Rabbi Aharon Rokeach of Belz רבי אהרן רוקח מבעלזא
the fourth rebbe of Belz, who carried the court out of the fire on his shoulders
Before the war he was named among the most withdrawn righteous of the generation: fasting, hardly sleeping, entering worldly affairs unwillingly—and yet the court under him was vast. The war overturned everything: for the rebbe of Belz there was a hunt of its own, and hasidim hid him through the ghettos of Galicia and ransomed him from death in literal gold.
The road of rescue ran through Bochnia and Krakow to Budapest, then by rail through Istanbul and Lebanon; in February 1944 he stood in the Land of Israel. Behind him remained everyone: son, daughters, grandchildren—the rebbe's family perished entire.
He was past sixty. He settled in Tel Aviv, then Jerusalem, opened a talmud torah, a yeshiva—and for fourteen years gathered the court out of ash, man by man. Today's Belz, with its huge Jerusalem synagogue, is the straight continuation of those fourteen years.
On the timeline
Places
Related
Sources
Documents of the period
- The testimonies of the Belzer Rebbe's rescue, 1943–44 — Bochnia, Krakow, Budapest, the Land of Israel, February 1944
Scholarship
- The standard reference works and encyclopedias — 1880–1957; the court rebuilt in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem
Basis: Talmud and midrash.