Rabbi Yissachar Dov Rokeach of Belz רבי יששכר דב רוקח מבעלזא
the third rebbe of Belz; he led the court away from the front and never brought it home
The sources give his birth year as 1851 or 1854; we set the second and name the first. The son of Rabbi Yehoshua, he took the court in 1894.
The First World War. In the autumn of 1914 the Russian army entered Galicia, and Belz lay in the path of the front. He led the court into Hungary, to Ratzfert and then to Munkacs; the chasidim followed him, and chasidic Belz lived for several years outside Belz. The house, the yeshiva and the great synagogue were ruined. He returned in 1918, but the townlet was already other, and his last years passed in Holshany and in Lvov.
The quarrel with Munkacs. In Hungary he found himself on the ground where Rabbi Chaim Elazar Shapira sat, and two courts collided. The dispute was loud and sharp on both sides; we say that it was, and do not retell who was right in it.
He died on 22 Cheshvan 1926 in Lvov.
On the timeline
Places
Related
Sources
Acharonim and later rabbinic literature
- The Belz tradition on the years of exile, 1914–1918 — the court's departure to Hungary and the return
Documents of the period
- Testimonies on the dispute between Belz and Munkacs — that the dispute took place; who was right we do not decide
Scholarship
- Reference works on the chasidic courts of Galicia — the two birth years and the years at the head of the court
Basis: documents and evidence.