The Minchat Elazar—Rabbi Chaim Elazar Shapira of Munkacs רבי חיים אלעזר שפירא ממונקאטש
the Munkacs rebbe, a hasidic master of halakha and the Carpathians' most unbending voice
Munkacs under him lived in two registers: the court—and the rabbinic bench. The six volumes of the Minchat Elazar are working responsa on everything from mikveh to new machines; they are taken up alike by those estranged from his hasidism and those estranged from his intransigence.
And intransigent he famously was: he argued with Zionism of every stripe, the religious included, with the Agudah, with Reform—the people, he held, is redeemed not by projects but by Torah, and he said so to every face. Historians quote his sharpness; hasidim remember the rest—service to the breaking point and the care of the Carpathians' poor.
He died in 1937, seven years before the death of his world; his daughter and son-in-law led the court's remnant to America.
Places
Related
Sources
Acharonim and later rabbinic literature
- The responsa Minchat Elazar, six volumes — his halakha; Munkacs as the Carpathian capital
Scholarship
- The standard reference works and encyclopedias — 1871–1937; the argument with every movement of the age
Basis: Talmud and midrash.