“I deal with all of the pikuach nefesh questions resulting from those who fasted when they shouldn’t have in the first place.”
The gunshots that rang out on June 30, 1924, on Rechov Yaffo, outside the old Shaare Zedek Hospital building, announced the first political assassination in modern Jewish history. The victim was an enigmatic character named Dr. Jacob de Haan, who served as the “foreign secretary” of the nascent Eidah Hachareidis faction of the Old Yishuv, and was a close confidant of its leader, Rav Yosef Chaim Sonnenfeld.
Jacob de Haan, although childless himself, would give his name, Yisrael Yaakov, to a prominent figure of the succeeding generation. De Haan worked closely with a recent immigrant from Romania named Rav Aharon Fisher, whose general and linguistic knowledge were invaluable to Rav Yosef Chaim Sonnenfeld in enunciating his position vis-à-vis the British government and the outside world.
In the aftermath of de Haan’s assassination, Rav Aharon and his wife Devorah welcomed the birth of a son, who was named Yisrael Yaakov in his friend’s memory. That son would become Rav Yisrael Yaakov Fisher (1925–2003), the longtime rav of Jerusalem’s Zichron Moshe neighborhood, a dayan on the beis din of the Eidah Hachareidis, and one of the beloved poskim of the last century.
His father, Rav Aharon, was a colorful character. He had been drafted into the Romanian military as a young man, and the experience led him to dedicate the remainder of his life to learning Torah in Jerusalem. There he developed a close relationship with Rav Sonnenfeld, with Rav Shlomo Eliezer Alefandri (the Saba Kadisha), and others. He served as baal korei in Batei Nathan and Meah Shearim, and donned his old Romanian army boots during a heavy 1920 snowfall to distribute bread to homebound neighbors. Upon Rav Sonnenfeld’s advice, he applied for a position at a Tel Aviv school affiliated with Mizrachi, teaching foreign languages there until his contract was terminated due to his unwillingness to change his white Yerushalmi yarmulke for a more modern look.
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