Enduring Testimony

Seven years.

That’s all it’s been, but they were “seven years of plenty,” years of spiritual abundance and bounty. Years in which a vibrant, passionate, learned rebbe led and breathed new life into a chassidic court that dates back to the earliest tzaddikim.

Reb Avraham Yaakov Zilbershlag, a maggid shiur in the Sadigur beis medrash and transcriber of the Rebbe’s Torah, reflects on the uniqueness of the dynasty.

“Sadigura,” he says, “boasts an uninterrupted lineal succession, father to son, starting with the Baal Shem Tov’s closest talmid and successor, the Maggid of Mezritch zy”a, and continuing to this very day, son following father, so that the heilige Ruzhiner’s surname, Friedman, came down through the generations. Even within the courts of Ruzhin, this is unique.”

But Rav Yisroel Moshe, who passed away last week at 65 after an illness, had so much more than the right last name. The seventh rebbe in the dynasty, and third in Eretz Yisrael, lived up to the exalted station of a Sadigura Rebbe in every way.