Rabbi Moshe Grünwald—the Arugat HaBosem רבי משה גרינוולד — ערוגת הבושם
rabbi of Chust; head of a yeshiva of four hundred students
He was born in 1853 at Brezová in Hungary, into a family where Torah was learned at home; at Pressburg he was a disciple of the Ktav Sofer, son of the Chatam Sofer. He served as rabbi in several communities, and in 1893 took Chust in the Carpathians and kept a yeshiva there in which up to four hundred studied—from it came the rabbis of Subcarpathia and Hungary of the next generation.
The Arugat HaBosem, "The Bed of Spices", holds his responsa and Torah commentaries, published by his sons; in them the chasidic spirit is joined to Pressburg exactness. He was one of the pillars of Hungarian Orthodoxy in the years when it separated from the Reform and the Neolog.
He died at Chust in 1910. His sons carried on the house: Rabbi Yaakov Yechizkiyah at Pápa, Rabbi Yosef at Chust; the grandsons raised the court of Pápa anew in America.
Related
Sources
Acharonim and later rabbinic literature
- The Arugat HaBosem — the responsa and the commentaries
Scholarship
- The standard reference works and encyclopedias — Brezová 1853, Pressburg, Chust from 1893, the yeshiva, 1910
- The register of the Hungarian rabbinate — the disciples and the descendants
Basis: documents and evidence.