Person · 5659–5728 AM · 1899 CE — 1968 CE
Rabbi Yaakov Yosef Twersky of Skver רבי יעקב יוסף טברסקי מסקווירא
the third rebbe of Skver; founder of New Square—the first chasidic town in America
Grandson of Rabbi Yitzchak of Skver: his father, Rabbi David, was the second rebbe of Skver.
Exile. After the Revolution the Skver court went to Romania; after his father’s death he took the court. In 1948 he reached New York.
New Square. He held that in a big city a chasidic community would dissolve, and in 1954 he bought a farm in Rockland County, north of New York. On it a town was built—New Square, the first town in America inhabited by a single chasidic court, with a government of its own. Others followed: so arose the type of the "chasidic town", which had not existed before.
He died on 2 Nisan 5728 (1968).
On the timeline
5699 · 1939 CEThe Shoah: the Destruction of European Jewry5706 · 1946 CERebuilding after the War: DP Camps and New Yeshivot
Places
Related
Sources
Acharonim and later rabbinic literature
- The traditions of the house of Chernobyl — the Skver line
Scholarship
- Reference works on the chasidic courts of America — New Square, the dates
Basis: documents and evidence.