Today’s Yahrtzeits and History – 28 Shevat

Rav Alexander Sender of Zholkov (~1660-1737). He was the son of Rav Ephraim Zalman Shor, Magid of Lvov, and was orphaned as an infant. In 1704, Rav Alexander Sender went to live in Zholkov (Zolkiew) where he remained for the rest of his life, devoting himself to study and writing and earning his living working in a distillery. He was the author of Tevuos Shor, first published in 1733, on shechita and kashrus. He was a great-grandnephew of Rav Ephraim Zalman Shor, the author of a sefer by the same name, Tevuos Shor, a condensation of the Beis Yosef.[27 Shvat, according Hamodia 2006]

Rav Emanuel of Preshedvorz (1802-1865). Successor to his father, the Rebbe Reb Yeshayale (d. 1831).

Rav Yosef Dovid (ben Yitzchak Isaac) Zindheim (1745 (or 1736)-1812). Born in the Alsace region on the border between France and Germany, Reb Yosef Dovid married at age 20. In 1778, his wife’s wealthy brother, Naftali Herz (aka Cerf Berr de Medelsheim) established a yeshiva in Bischeim (near Strasbourg), and he appointed his brother-in-law to be Rosh Yeshiva. It was also at this time that Rav Zintzheim began composing his commentary on Shas, Yad Dovid. He also wrote Shelal Dovid on Chumash, Da’as Dovid on the Shulchan Aruch, and an encyclopedia of halachic and Talmudic topics called Minchas Ani. He was appointed to the Assembly of Jewish Notables convened by Napoleon (1806), appointed president of the Great Sanhedrin, and named by Napoleon as inaugural chief rabbi of Central Consistoire.

Rav Mordechai Goldman, Zvihller Rebbe (1979). Son of Rav Gedalya Moshe. Note: Novohrad-Volyns’kyi (Russian: Novgorodvolynsk, Yiddish: Zhvil, Zhvill) is a City in Zhytomyr Oblast, Volhynia, Ukraine.

Rav Menachem Nachum Twersky of Chernobyl, the Rachmistrivka Rebbe (1840-1937); son of Rav Yochanon; grandson of Rav Menachem Nachum (author of Meor Einayim).

Rav Ephraim Ezra Laniado, author of Degel Machaneh Ephraim

Rav Eliezer Alpa (originally Potshnik) (1896-1990). Born in the Russian town of Ulshan, he joined the Novardok school in Charkov when he was only 11. During that period, he studied incessantly with his chavrusa, Rav Chaim Shmulevitz, the future Rosh Yeshiva of Mir. During the ravages World War 1, the bachurim to Poland and joined the Novardok yeshiva’s branch in Bialystock. There, Rav Eliezer learned b’chavrusa with Rav Yaakov Yisrael Kanievsky, the Steipler Gaon. He married Shulamis, the daughter of Rav Meir Karelitz. Under the recommendation, he headed a yeshiva in Galician city of Gorlitz, but he did not remain long because, in 1935, the Chazon Ish and other prominent rabbanim urged him to settle in Eretz Yisrael. At first, he moved into the one-room home of his uncle, the Chazon Ish, where the Steipler Gaon and his wife were also staying. Not long afterwards, Rav Eliezer decided to move to Haifa in order to found a yeshiva in that spiritual wasteland.

Rav Nesanel Quinn (1910-2005), menahel at Mesivta Torah Vodaas for almost 80 years. Rav Nesanel’s parents’ Reb Zalman Pinchas and Devorah Miriam were neighbors of the Rogochover Rav in Dvinsk, Lithuania, and were childless for 10 years. Upon the advice of Rav Shalom Ber of Lubavich, they moved to America (they were promised a family and arichas yomim; they had 5 children, and she lived to 111 years.) Reb Nesanel was a talmid of Rav Dovid Leibowitz. He later became the talid muvhak of Rav Shraga Feivel Mendelovitz, at Torah Vodaas, and stayed there as an educator.

Today in History – 28 Shevat

· Antiochus V lifts siege of Jerusalem, 163 BCE
· Jews of Norwich, England, are massacred, 1190
· The first auto-da-fe (“act of faith” i.e. burning Jews at the stake) by the Spanish Inquisition, 1481, in Seville.
· Auto-da-fe at Toledo, Spain, February 12, 1486. Toledo was one of the largest Jewish communities in Spain, and this auto-da-fe was the first in that city and unusually lenient. The Jews were forced to recant on their Judaism, fined 1/5 of their property and permanently forbidden to wear decent clothes or hold office.

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