The Klausenberger Rebbe—Rabbi Yekusiel Yehuda Halberstam האדמו"ר מצאנז־קלויזנבורג רבי יקותיאל יהודה הלברשטאם
lost his wife and eleven children and rebuilt his court from nothing; founded Kiryat Sanz and Laniado Hospital
A great-grandson of the Divrei Chaim of Sanz. While still young he took the rabbinate of Klausenburg (Cluj).
The Holocaust. His wife and ten of his children were murdered; his eldest son survived the war and died of illness in a displaced-persons camp soon after liberation. No one was left.
He did not withdraw into silence. In the displaced-persons camps he gathered survivors around him, set up learning, arranged marriages—and by this kept many from scattering alone.
Kiryat Sanz. In 5718 he founded a neighbourhood in Netanya: schools for boys and for girls, yeshivot, an orphanage, an old-age home. In 5720 he moved there himself from Brooklyn. Laniado Hospital took its first patients in 5736—he insisted that it work on the Sabbath too, and that it be arranged so that the Sabbath would have to be broken as little as possible.
His books: the responsa Divrei Yatziv, and Shefa Chaim.
On the timeline
Related
Sources
Acharonim and later rabbinic literature
- Responsa Divrei Yatziv — his halakhic responsa
- Shefa Chaim — his discourses and teaching
Basis: documents and evidence.