Hebrew calendar. It is a winter month of 30 days...
, 5705 (January 24, 1945). The following quotation is from an account of his father’s death on a train transport related by Rabbi Chayim Menachem Teichtal:
(from the Historical Introduction of Eim Habonim Semeichah: on Eretz Yisrael, Redemption, and Unity published in 2000 by Kol Mevaser Publications, Mevaseret Tzion, Israel; pg xxiv).
After starving their victims for a number of days, the oppressors tossed each of them a meager crust of bread, with the evil intent of having them fight pathetically for their paltry allotment. Indeed, one of the Ukrainians grabbed the portion of a Jew – my father’s neighbor - who was desperate for this crust of bread. This angered my father, who demanded the return of the theft. The other travelers begged my father not to get involved, since it might cost him his life. But he said “How can I stand by when the wronged man’s life depends on this food?” Indeed he insisted on taking a stand, and the Ukrainians, with the cooperation of the Nazi soldiers, rose against him and killed him, after torturing him mercilessly.
Zionism
As a result of the Holocaust Teichtal changed his position on IsraelIsrael
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
as he struggled to make meaning out of what was happening around him. His carefully constructed arguments are outlined in his book Eim Habanim Semeichah penned during his wanderings in hiding from his Nazi oppressors and their collaborators. In that work, first published in 1943, he makes a case for the rebuilding of the land of Israel
Land of Israel
The Land of Israel is the Biblical name for the territory roughly corresponding to the area encompassed by the Southern Levant, also known as Canaan and Palestine, Promised Land and Holy Land. The belief that the area is a God-given homeland of the Jewish people is based on the narrative of the...
bringing about the ultimate redemption. In this respect his work had a precursor in the works of Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook
Abraham Isaac Kook
Abraham Isaac Kook was the first Ashkenazi chief rabbi of the British Mandate for Palestine, the founder of the Religious Zionist Yeshiva Merkaz HaRav, Jewish thinker, Halachist, Kabbalist and a renowned Torah scholar...
. His original view had been that of the majority in the Orthodox Jewish world at the time, which discouraged an active movement for a return of Jews to Israel. The prevalent view at that time was that God would bring about a return without the need of human mechanizations. The Holocaust caused him to re-think this approach, and he therefore came to the conclusion that the reason that the Jewish people had not been redeemed, was because they had not returned to their homeland, the land of Israel, to resettle and rebuild it to its former glory.
Legacy
Teichtal wrote other works besides Eim Habanim Semeichah, in particular Mishneh Sochir (responsa). He was a prolific writer, and miraculously a number of his other works survived both his murder and the Holocaust. Some works are still in manuscript form and have not yet been published. The Mishneh Sachir Center located in Bnei Brak, Israel is an advanced Talmudic learning academy named in the honor of Teichtal carrying on his work and preserving his legacy.Lately, Isaac Hershkowitz has completed a comprehensive study on Teichtal's works. He demonstrated that some of Teichtal's ideological changes that had been attributed to the war had indeed occurred even earlier – in the early 1930s. This metamorphosis is reflected both in his views and even more significantly in his halakhic methodology.
Moreover, by means of examining the dates of various parts of Eim Habanim Semeichah, and by analyzing Teichtal's ideological stances during the various stages of his compilation, it becomes clear that the book does not present a clear-cut stand on any of the basic issues of Religious Zionism’s conceptions, as well as Orthodoxy’s beliefs. Moreover, Teichtal’s doctrines are filled with retractions and contradictions, and his positions swing from Hungarian Orthodoxy to Religious Zionist thought.
In the earlier stages of Eim Habanim Semeichah, Teichtal spoke more of the importance of the Land of Israel and its building as a crucial stage of the Redemption, in order to stimulate significant down-to-earth developments. However, in the latter parts of his book, he granted theological and mystical value to indexes measuring inner unity in the Jewish nation, thus protesting actively against the creators of the Orthodox - non-Orthodox schism in Hungarian Jewry.
Hershkowitz argues that Eim Habanim Semeichah should be analyzed as a dialectical compilation, and not as a canonical work. Accordingly, it is not meant to outline a world with only one meaning, and consequently, Teichtal is not obligated to explain each
division. The objective of the compilation is to float fundamental issues of nationalism and derivative ideas such as the link between God and Israel during the Redemption, the nature of Redemption, and methods of its implementation. Teichtal wanted to include within his book the boundaries various implications arising from an open discussion, and not to dictate only one world view. Thus, he did not attempt to obscure this tension; on the contrary, he gave it expression in various ways.
The essence of Eim Habanim Semeichah, and of the other shifts in Teichtal's religious concepts ever since the rise of the Nazi regime, is affixed to his ability to express harsh criticism of those rabbinic personalities who had shaped his own world, as well as the entire world of Hungarian Orthodoxy for close to eighty years, and publicly criticize the schism within Hungarian Jewish communities in addition to Orthodoxy’s shirking of a vision of Redemption.
External links
- Complete text of Eim Habanim Semeichah Online The Jews of Hungary During the Holocaust http://www.tsel.org/torah/emhabanim-eng/contents.html#link
- Article from the Orthodox Union http://www.ou.org/torah/tt/5765/toldot65/chosen.htm
- Zionist Leaders http://www.zfa.org.il/articles/interwar_years.html
- Chaburat Eim Habanim Semeichah -- On-line study of Eim Habanim Semeichah and related topics http://groups.yahoo.com/group/toratimecha/