Chief Contender

A Krakow seforim store’s 1877 advertisement in HaMaggid includes Rav Yaakov Gesundheit’s magnum opus Tiferes Yaakov

Title: Chief Contender

location: Warsaw, Poland

Document: HaMaggid

Time: January 1877

Rav Yaakov was a righteous king, and deserving of his royal position as chief rabbi of Warsaw. But the people of Warsaw weren’t worthy of his leadership or of benefiting from the light radiating from him. It should be stated here that he remained the rav of Warsaw, even after the evil ones of the city removed him from his formal position as chief rabbi. He is rightly considered the rav of Warsaw, and in the World of Truth they are currently greeting him as the rav of Warsaw.

 —Rav Yosef Dov HaLevi Soloveitchik, the Beis HaLevi, in his hesped for Rav Yaakov Gesundheit

Warsaw’s Okopowa Jewish cemetery is one of the largest in the world. Near the cemetery entrance lies the chelkas harabbanim, dominated by the great rabbis of the city. The large ohel of Warsaw’s first chief rabbi, Rav Shlomo Zalman Lifschitz, the author of Chemdas Shlomo, looms over the others.

The graves of Rav Aryeh Leib Tzuntz, the Gaon of Plotzk; Rav Chaim Davidsohn; Rav Dov Ber Meizlish; Rav Yitzchak Feigenbaum; Rav Tzvi Hirsh Perlmutter; Rav Nosson Spiegelglass; Rav Avraham Luftvir, the young son-in-law of Rav Meir Simcha of Dvinsk; and many others offer silent testimony to the glorious Torah legacy of what was once the world’s largest Jewish community.

Just to the left of the Chemdas Shlomo’s ohel is the modest headstone of the last official chief rabbi of Warsaw — Rav Yaakov Gesundheit, author of the highly acclaimed Tiferes Yaakov on Shulchan Aruch and masechtas Chullin and Gittin. Despite his memorable last name, Rav Yaakov was immortalized by the name of his seforim, Tiferes Yaakov. His sefer on Gittin remains a very popular sefer utilized in yeshivos worldwide till this very day.