Tonight......... The RASHASH and The Freidiker Rebbe Of Lubavitch

[Tal Moshe Zwecker]

From my good friend R' Yakov Lehrfeld

Tonight 10^th of Teves Is The Yartzeit Of :

The RASHASH HAKODESH.

Rav Sholom Mizrachi Didia Sharabi (1777) ben R' Yitzchok, the Rashash, Rosh Yeshiva of Beit-El. His interpretation of Kabbala of the Arizal is considered one of the main 4 ways. (The others are Ramchal, Vilna Gaon and Baal Shem Tov)

Opened pathways of Toras Hanister  and revealed the deepest Kavanos of each letter in the Siddur. Connecting all the upper worlds and combining them.

Kever Rashash – Har Hazeisim                                                                                                                 Page from Holy Rashash Siddur Kavannah for one word in Shemona Esrei

Zecher Tzadik V’Kodesh Livracha Zechuso Yagen Aleinu Amen!!

The Rashash - The Great Mekubal Rav Shalom Sharabi

One the great Yemenite Torah leaders and one of the foremost Mekubalim of his day and leading Mekubal in Yerushalayim, Rav Shalom Sharabi otherwise known as the Rashash, was born in Yemen in 5480/1720.  After being saved from a difficult situation he fulfilled his promise to go to Eretz Yisroel with his sights set on learning Torah in Yeshiva Bet El in Yerushalayim.  After a journey that led him through India, Baghdad and Damascus he arrived in Yerushalayim.  At that point he was already a great talmid chochom and accomplished in both Toras HaNiglah and Toras HaNistar.  Yet trying to keep himself hidden, the Rashash approached the Rosh Yeshiva Rav Gedalia Chayon and applied for the job of a Shamash.  This way he was able to stay anonymous yet quench his thirst for Torah in this great Yeshiva.  He would stand innocently in the corner during shiurim as if he was not part of the shiur, yet he was listening intently.  His official job was to wake up the talmidim for tikkun chatzos, arrange the seforim, and bring water.  No one dreamed that this "Shamash" was actually a great Talmid Chochom.  When difficult questions would arise that could not be answered by anyone in the yeshiva the Rashash would leave an anonymous note with the correct answer between the Rosh Yeshiva's seforim.  This happened on a number of occasions and left the Rosh Yeshiva and all the talmidim bewildered as to who the author could have been since the Rosh Yeshiva decreed on all the "talmidim" that they must reveal the author. One day when the daughter of the Rosh Yeshiva saw the Rashash sticking a paper inside her father's sefer she immediately notified her father.  Under pressure from the Rosh Yeshiva the Rashash was forced to admit what he had been doing all along.  Although he pleaded with Rav Gedalia to let him remain hidden, Rav Gedalia took his daughter's revelation as sign from Shamayim that it was time for the Rashash to be revealed.  From then on the Rashash became very close with the Rosh Yeshiva and in time married his daughter. After Rav Gedalia's death the Rashash, at only 27 years old, was appointed Rosh Yeshiva.  He wrote a peirush on the Arizal's Kabbala work Etz Chaim (written by Rav Chaim Vital) of which Rav Yeddiya Abulafia said that whoever learns Eitz Chaim without the peirush of the Rashash is like a blind man feeling his way in the dark.  Among his most famous writings is the Siddur HaRashash in which is written special kabalistic kavanos for Tefila which have become the standard for all Mekubalim today. Among his talmidim were the Chida and the Maharit Algazi who became the Rosh Yeshiva after the petira of the Rashash.  His great son Rav Yitzchok Sharabi left in his tzava'a a request to bury him in disgrace and throw him into his kever as a kapara for once acting against the wishes of his father the Rashash.  Naturally upon his death the Chevra Kadisha refused to carry this out.  During the levaya they were attacked by the local Arabs and everyone was forced to leave the niftar and flee for their lives.  The attackers then flung the body which rolled down the hill in disgrace to its final resting place. The Rashash was niftar in 5537/1777 at the age of 57 in Yerushalayim.  The Rashash promised that in times of tzara whoever davens at his kever with great kavana will be answered.  He is buried on Har HaZeisim and on his Yahrtzeit, the 10th of Shevat many petitioners who go to learn and daven there. Yehi Zichro Boruch .

 

Tonight Is The Yartzeit Of The Sixth Rebbe Of Lubavitch. Zecher Tzadik V’Kodesh Livracha Zechuso Yagen Aleinu Amen!!!

Rav Yosef Yitzchak ben R' Sholom Dov Ber Schneerson (1951) the sixth Lubavitcher Rebbe.

Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn (1880-1950) Sixth Rebbe of Chabad-Lubavitch

Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn, 1880-1950, the sixth Rebbe of Chabad-Lubavitch Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn, the sixth rebbe of Chabad-Lubavitch, was one of the most remarkable Jewish personalities of the twentieth century. In his seventy years, he encountered every conceivable challenge to Jewish life: the persecutions and pogroms of Czarist Russia, Communism's war on Judaism, and melting-pot America's apathy and scorn toward the Torah and its precepts. The Rebbe was unique in that he not only experienced these chapters in Jewish history -- as did many of his generation -- but that, as a leader of his people, he actually faced them down, often single-handedly, and prevailed. Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak was the only son of Rabbi Sholom DovBer, the fifth Rebbe of Chabad, whose devotion to the child's education is lovingly chronicled in Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak's voluminous writings.1 While still in his teens, the young Yosef Yitzchak he served as the right hand of his father. As the personal secretary of the Rebbe, Yosef Yitzchak's responsibilities included administrating the many civic and communal activities in which the Rebbe was involved. The young Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak, in full-length chassidic garb, was a familiar figure in the receiving rooms of the government officials, ministers, and nobles of Moscow and Petersburg. In 5655 (1895) the young rabbi participated in the great conference of religious and lay leaders in Kovno, and again in the following year in Vilna. At times soft-spoken and with words coming from the heart, at times audacious and threatening, but always fearless and determined, he demanded the repeal of anti-Jewish decrees, the stopping of pogroms and the cessation of the government's program of forced "enlightenment" of traditional Jewish life. On Elul 13, 5657 (1897), at the age of seventeen, Yosef Yitzchak married Nechamah Dina, daughter of Rabbi Abraham Schneersohn and granddaughter of the Tzemach Tzedek, the third Chabad rebbe. During the week's celebrations that followed the wedding ceremony, Rabbi Sholom Dovber announced the founding of Tomchei Tmimim, the Lubavitch yeshivah, and the following year appointed his son to be its executive director. It was there, in the hamlet of Lubavitch in pre-soviet White Russia, that Rabbi Yosef Yitzchok trained the army of the faithful torchbearers who, under the impossible conditions of the decades to come, would literally give their lives to keep the flame of Jewish life ablaze throughout the Soviet Union. Upon his father's passing in 1920 Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak assumed the leadership of Russian Jewry just as Communism's all-out war on Jewish life was moving into high gear. His fight to preserve Judaism was characterized by his all-consuming mesirat nefesh - an unequivocally selfless devotion to the physical and spiritual needs of a fellow Jew and unshakable faith in what he stood for. He dispatched teachers and rabbis to the farthest reaches of the Soviet Empire, establishing a vast underground network of schools, mikvaos, and lifelines of material and spiritual support. Stalin's henchmen did everything in their power to stop him. In 1927 he was arrested, beaten, sentenced to death and exiled; but he stood his ground, and by force of international pressure he was finally allowed to leave the country. But in leaving the boundaries of the Soviet Union he left his emissaries and their infrastructure of Jewish life behind; these continued to function and thrive, preserving and even spreading the teachings of Torah and chassidism to this very day. When the all-powerful communist regime began to crumble in the closing years of the '80s, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak's network of children's schools, outreach centers, and supply lines of kosher food and religious services simply moved out of cellars and attics into emptied Communist Party buildings. Upon arriving in New York after his rescue from Nazi-occupied Warsaw in 1940, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak took on a no less formidable challenge: the frigid spiritual atmosphere of the western world. There was no telling Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak that his was a losing battle; from his wheelchair, he rallied the Jewish young of America under the cry that "America is no different," that also in this bastion of materialism the timeless truths of Torah can take root and flourish. He established yeshivas and day schools, a publishing house for Jewish books, a social service organization and community support networks throughout the country. By the time of his passing in 1950 he had laid the foundation for the global renaissance of Torah-true and chassidic-flavored Jewish life, heralded by his son-in-law and successor, Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson.

Zechuso Yagen Aleinu Amen!!!