Rabbi Yisrael Taub of Modzitz—the Divrei Yisrael רבי ישראל טאוב ממודזיץ — דברי ישראל

Of a family of Polish tzaddikim; he set up his court in Modzitz on the Vistula.

A melody instead of a book. Chasidic courts are known by their teaching; Modzitz is known by its music. He composed the melodies himself and required a strict structure of them: not a tune but a thing with a beginning, a middle and an end, sometimes in several parts and twenty minutes long. The chasidim count some seven hundred.

Ezkera. In 1913 his leg was amputated in Berlin. He took no anaesthetic—and, by the account, composed during the operation a long melody to the words Ezkera Elokim ve-ehemaya: "I remember and I moan". That melody is sung on Yom Kippur in many communities, and sung by people who never heard of Modzitz.

In the First World War the court left Modzitz; he died in Warsaw on 13 Kislev 1920. His book of teachings is Divrei Yisrael.