Rabbi Aharon Rokeach - the Belzer Rebbe

Rabbi Aharon ben Yissachar Dov Rokeach (1880-1957) was the fourth Rebbe of the Belz Hasidic dynasty. He led the movement from 1926 until his passing in 1957. Yahrzeit - 21 Av Resting place - Belz, Ukraine Rav Aharon inherited the mantle of leadership from his father, Yissachar Dov Rokeach, after his passing in 1926. Known for his piety and mysticism, Rebbe Aharon was called the "Wonder Rabbi" by both Jews and non-Jews for the miracles he performed. During the Holocaust, Rebbe Aharon was one of the first names on the Gestapo's target list, as a high-profile Rebbe. With the support and financial assistance of Belzer Hasidim in Mandatory Palestine, England, and the United States, he and his brother, Rav Mordechai of Bilgoraj, managed to escape from Poland to Hungary, then to Turkey, Lebanon, and finally to the Holy Land in February 1944. After Rav Mordechai's sudden passing in November 1949, Rebbe Aharon took in his one-year-old son, Yissachar Dov, and prepared him to become his successor as the Belzer Rebbe. Aharon was the first child born after 12 years of marriage between Rav Yissachar Dov Rokeach and Basha Ruchama Twersky. He was named after his mother's great-grandfather, the Chernobyler Rebbe Aharon, although his father later admitted he had intended to name the boy after Rabbi Aharon of Karlin. Aharon had a younger sister, Chana Rachel, who later married Rabbi Pinchas Twersky of Ostilla. Aharon's mother passed away on March 18, 1884, when Aharon was 4 years old. His grandfather, Rebbe Yehoshua Rokeach, the second Belzer Rebbe, took the boy under his wing and oversaw his spiritual development. As he grew, Aharon spent most of his day secluded in Torah study, eating and sleeping little. He also concealed his accomplishments with a humility that would remain with him his entire life. When his grandfather passed away on January 30, 1894, Aharon's father became the third Belzer Rebbe. Rebbe Yissachar Dov married Chaya Devorah Pechenik and had seven children. Rebbe Aharon was 22 years old when his half-brother Mordechai was born. When he came of age, Rav Aharon married his cousin Malka, daughter of his father's older brother Shmuel, the rabbi of Sokal. After the wedding, Aharon lived with his father-in-law for several years. His strict regimen of seclusion, deprivation, and asceticism seriously weakened his health, after which doctors recommended a complete change of residence and sent him to a resort. Although he recuperated at the Krynica resort, he still ate very little, and his chronic lack of sleep prevented him from standing or walking quickly. However, on Shabbat he would stand upright, walk briskly, and take part in the Shabbat meals with evident pleasure. He and his wife had five sons and four daughters. Several children died at birth, and those who survived were sickly and weak. Two daughters had hearing and speech impairments. One daughter, Mirel, passed away in 1938; the rest were murdered by the Nazis along with their families. When Aharon's father, Rabbi Yissachar Dov, passed away in Belz on Friday evening, October 30, 1926, his 46-year-old son accepted the mantle of leadership at the funeral held after Shabbat. While continuing to live a spartan and reclusive lifestyle, Rebbe Aharon proved himself to be a warm and caring leader. He read every kvitel with great interest and prayed for the salvation and success of the petitioner. At first he tried to limit the number of petitioners seeking his counsel and blessing to five per night, saying, "I simply cannot bear these tzoros (sorrows) of Klal Yisrael," as he felt every problem as deeply as if it were his own. But eventually he began receiving everyone at night. Escape from Europe During World War II, Belzer Hasidim both inside and outside Nazi-occupied Europe considered saving the Rebbe their top priority. They moved Rebbe Aharon — who insisted on being accompanied by his brother, Rabbi Mordechai — from Belz to Vyshnytsia, then to the Bochnia ghetto, then to the Krakow ghetto, and then back to the Bochnia ghetto, narrowly escaping Gestapo raids and deportations each time. Eventually the brothers were smuggled out of occupied Poland into Hungary by a Hungarian counterintelligence officer who was friendly to Jews. The Rebbe, his attendant, and Rabbi Mordechai, stripped of their characteristic beards and peyot, were disguised as Russian generals captured at the front and sent to Budapest for interrogation. After spending eight months in Hungary, the brothers boarded the Orient Express to Istanbul and finally arrived in Israel in February 1944. Rabbi Aharon lost his entire family in the Shoah: his wife, nine children, and twenty-three grandchildren. All of them were murdered in Nazi death camps, and none of them lived to see the end of the war. Rebbe Aharon's eldest son, Moshe, was burned alive in the synagogue of Peremyshliany at the very time Rebbe Aharon was in hiding in that same town. Later, Rabbi Moshe's wife and five children were also murdered. Rebbe Aharon's eldest daughter, Rivka Miriam, and her husband, Rabbi Shmiel Frankel, both perished along with their seven children. Rebbe Aharon's other daughters, Adel Twersky and Sarah Bracha Rosenfeld, along with their children, and two other sons, Rabbi Yisrael and Rabbi Yehuda Tzundel, along with their children, were also murdered. When he heard of these tragedies, the Rebbe showed no emotion. Stoically, he continued to lead his Hasidim and to conduct his prayers. In Israel Rebbe Aharon devoted the rest of his life to rebuilding the Belzer Hasidim in Israel. He first established his court in Tel Aviv, where he opened the first Belzer Talmud Torah. He later moved to Jerusalem, where he founded the first Belzer Yeshiva. In 1949 he married Chana Labin-Pollak, daughter of Rabbi Yechiel Chaim Labin, the Makover Rebbe, and widow of Rabbi Yosef Meir Pollak, the Berezhaner Rebbe. Her first husband had been murdered by the Nazis in Berezhany, leaving her with a young son and daughter. Rebbe Aharon had no children with his second wife, but he raised her children and arranged their marriages. Meanwhile, Rabbi Mordechai also remarried, and on January 19, 1948, a son, Yissachar Dov, was born to him. When Rabbi Mordechai suddenly passed away on November 17, 1949, Rebbe Aharon began preparing his one-year-old nephew to inherit the dynasty. After Rebbe Aharon's own passing in 1957, the boy was educated by a small circle of trusted advisors. He became the fifth Belzer Rebbe in 1966. The Holocaust changed Rebbe Aharon; he developed an attitude toward modern and non-Orthodox Jews that was unusual for the Chareidi world. Rebbe Aharon's second marriage also signaled a shift in the Belzer leader's thinking: the ceremony was performed by Rabbi Isser Yehuda Unterman, a member of the religious Zionist Mizrachi movement, a group that Belz had also previously kept at a distance. Unlike some of his fellow Hasidic Rebbes who survived the Holocaust and made it a practice to acknowledge and honor their deceased followers and to share their own experiences, Rebbe Aharon had a personal custom of never speaking about the Belzer Hasidim who perished during the war, especially members of his own family. Once, the rabbi and writer Arthur Hertzberg, a descendant of Belzer Hasidim, visited the Rebbe and tried to speak with him about pre-war Belz: He spoke readily about [my] grandfather, recalling that... [he] had been his teacher in his youth, but he fell completely silent when I mentioned my mother's father and her brothers, who had been his students, until they were killed during the war. I was upset. This strange behavior was later explained to me by his chief attendant: the Rebbe never once recited any of the prescribed prayers (Yizkor, Kaddish) for his wife and children, because those murdered by the Nazis for being Jews possessed a transcendent holiness; they were beyond our comprehension. Any words we might say about them would be inadequate and might even defile their memory. For Rebbe Aharon, the only proper way to respond to the near-total destruction of Belz and its Hasidim, and to honor the memory of those who perished, was to build new institutions and gradually raise a new generation of Hasidim. This task was carried forward — and largely accomplished — by his nephew, the current Belzer Rebbe.   Sipurei Tzadikim A Jewish woman from Peremyshliany, Faina Lyakher, fleeing the Holocaust, converted to Christianity and took the name Anna, later becoming a nun of the Studite Rite of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church — Sister Maria. Faina first saw Rabbi Rokeach when she came to him together with her father, who wanted to seek advice about a court case against him. He owned a candy shop and had accidentally failed to give change — 2 kopecks — to a Red Army soldier, for which he was to be put on trial. "It was a little house, terribly humble. There was a candle or a lamp on the table, a very poor washstand, and he sat over a book. He was so short in stature that when he stood up, he could barely be seen over the table." Faina's father, Gabriel Lyakher, explained the essence of his troubles and received advice from Rokeach: "Do you have anyone here in the cemetery?" — "Yes, my parents are buried here." — "Well, take your children, light candles at their grave, and ask them to intercede for you — nothing will happen to you." "We went to the cemetery. We did as the rabbi advised. There were two trials, and twice the Ukrainian lawyers defended my father, and nothing happened to him." With advice like this, the rabbi helped more than one resident of Peremyshliany. Rescuing a "child" from a burning synagogue In Peremyshliany, Rabbi Rokeach was to meet the local Greek Catholic priest Omelyan Kovch, an acquaintance that would play an important role in his life. The pastor of Peremyshliany, Omelyan Kovch, was four years younger than Rabbi Rokeach and likewise came from a family of clergy: his father, uncle, and grandfather were all priests. After studying in Rome, Kovch was ordained a Greek Catholic priest in 1911 and began his pastoral work. World War I and the Ukrainian-Polish war for independence (Omelyan Kovch served as a chaplain in the Ukrainian Galician Army) left their mark on his weathered, wrinkled face. Several imprisonments, both Polish and Soviet, the threat of execution, and typhus took their toll on the priest's health, but not on his spirit. As 1941 approached, Father Kovch would once again, in the fitting words of Holocaust researcher Zhanna Kovba, demonstrate his "humanity in the abyss of hell." On June 22, 1941, the German-Soviet war began. The Wehrmacht — the armed forces of Nazi Germany — swiftly seized one town after another in Western Ukraine as the Red Army retreated in disarray. The invasion of German forces replaced one occupying regime with another, and with it came the merciless machinery of Nazi terror to Ukrainian soil. Among the other Wehrmacht commanders riding triumphantly into the conquered Galician towns in his elegant Italian Fiat automobile was one of the most devoted and committed Nazis in the German military command — Field Marshal Walter von Reichenau. He took part in the capture of Kyiv and Kharkiv and died in a plane crash near Lviv. In late summer, an SS Einsatzgruppe entered Peremyshliany. They surrounded the Jewish quarter and set fire to the synagogue. Several local residents ran to Father Kovch and told him that the SS had herded many Jews into the synagogue and locked them inside, and that the building was already burning. The priest rushed to help without hesitation. His son Myron was with him. From eyewitness accounts, we know that the priest, running up to the synagogue, ordered the SS men to let him into the burning building. He spoke fluent German. Taking advantage of the invaders' momentary confusion, Kovch opened the door of the synagogue, and people began running out. Going inside, the priest saw a small body near the entrance, which he picked up and carried out of the flames. Only later did the priest learn that this rescued "child" was Rabbi Aharon Rokeach. Unfortunately, not everyone managed to escape the synagogue. Among the dead was found the body of Aharon Rokeach's only son, Moshe. With his death, the direct dynastic line of the Belzer Rokeach rabbis was broken. The current rabbi is the son of Aharon's cousin — Yissachar Rokeach.   May the merit of the Tzadik Rabbi Aharon Rokeach protect Am Yisrael!   (https://dailyzohar.com/tzadikim/1069-Rabbi-Aharon-Rokeach, http://ju.org.ua/ru/holocaust/856.html)