Rabbi Tzvi Hirsch of Rimanov—the Attendant רבי צבי הירש מרימנוב — המשרת
the second rebbe of Rimanov; the attendant who became rebbe
An orphan, a tailor. He came to Rabbi Menachem Mendel of Rimanov as an attendant and served him twenty years: the stove, the water, errands. He had no learning and never pretended to have.
Rebbe. After Rabbi Menachem Mendel’s death in 1815 the chasidim divided: some followed his son, most followed the attendant. Not the only such case in Chasidut, but the best known: the court passed neither by blood nor by learning, but because a man had stood twenty years beside the tzaddik and seen everything.
He led Rimanov for thirty-three years. He spoke briefly and of plain things—of honesty in a trade, of prayer, of God being found at the workbench too. From him came the branches of Rimanov and Dzikov.
He died on 30 Cheshvan 1847.
On the timeline
Related
Sources
Acharonim and later rabbinic literature
- The Rimanov tradition on the attendant who became rebbe, 1815 — how the court passed not by blood
Scholarship
- Reference works on the chasidic courts of Galicia — the dates and the branches
Basis: documents and evidence.