Abraham Yehoshua Heschel

Abraham Jehoshua Heschel von Apta , (* 1748 in Nowy Żmigród , † 1825 in Medschybisch , known as the Apter Rebbe ) was a Hasidic tzaddik .

Life

He was born in a village in south-eastern Poland and was a student of Elimelech of Lyschansk . From 1809 to 1813 he was rabbi in Opatów and Jassy , after which he settled in Medschybisch, where he lived until his death and was buried next to the Baal Shem Tov , the founder of Hasidism. He was an opponent of the Haskala (Jewish Enlightenment) and fought against the Maskilim (followers of the Haskala) in Brody , who, in his opinion, spread heretical ideas among the Jews in Russia . After Tsar Alexander I passed a law that drastically deteriorated the living conditions of Jewish tenants and landlords in the Russian Empire , Abraham Heschel ordered a public fast. In the controversy between Hasidim from Bratslav (follower of Rabbi Nachman ) and Przysucha (follower of Jaakow Jizchak von Przysucha ) he tried to reconcile the different views.

He left instructions that his tombstone should only contain the words Ohew Jisrael ( Who Loves Israel ). He is known under this name in Hasidic circles to this day. He was a religious ecstatic and accompanied his sermons on Shabbat and on Jewish holidays with wild hand movements, whereby his followers believed that this was an expression of the "stripping away from physical existence". His revelations were compared by Hasidim with the legends narrated in the Talmud of Rabbah Bar Bar Hana, an Amorae from the second half of the third century AD . A contemporary account of Abraham Yehoshua Heschel states: "In the middle of the supper, when the Spirit came upon him, he shouted and gestured in a loud and painful voice; his head fell back almost to his heels, and everyone around him holy table sat ... trembled and feared ... he began to reveal secrets of the Torah and hidden mysteries ... his face was (like) a torch, he raised his voice in ecstasy ". His posthumously published works include Torat Emet (“True Torah”, Lemberg 1854) and Ohew Jisrael ( Shitomir 1863).

literature

• Encyclopaedia Judaica , Vol. 2, pp. 159-160.