Rabbi Yechiel Danziger of Alexander רבי יחיאל דאנציגער מאלכסנדר
founder of the Alexander court—the second largest in Poland after Ger
He studied under the Kotzker and under Rabbi Yitzchak of Vurka; he held Kotzk severity and Vurka gentleness together, and this became the mark of the Alexander house.
Aleksandrow. He set up the court in Aleksandrow near Lodz—a townlet beside the largest industrial city in Poland. This proved important: workers and craftsmen of the Lodz factories became Alexander chasidim, people neither wealthy nor free of time, and the manner of the court took shape to fit them—brief, without long gatherings.
Size. By the end of the century Alexander was second in Poland only to Ger. Both courts came out of Pshischa and Kotzk, and both argued over what a tzaddik may ask of a plain man.
He died on 27 Adar 1894.
On the timeline
Related
Sources
Acharonim and later rabbinic literature
- The Alexander tradition on the founding of the court — the teachers and the seat of the court
Scholarship
- Accounts of the chasidic courts of the Lodz region — why the court took shape around working people
Basis: documents and evidence.