Rav Yosef Tzvi Dushinsky רב יוסף צבי דושינסקי
head of the Eda Charedit court after Rav Sonnenfeld; founder of the Dushinsky chassidic court
Born in Paks, Hungary, he learned in Pressburg under the Shevet Sofer—the Chatam Sofer's grandson. That school—rigour in halakhah and distrust of all that is new—shaped him. He was rabbi of Galanta, then of Chust, where he kept a large yeshiva, and in 1930 went up to Jerusalem.
After the death of Rav Yosef Chaim Sonnenfeld in 1932 he was elected head of the court of the Eda Charedit—the community of the Old Yishuv that stood outside the Zionist institutions. In 1947, when the UN committee came to the Land of Israel, he appeared before it on behalf of that community—against a Jewish state, for Jerusalem to remain under international rule. It is a document of the age, and we do not smooth it over: a considerable part of Jerusalem's Jews thought so.
In Jerusalem he founded a yeshiva and a court which, after his death on Sukkot 1948—a few months after the state was proclaimed—his son led. The Dushinsky chassidim are to this day a visible part of the Jerusalem community.
On the timeline
Places
Related
Sources
Acharonim and later rabbinic literature
- The responsa Maharitz of Rav Yosef Tzvi Dushinsky — his halakhic responsa
Documents of the period
- The records of the UN Special Committee on Palestine, July 1947 — his testimony on behalf of the Eda Charedit
Scholarship
- The standard reference works and encyclopedias — the years, Paks and Pressburg, Galanta and Chust, Jerusalem from 1930
Basis: documents and evidence.