Shtetl Links: Lyakhovichi

Rabbi Mordechai of Lyakhovichi (called Mordechai of Lechovitz in most sources but with every variant spelling for the Jewish name of the town) was born in Lyakhovichi around 1742. A story told by Buber claims that Mordechai met the Hasidic leader who would be called Rabbi Aaron the Great of Karlin when Mordechai was under thirteen and Aaron was “old.” But the ages don’t add up for that – Aaron the Great was only six years older than Mordechai who always called himself Aaron’s disciple.

Whatever the circumstances of their meeting, it shook Mordechai to his core. Aaron the Great of Karlin was such a formative influence on the Hasidic movement in Lithuania and White Russian that for fifty years all Hasidim in that area were called “Karliners.” In every reference quoted by his descendants and followers among five branches of Hasidim, Mordechai referred to himself as a personally-taught disciple of Aaron the Great of Karlin and passed on many teachings in that leader’s name. The important tenets of - prayer with kavvanah (prayerful intensity) and the role of the tzaddik - were key elements passed from Aaron the Great to Shlomo of Karlin to Mordechai of Lyakhovichi to each of the dynasties descended from him. He also saluted his special mentor as he passed to each of the groups the custom of singing the Sabbath song “Yakh ekhsof noam Shabbat” [Lord, I long for Shabbat’s delight] that Aron the Great had written.

In 1765 Rabbi Dov Ber, the Maggid of Mezheritch was making a serious effort to bring the teachings of the Baal Shem Tov to Lithuania. His star pupil Rabbi Pinchas haLevi Horowitz, author of “ha flaah” was appointed rabbi that year in the “Lithuanian town” of Lyakhovichi. The Maggid sent other emissaries, such as the learned scholar who wrote down all of his teachings, Zev Wolf of Grodno, to towns throughout Belarus and Lithuania. Solomon Maimon in Neshvizh wrote of the preacher who gathered a large crowd in his town in the 1760s and fired him with a desire to go and meet Dov Ber in Mezheritch, and some say that preacher was Aaron the Great of Karlin. The work Dov Ber’s emissaries were to do was to teach, preach, admonish, and inspire. To reach out to young men throughout the area and to get them to come and share in prayers with the Hasidim. Aaron’s preaching skills were so famous and purportedly inspired so many to lead more holy lives, that he was called Aaron the Admonisher. And Aaron became the first of the emissaries to develop disciples of his own.

Aaron had quickly found that that the help of enthusiastic young men was essential. He set up a Bet Midrash in Karlin (having originally come from the Pinsk suburb of Yanovo) from where two of his most enthusiastic pupils originated, Shlomo ben Meir haLevi of Karlin and Haim-Heikel who was later of Amdur near Grodno. Haim Heikel was a fiery man who was not comfortable with compromise and his unconcealed scorn for those who followed the non-Hasidic path, was said to exacerbate the rising conflict between the Hasidim and the traditionalists. Shlomo had people skills that Haim did not. Both were even younger than their teacher and in 1765, the teacher was only twenty-nine. We don’t know all of the pupils in Karlin at that point but Mordechai of Lyakhovichi was among them.

1772 was the year of disaster for Hasidim and, at their new Lithuanian stronghold of Karlin, it was felt most acutely. The spring was ushered in by a ban of excommunication on Hasidim pronounced by the Jewish authorities in Vilna. A book of anti-Hasidic writings was published and widely circulated. Aaron the Great of Karlin, who was thought likely to become the successor to Dov Ber the Great Maggid of Mezheretch, died at the age of thirty-six, and in December, Dov Ber himself died. For the first time since the Baal Shem Tov’s death, there was no clear single leader among the Hasidim. And this in a year in which the Lithuanian communities were cut adrift from the senior Hasidic leaders of the Northwest (in the Minsk and Vitebsk area) and the Southwest (in Mezhibozh and in Chernobyl) by the First Partition of Poland, leaving Lithuanian Hasidim to take the brunt of the onslaught by Lithuanian traditionalists.

The community leaders and the Jewish governing bodies in each town, used the bans of 1772 to try to drive the Hasidim out of communities in which their numbers were still small, concentrating them in areas like Karlin. In Karlin, Rabbi Shlomo of Karlin, who had been the right hand man of Aaron of Karlin, took on more and more of his responsibilities. First, he obligated himself to the intensity of prayer and devotion that he felt the obligation of a true leader who was to intercede for his community. Then, he began the task of meeting the anti-hasidic onslaught in its Lithuanian place of origin. In 1772, the Karliners began trying to spread into areas where the opposition was not as intense. That year we find Haim Heikel in Amdur. That year we find that Mordechai of Lyakhovichi is back in the town that was among the first to hire a Hasidic Rabbi – Lyakhovichi in the Polesie region. Polesie region communities like Stolin and Lyakhovichi and its smaller centers were slowly growing majorities of Hasidim, while the larger Polesie towns like Pinsk had to fight to hold onto private meetings of like-minded Hasidim. Solomon Maimon described this time period that eight years earlier had begun with his enthusiastic introduction to Hasidim in Nesvizh, as “all that was left now was a few isolated and scattered segments.” The isolation was made worse when the Hasidic leader in Minsk, Rabbi Mendel of Vitebsk, was forced out by its Jewish governing body and in 1777 emigrated to Eretz Israel.

Shlomo of Karlin found himself trying to extend himself to meet the needs of both the Lithuanian and Belorussian communities [more properly, the western and eastern Lithuanian Jewish communities, but the anachronistic terms are handy] but doing it against a rising tide of anti-Hasidism. In the nine years between 1772 and 1781, he had many successes. The Hasidic movement was becoming a popular movement – in the sense that many who saw little of value in the leadership of the Jewish governing bodies were willing to antagonize them openly by praying in a forbidden manner. Prayer in the traditional manner, was denigrated when it did not include the intensity or joy promulgated by the Hasidim, and rabbinic scholarship was held to also be diminished if those characteristics were not present. Students were flocking to the new Bet Midrashim in places like Lyakhovichi. The first Hasidic book was on the marketplace – Yakov Yosef of Polonoyye who had copied down the Besht’s words had died and his son and son-in-law published it at their own expense. But all of those successes were the grounds for strong complaint by the traditionalist forces. That Hasidic book was published without a non-Hasidic approbation, the first time in two hundred years that the right to approve printed material was taken from the heads of the communities. Mordechai of Lyakhovichi was noted as a dangerous agitator, disturbing the minds of the young. Disrespect for Torah scholars and Kahal elders were all part and parcel of what the anti-Hasidic leadership feared most in the groups they still lumped together as “the Karliners.” In 1781 the Lithuanian leadership declared a new and more serious excommunication of the Hasidim. The difference between it and the earlier one was that this one didn’t stop at attempting to close Hasidic prayer houses; it banned all Jews from all social contact with Hasidim. They were not to eat with them, and food they prepared was not held to be kosher. The attacks were effective for a time. The Hasidim were largely reduced to sheltering in their strongholds. We know that they continued in Karlin and Amdur. And the Hasidic majorities that the Polesie communities had by the 1790s indicate they had core followers throughout the area that included Lyakhovichi. But Shlomo of Karlin was not able to reach out to the Hasidim in Belarus in this time period. The strong alliance between the Jewish governing bodies of the towns of Minsk and Vilna (each a Kahal, plural Kehillot), made an outreach from the Lithuanian side of the border that both Karlin and Lyakhovichi fell on, unfeasible. Instead, a Belarus native of great repute – he had been pupil to Dov Ber the Maggid of Mezheritch and he was the “designated heir” of the leadership of Belarus that had emigrated to Eretz Israel – Rabbi Shneur Zalman ben Barukh accepted the leadership role of Belarus. This man, who would become known as the Alter Rebbe and the first of the Lubavitcher dynasty (Chabad Hasidim), soon utilized his unique position as a Hasid who was a gifted rabbinical scholar, to become the head of Hasidim all across the northwest – Lithuania and Belarus. Only the hegemony of Karlin and its dependent communities of Stolin and Lyakhovichi maintained a separate identity in the area, as did the Ukrainian and Galician communities in their areas.

Shlomo of Karlin was forced to leave Karlin in 1784 and he moved to Ludmir, which was still part of Poland but would become part of Russia in the Second Partition. Mordechai of Lyakhovichi and Asher of Stolin (the son of Aaron the Great of Karlin) followed him there, to be at his side. What happened to Mordechai’s Bet Midrash in Lyakhovichi during this time? No information is currently available. We know that between 1770 and the 1780s, Mordechai of Lyakhovichi had at least four sons and a daughter in Lyakhovichi. Two of his sons were noted rabbis from the 1790s. In the 1790s, Mordechai’s primary assistant was his son-in-law Yitzhak b. Wolf, who may have been left with the running of the Yeshiva for a time. Certainly, Yitzhak was Mordechai’s major liaison with his followers throughout Lithuania in that same time period. If Yitzhak is the same as "Yitzhak son of Wolf ben Yankel" who was recorded in the 1784 Grand Duchy of Lithuania Census, then he had been unmarried and probably a minor in his father's house less than a decade previous. Mordechai who in his twenties, took on the work of expanding the range of the Baal Shem Tov's teachings into Lithuania, might have had little difficulty in entrusting such important tasks to his twenty-something son-in-law.. We know that the Hasidim in Karlin continued in existence even while their Rebbe Shlomo was living in Ludmir. The training of Mordechai’s children in Hasidic studies through this period (as evidenced by the roles played by his sons Noah and Aaron just a short time later) indicates that the Hasidic presence in Lyakhovichi continued even while Mordechai was “abroad” in Ludmir and later in Mezhibozh. When the Hasidim eventually made their stand against their traditionalist opponents (the mitnagedim) in the 1790s, they started in the smaller towns where they had become the majority. Lyakhovichi was in the district where they made their first assault – when the Hasidim led the attack on the Rabbi of Pinsk District in 1793.

Shlomo of Karlin lived in Ludmir from 1784-1792. In 1792 the war, which would end in the Second Partition of Poland, was at its height. On the 22nd of Tammuz, Russian soldiers killed Shlomo of Karlin while he was at his prayers. His death was a tragedy in many ways, including that he died just before he would have seen his long fight won. His Hasidim were about to flex their muscle in the Polesie where they had been growing in force over the last ten years until they had a solid majority among Jews in most towns. They would first go after the rabbis that had executed the herem against them, and then after the kahal in each individual town. Finally, many would move away from the Chabad movement that they saw as trying to force them back into a path of rabbinic studies vs. the Karliners’ ecstatic devotion. Though Chabad would remain a strong force throughout Belarus, it wasn’t until the twentieth century that it would surpass the other Hasidic traditions in the number of adherents. If Shlomo of Karlin hadn’t been shot, he might have seen the majority of Hasidim in Lithuania and Belarus become followers of his students and of their disciples - Asher of Stolin (son of Aaron of Karlin; raised by Shlomo of Karlin), Mordechai of Lyakhovichi, Noah of Lyakhovichi [son of Mordechai of Lyakhovichi], R. Shlomo-Hayyim of Koidanov [grandson of Mordechai of Lyakhovichi], R. Moshe of Kobrin [pupil of Mordechai of Lyakhovichi and of his son Noah of Lyakhovichi], R. Avraham of Slonim [pupil of Noah of Lyakhovichi]). In the Ukraine’s Volhynnia which adjoined the Polesie of Mordechai of Lyakhovichi –the son of Shlomo of Karlin, Moshe of Ludmir and his descendants, established a dynasty in Ludmir but they never achieved the level of recognition in the Ukraine held in that region by the descendants of the BESHT, of Dov Ber the Great Maggid, or those of Mordechai of Chernobyl. But the Karliner influence was not stopped at the Russian border - even in Galicia, Shlomo of Karlin’s pupil Uri of Strelisk was in power and the level of holiness seen in his ecstatic devotions learned from the Karlin tradition earned him the title of “the Seraph.”

So it’s 1792 and where is Mordechai of Lyakhovichi? The records of Asher of Stolin who eventually inherited the Karliner dynasty, said that year he and Mordechai of Lyakhovichi went to Baruch of Tulchin, the Mezhibozher Rebbe, grandson of the BESHT and studied with him. Baruch was a strong proponent of the role of the Tzaddik in keeping the Jewish community safe and on the path to Messianic redemption. We don’t know how long Asher and Mordechai were there or how long they stayed together. (The Stolin Archive of thousands of documents of the Karlin and Stolin dynasty was in existence up until World War II and is assumed destroyed in the SHOAH.) Asher of Stolin spent a long time out of the region, though Stolin, where he eventually settled by 1801, was one of the three towns that used their Hasidic majority to expel the District Rabbi of Pinsk. Before Asher settled in Stolin, he had again taken a teacher, this time Israel of Kozenitz, whose teachings also emphasized the role of the Tzaddik. But Mordechai had not waited that long to return home. In a book published in 1798, the author of an anti-Hasidic polemic Sefer ha-Vikkuah, Rabbi Israel Leibel challenges specific Tzaddikim of the Hasidim to a debate on the “perverseness of Hasidim” - Shneur Zalman of Lyady (the first Lubavitcher Rebbe), Mordechai Twersky of Chernobyl and the “two Lithuanian Hasidim” – Mordechai of Lyakhovichi and Samuel ben Haim Heikel of Amdur. He goes on to say of Mordechai of Lyakhovichi that “Mordechai had a great influence on the Hasidim, who believed in his 'wonders.' Thus, for example, they were sure that it was only through the influence of R. Mordekhai that the provincial governor, Radziwil, was dismissed from his post because of his hostility to the Hasidim, and another governor appointed in his place.” He emphasized that Mordechai of Lyakhovichi was especially repulsive because he had gained followers even in the Jerusalem of Lithuania, Vilna. According to Ze’ev Rabinowitz’s 1933 book on the Hasidim of Karlin, Mordechai had been named as well in Zimrath Am ha-Arets and Shever Posheim, anti-Hasidic pamphlets preceding 1798.

In 1798, we again find Mordechai of Lyakhovichi in a determining role in the Hasidic movement. That year at the instigation of the conservative Jewish forces, Shneur Zalman of Lyady and the “Tzaddikim of the Karliner sect” were indicted by the Supreme Court in St. Petersburg as revolutionaries. Shneur Zalman, there called Zalman Borukovich, and twenty-two Karliners were imprisoned in Vilna and other places. Seven of the top Karliners were to be sent from Vilna to St Petersburg, but they were stopped at Riga and returned to Vilna. An investigation led to the Czar declaring that he did not find Borukhovich or the others harmful to the state but that they should be watched after their release. Then all of those in prison were released. Though Simon Dubnow gives the report on this arrest in one of his books, the names of those in Vilna who were taken to Riga is not reported there. Hasidic tradition says that this group included both Asher of Stolin and Mordechai of Lyakhovichi. The release of this group on the 5th night of Chanukah in 1798 is still celebrated by all of the groups descending from the Karliner Hasidim as a night of special rejoicing. With the number of times Mordechai of Lyakhovichi’s name was brought up in anti-Hasidic complaints, it would be surprising if he was not arrested when the opportunity presented itself to rid the area of leading Hasidim. In 1800 when Shneur Zalman was again arrested and the prosecution was being assisted by the former district rabbi of Pinsk (the one who had lost his position due to pressures from the Hasidic community), that rabbi was not content with going after the Lubavitcher. He stressed that the Hasidim of Lyakhovichi had spread their influence into the “principal community” of Lithuania –Slutsk. He complained that though the mitnagedim were violently opposing the Hasidim, the Lyakhovichi Hasidim were triumphing because the provincial authorities in Minsk supported them. The actual Russian documents filed in 1800 by the Rabbi of Pinsk (Avigdor Haimovitch of Pinsk) were in existence when Dubnow collected material at the turn of the twentieth century. Before the legal process could proceed to the Senate, a palace coup threw out Czar Paul in 1801. Shneur Zalman was released and action against the Hasidim was stopped.

This is a quote directly from the Rabinowitz book. He uses the name Lakovich to refer to Lyakhovichi: During the years 1794-1801 the numbers of the Hasidim increased, thanks to the legal status that they enjoyed both in Pinsk itself and also in Polesie. Perhaps their numbers were now swelled by all those who had previously been afraid to proclaim their adherence to the movement openly. Small groups of Karlin Hasidim now came into existence not only in central Polesie, but also in other towns of Lithuania. Thus, for example, in Vilna there was a Karlin prayer-house ['shtiebel,' 'shulkhen'], and even a Lakhovich 'shtiebel.' The Lakhovich Hasidim, who appear to have been numerous, maintained contact with their Rebbe, R. Mordekhai, through his son-in-law, R. Yitzhak the son of R. Wolf, who used to visit them regularly and give them moral support in their struggle to maintain their position.

In 1804 the Czar formalized the right of the Hasidim to maintain separate synagogues and to elect their own rabbis while insisting that any town with both forms of worship still had a single Jewish community. We do not yet know much about Mordechai of Lyakhovichi between 1804 and 1810. We know that he was visiting with Asher of Stolin in Stolin in 1810 when Mordechai died and was buried in Stolin. Shalom of Koidanov, presumably a descendant of Mordechai’s grandson Shlomo Haim of Koidanov, wrote in his book Divrei Shalom (pub Vilna 1882) that Mordechai of Lyakhovichi was buried in Stolin. His Yahrtzeit of 13 Shevat is still commemorated among the major groups of Hasidim and all of those that descend from Karlin.

Sources : There were a number of sources for individual details but the work Lithuanian Hasidism, by Ze’ev Rabinowitz 1970 was drawn on the most. Disputes with the sources like Buber, are my own.

The Teaching Chain of a Vibrant Hasidic Group
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Have you found comparable reports for the Koidanover, Kobrin, and Lechovicher Hasidim from Mordechai the Holy Grandfather, to today? Do you have other such teaching chains demonstrating Lyakhovichi leadership, that we can post?

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New Find May 2008