2 Nisan · Yahrzeit
Rabbi Yaakov Yosef Twersky - the Skverer Rebbe
Rabbi Yaakov Yosef Twersky, the Skverer Rebbe (1899-1968)
Yahrzeit - 2 Nissan
Resting place - New Square, New York
Rabbi Yaakov Yosef Twersky was a direct descendant of the Baal Shem Tov on his mother's side (his mother, Chana Sima, was a granddaughter of Rabbi Aharon of Titov, son of Rabbi Tzvi, son of the Baal Shem Tov), and on his father's side he was a direct descendant of the first Chernobyler Rebbe.
In the summer of 1919, due to the pogroms in Ukraine that followed the Bolshevik Revolution, the Rebbe's family moved to Kiev. A few months later, on 15 Kislev, his father, Rav David, the Skverer Rebbe, passed away, and the following autumn the family moved to Kishinev, Bessarabia.
In 1925, Rabbi Yaakov Yosef married the granddaughter of Rabbi Issachar Dov Rokeach of Belz and moved to Belz. A few years later he returned to Romania and led the Skverer chassidim in Coloraş as their Rebbe.
In the winter of 1945, he moved to Bucharest, from where he emigrated to the United States (in 1948). After establishing his court in Boro Park, and later in Williamsburg, in 1957 he founded New Square, a town of chassidim - facing materialism and decline in chassidic life, he wanted to build his followers a rural residential community far from urban centers. This was the first shtetl of its kind in the United States.
May the merit of the tzadik protect Am Yisrael!