Letter Legendary Pinchas M Teitz Rav Elizabeth New Jersey 2 Reb Moshe Feinstein for Sale

Letter Legendary Pinchas M Teitz Rav Elizabeth New Jersey 2 Reb Moshe Feinstein For Sale

When you click on links to various merchants on this site and make a purchase, this can result in this site earning a commission. Affiliate programs and affiliations include, but are not limited to, the eBay Partner Network.

Letter Legendary Pinchas M Teitz Rav Elizabeth New Jersey 2 Reb Moshe Feinstein:
$299.00

Rabbi Pinchas Mordechai Teitz (1908–1995) was a rabbi, teacher, author, and innovator in creating a modern Torah community in Elizabeth, New Jersey.

He excelled in his family\'s tradition of caring for Jews across the globe in any challenges they faced.

A mikvah he built in 1938, a day school he founded in 1941 that grew to more than 900 students, adult education courses that he initiated, the welcome he gave to displaced persons after WWII and to Jews who came from Russia,

all became a model for other leaders to implement in their cities and towns.

Early life Mordechai Pinchas Teitz was born on 8 Tammuz-July 7, 1908 in Subat, Latvia.

The first name had a long history in the family, going back to Rav Mordechai Yoffe, the Levush. ‘Pinchas’ was the title of the parshah in the week of his bris. He became known by this name, which proved to be appropriate as he acted for the welfare of the Jewish community throughout his adult life. But he signed legal documents in Hebrew ‘Mordechai Pinchas,’ and his passport from Latvia read ‘Morduchas Pinchas Taic.’ His father\'s name also raised questions.

At birth he was named Binyamin Yaakov, with Rabinovich as his last name. The family wanted to avoid his being taken into the Russian army. A boy who was an only child was exempt from the draft.

The parents of an only son, Avraham Teitz, did not inform the authorities when their little boy died.

They gave his passport to Binyamin Rabinovich, who now became Avraham Teitz [he], and was called ‘Avraham Binyamin’ or ‘Binyamin Avraham’ within the community. In his last years, when he did not have to fear that the Tsar\'s army would come after him, he signed letters with his original name, Binyamin Yaakov. Another source of confusion was that Pinchas\'s grandfather was a Yoffe. But when he married Rivkah Rabinovich, he took on her surname because her family had become renowned. Her father, Rav Binyamin Rabinovich, was the courageous rabbi of Vilkomir who made a powerful man stop sending Jewish boys to the army

Her brothers were the twins Rav Eliyahu David and RavZvi Yehuda, who added ‘Te-omim’ to the family name. The initials of the first thing name, aleph daled reish taf, formed an acrostic, ‘Aderet.’ His daughter married Rabbi Avraham Yitzchak Hakohen Kook, who later became the first chief rabbi in Palestine.

When his wife died in the third year of their marriage, Rav Kook married her first cousin, and became double related to the Rabinoviches.

For Pinchas\'s father, the youngest in the family and orphaned when he was nine, there was a special closeness with his uncles and their families;

he lived with them when he was home from the yeshiva. He married Shaina Sira, a daughter of Rabbi Moshe Mishel Shmuel Shapiro, the rabbi of Rogova,Lithuania, and the author of noted scholarly works.

Her ancestor was the Maharshal,Rav Shlomo Luria, known for his accurate rulings in Torah law. Her sister Leah married Rabbi Ben-Zion Zilber. Leah\'s son, Yitzchak Yosef, and Shaina Sira\'s son, Pinchas,first met in 1972 in Tashkent; two World Wars and the Iron Curtain had kept them apart until then.

Rabbi Binyamin Avraham Teitz was the rabbi in Subat for the mitnagdim andthe hassidim.[5] Living quarters for the familywere between a shul for one group at one end, and for the other group at thesecond end. The five sons and five daughters learned that everyone was a valuedmember of the community, united with one rabbi. Years later visitors to Elizabeth commented that in most places the residents would erect separate synagogues for different factions,

but Rabbi Teitz kept them united.

In 1914, Rabbi Eliyahu Akiva Rabinovich [he],[ a brother of Rabbi Binyamin Avraham, urged him to come with Shaina Sira and their children to Poltava,Russia, where he was the rabbi. The danger in Latvia was that the Russians and the Germans - whichever army reached a city first - took the rabbis as a hostage to prevent any aid being given to the enemy. Rabbi Eliyahu Akiva edited and published Hamodia,

a newspaper, and HaPeles [he], a journal. Pinchas and his brothers set type on a machine their unclehad bought in Warsaw in order to print professional editions. The young Pinchaslearned from his uncle to speak and write without fear about communal issues,and to act. If people were fleeing to Poltava, his uncle cared for them. RabbiEliyahu Akiva Rabinovich died before Passover in1917, while he was preparing to bake matzoh for the refugees.

In 1921, the family had to flee again, this time from Communists who were intent on destroying Torah education and Torah life. In Latvia, their father became the rabbi in Livenhof.

In the nearby city of Dvinsk were brilliant Torah scholars—Rabbi Yosef Rosen (the Rogatchover) and Rabbi Meir Simchah HaKohen, the author of Or Samei’ach and Meshekh Chokhmah.

By the time Pinchas turned fourteen, he had met outstanding scholars and courageous, caring leaders, many of them his relatives. He learned from them how to be a rabbi. Education Pinchas learned in a yeshiva in Ponevez,then in Riga.When he came home for vacation, he found that boys who were not in school were in danger. He was only fourteen and a half years old, yet he took theinitiative and founded a heder for them.

He studied for six years at the yeshiva in Slabodka, where he and Rav Yaakov Kamenetsky began a life-longfriendship. He was ordained in 1931 by Rabbi Yosef Zusman Hayerushalmi [he], Av Beis Din of Kovna, and by Rabbi Avraham Yitzchak Bloch, Rosh Yeshiva ofTelz.

His education in community-building began with an invitation from Rabbi Mordechai Dubin (1889-1956) to help in his successful campaign for a seat in the Latvian legislature, the Sejim.

Dubin set the example of helping everyone, Gentile and Jew, observant andnon-observant. In 1931, when the doctor recommended that he spend time at home to recover from an emergency appendectomy, Pinchas took a daily train ride to Dvinsk to study Yoreh Deah, particularly the laws of kashrut, with Rabbi Yosef Rosen (the Rogatchover).

Career Rav Pinchas Teitz became friendly with Shimon Wittenberg, also a representative to the Sejim, and Avigdor Balshanek, the head of Agudath Israel in Latvia. He became Secretary of Agudath Israel and traveled around the country to establish a heder in every town.

His powers of analysis, memorable phrasing, and ability to engender enthusiasm in an audienceled to his being asked to speak at many gatherings. He met the Lubavitcher Rebbe (1880-1950) at the border when the Communists released him from Russia to Latvia;

he helped the Rebbe establish a yeshiva in Riga. He met Rav Yehezkel Abramsky (1886-1976) at the train station in Riga when the Communists released him from prison. The prison officials had wanted to humiliate Rav Abramsky by removing his beard. Rav Teitz arranged a minyan in an apartment where the rav could stay while his beard grew back.

He edited Unzer Shtimme, \"OurVoice,\"

a Yiddish newspaper in Riga; he headed a religious youth movement that he named Yavneh; he was the rabbi of a small town. At his sister\'s wedding the heads of the Telz Yeshiva observed his organizational skills and heard him speak.

They asked him to accompany rabbi Eliyahu Meir Bloch (1895-1955) on fund-raising trip to North America.

He promised his father that he would return to Latvia after the trip. He prepared by learning at the yeshiva for a semester. Rabbi Bloch and Rabbi Teitz arrived in New York on November 3, 1933, the thirtieth day after the passing of Rabbi Elazar Mayer Preil, a distinguished Telzalumnus. He had been the rabbi of the Orthodox community in Elizabeth, New Jersey, a close friend of the Bloch family, the author of scholarly works, and had contributed essays under the pen name A.L. Tzihan to Hapeles, the journal Pinchas\'s uncle had edited and published in Poltava decades earlier.

Marriage Rabbi Preil had written in his will that if the man his oldest daughter,Basya, would marry will be suitable, he should become the rabbi of Elizabeth.

Basya and Pinchas hesitated to meet since people spoke about a solution to the problem of finding a rabbi, not about the relationship of a young couple.

Then Rav Bloch introduced them to each other. In autumn 1934 they became engaged and on January 13, 1935, the 9th of Shvat, they married; she would teach her husband English. Rescuing Jews from Europe Their trip to Latvia and Lithuania to meet the family took them across Germany;

fear of the Nazis was evident.

Rabbi Teitz spoke wherever he was invited about the danger of Hitler carrying out his plans and the need to leave Europe.

When the couple returned to America, he started the process of immigration for his family. He was able to save one brother and his parents. A brother-in-law came to the United States in 1938, then went back to accompany his wife and young children; they waited too long.

He had worked in Europe in the 1930s on an economic boycott of Germany, but the Nazis used it for propaganda against the Jews. Now that he was in the United States, he met with government officials, including senators, to propose paying $100 for each Jew who would be permitted to leave the lands that the Nazis had conquered. But anti-Semitism was rampant;

one politician told him that helping Jews would hurt his chances inthe next election.

He joined Va’adHatzalah, sending food and trying to rescue people. In 1941, Jewish life in Europe was being destroyed; Torah education andobservance would have to grow in America. He started a day school where a highlevel of Jewish and secular knowledge would be attained. He instituted nursery for 3-year-olds, kindergarten at 4, and primer at 5, where children learned toread Hebrew and English,each one at an individual pace. He wanted children to enjoy learning throughShabbos parties, making a seder, singing, performances, and daily recess in alarge playground. Opposition to a day school was intense; the word ‘yeshiva’could not be used until Dr. Samuel Belkin,president of Yeshiva University from 1943-1975, made itpart of the American vocabulary. The assumption was that only a big city with alarge Jewish population could sustain a yeshiva. Elizabeth was the third smallcommunity to start a school. After the war he went to England,France and D.P.(Displaced Persons) camps to help survivors find refuge. Helisted the school and synagogues in Elizabeth as places where they could beemployed.[19] The savings account thatcontained money he had raised to construct a school building became assurancethat none of the survivors would request welfare. In a booklet publishedby Bobover Hassidim they note that RavTeitz helped the Rebbe with the paperwork and got him into the United States. For 30 years he was the treasurer of Ezras Torah,a charity to support Torah scholars; he worked closely with Rabbi Yosef Eliyahu Henkin, who headed thecharity. When a project to provide housing in Jerusalem for Torah scholars wasabout to go bankrupt, he raised the funds to complete it in 1977. Building Torah in America In 1947, he built a modern synagogue with perfect sight lines andacoustics for the men\'s and women\'s sections; it was located in a beautifulneighborhood, an example of the rabbi\'s principle that Orthodoxy shouldbe first-rate in every way.[20] In 1951, he opened a new building for the school, around the corner fromthe synagogue; the school and synagogue were now named the Jewish Educational Center, JEC; visitorsborrowed educational materials, mission statements, publicity flyers, andarchitectural plans. In 1955, two projects combined: a yeshiva high school for boys opened;the classrooms were in a new synagogue in an area that had been fields a fewyears earlier, but was now the place to build spacious homes. The synagogue had6 steps leading down to the men\'s section, and 6 steps up to the women\'ssection, demonstrating that men and women shared in separating for prayer. In 1963, he opened the Bruriah High School, the first yeshivahigh school for girls in New Jersey. In 1965, the boys’ high school moved into a new building with a beitmidrash-study hall, labs, a gym, a library; it was connected to the elementaryschool building.[21] In 1972, Bruriah moved into a new building with a mikvah for the newneighborhood.[22] While he was fundraising and, together with his wife, creating acommunity where every member was important, he took responsibility for originalprojects: In 1958-1964, he testified before congressional committees and statelegislatures on the humane qualities of kosher slaughter; he debated on theradio with those who wanted to ban shechitah.For a book about the confrontation with death in America, Dr. Michael Lesyreported on the contrast between an ordinary packinghouse in Omaha,Nebraska and the kosher slaughterhouse that Rav Teitz permittedhim to visit. He was impressed with the rabbi\'s explanation of shechitah andwith the shochet\'s attitude to his work as a mitzvah.He thought \"in Omaha, the kill was rational and brutal. Here it’sreligious and humane.\"[23] In 1960, he served on the board of Yavneh, the newly formed NationalAssociation of Religious Jewish Students.[24] In 1961, he assisted students at Princeton in renting a house where theycould pray, have Torah classes, and eat kosher food. He signed the lease forthe house, spoke to officials at the university, invited Milton Levy, a memberof the Elizabeth community who wanted to support this initiative (and whodonated all the furniture and outfitted the kitchen), and gave several classesto the students. Russia Between 1964 and the 1980s, Rav Teitz traveled to the USSR twenty-two timesto assure the 3 million Jews who were caught behind the Iron Curtain that theirbrothers and sisters cared for them, and to bring siddurim, chumashim, haggadotfor Passover, etrogim and lulavim for Sukkot, and kosher cured meat. Hepublished a siddur calledKol Yisrael Haverim,[25] All Jews Are Friends, whichcontained all the information needed for a Jewish life: how to read Hebrew, howto pray, the text for a ketubah (marriage contract), how to make tefillin, mezuzot,and tzitzit.He added pictures of fruits, vegetables, grains, plants used for spices, withtheir names in Hebrew, Russian, and Latin/English (sometimes together,sometimes Latin alone), grouped together according to the blessing on each.[26] Young people met in secretgroups to learn from the siddurim how to read and speak Hebrew; several beganto observe mitzvot. He met with government officials to stop the destruction ofcemeteries and to get permits to build an ohel, a canopy, for the graves ofsuch luminaries as Rabbi Chaim Ozer Grodzinski and the Vilna Gaon,and a gravestone for the Ba’al ShemTov. His wife accompanied him on all the trips but two, when hisdaughters came instead. He wanted the insurance of American passports belongingto citizens born in America; his passport indicated that he was a naturalizedcitizen, and he did not want to be \"reclaimed\" by Latvia. He alsowanted to demonstrate that they were tourists, not spies; a spy would not havehis family accompany him. He opposed demonstrations against the Soviet government; peoplecriticized his approach of quietly applying for visas and repeatedly going toRussia.[27] He did not want publicity; hedid not speak about what he did on these trips. He was concerned that if thename of a person he worked with would become known, that person might beimprisoned. After he died, and as Russia changed, emigrants started to tell what hehad done. If a person wanted to leave Russia, he could take nothing alongexcept for some clothing; everything of value was confiscated. Rav Teitzarranged with a family that was planning to exit: they would trade all theirpossessions for rubles; he would return the money to them in dollars when theygot out. He gave the rubles to refuseniks who had been dismissed from theirjobs, and to old people who were living in poverty, including a few talmideihakhamim, Torah scholars, who were destitute. When the family reached theUnited States, he gave them dollars. They were able to start a business; withina few years, they bought a house.[28] Two men who were in the USSR appreciated what Rav Teitz was doing:Rav Eliyahu Essas, who led a return to Jewisheducation and observance in Russia, and now teaches Torah in Israel.;[29] Rav YitzchakZilber (1917-2004), who stood up for his beliefs in Tashkent,encouraged others to do the same, and became the \"rabbi of theRussians\" in Israel when he arrived there in 1972.[30] Daf Hashavua In 1953, in order to awaken Jews who knew Yiddish,but had gotten distant from their origins, he founded a half-hour radio programof Talmud,Daf Hashavua, aired at 9:30 on Saturday night. He chose WEVD, a socialist station,to reach his intended audience. Over the years he taught 9 Tractates - Brakhot, Rosh Hashanah, Yoma, Sukkah andothers that would be immediately relevant.[31] The program continued until1988.[32] To meet the demand for textseach time he started a new tractate, he printed copies with line numbers sothat listeners could easily find the place. He sent tapes for broadcasts inlocal stations to Boston, Chicago, Detroit, Miami, Philadelphia,and Montreal. KolYisrael LaGolah aired the tapes behind the Iron Curtain.When the U.S. government monitored foreign language programs, it reported200,000 listeners. His son, Rabbi Elazar Mayer Teitz, taught Talmud on theradio in English for eleven years. There were objections from people whothought that Torah on the radio was forofferden. While David Eisenberg wrote in\"She’arim\" May 15, 1955 about \"Limmud Torah Ba’rabim: Rive’votMa’azinim L’ Shiuro Shel HaRav Pinchas Mordechai Teitz,\" others were notpositive. But Rabbi Yitzchak Herzog, Rabbi Shmuel Belkin,Rabbi Moshe Feinstein, Rabbi Yechiel Yaakov Weinberg andRabbi Yosef Kahaneman, who spoke at the one-yearcelebration of the broadcast, all wrote in favor of teaching Torah throughmodern technology.[33] In a taped message fromJerusalem to the celebration, Rav Herzog said perhaps this was the reason theradio was invented. Tapes of Rav Teitz\'s broadcasts demonstrated that here wasanother new technology that could be used to teach Torah; Torah Tapes were inthe future. Publications He joined the Machon Tzofnas Paneiah, topublish the works of Rabbi Yosef Rosen,the Rogatchover. When Rabbi Menachem Kasher died in 1983, hebecame the head of the group. For one volume, he added an analysis of reasonsfor this scholar\'s unusual ways, and an account of his insights. His mind waslike a computer, containing the entire Written and Oral Torah; he was extraordinaryin drawing connections.[34] Meeting another great scholar inDvinsk had two other benefits. When Rav Meir Simhah HaKohen told him that hehad written the Meshekh Hokhmah, his commentary on the Bible, years earlier butnow needed a young person to help him edit it, Pinchas, who was a student atSlabodka, found a student who worked with the rabbi to prepare the manuscriptfor publication.