The courts of Lithuania, Polesia and Volhynia: Karlin, Lechovitch, Kobrin, Slonim

Rabbi Aharon the Great of Karlin, a disciple of the Maggid of Mezeritch, settled in Karlin near Pinsk—and in Lithuania the word 'Karliner' became the name for a chasid at all. The Karlin manner is known by prayer at full voice: where the Lithuanian yeshiva demanded quiet, the Karlin chasidim prayed aloud, and this was taken as a challenge.

From Karlin a second line went out. Rabbi Mordechai of Lechovitch, a disciple of Rabbi Shlomo of Karlin, led his own court; his son Rabbi Noach taught Rabbi Moshe of Kobrin and Rabbi Avraham of Slonim, and the four of them stand together in one book, the Or Yesharim, as a single chain. Rabbi Noach's nephew, Rabbi Shlomo Chaim Perlow, settled in Koidanov, and the Koidanov prayer book, the Or ha-Yashar, became the basis of the prayer usage of several courts.

Slonim and Kobrin taught one thing: work upon oneself before any wonder. The Yesod ha-Avodah of Rabbi Avraham of Slonim is a book not of secrets but of how a person changes himself day by day, and it is studied far beyond the court.

In Volhynia, Zvhil and Skver stood nearby—courts of another root, from Zlotchov and from Chernobyl. All these houses ended where they stood: Stolin, Lechovitch, Kobrin, Koidanov and Skver were destroyed together with their communities. Those survived whom the war caught on the road—and they gathered the courts anew in Erets Yisrael and in America.