Rav Chanoch Henoch Eiges, immortalized as the Marcheshes
While Rav Chaim Ozer Grodzenski led Vilna’s beis din and the prewar Torah world, another luminary served quietly beside him for over 40 years: Rav Chanoch Henoch Eiges, immortalized as the Marcheshes after his renowned sefer.
Despite his unassuming nature, Rav Eiges was a giant in his own right. He served as a dayan until his tragic martyrdom during the Holocaust. Though he often served in Rav Chaim Ozer’s shadow, the Marcheshes’s scholarship and halachic brilliance continue to illuminate the Torah world to this day.
Rav Chanoch Henoch was born in the Lithuanian city of Raseiniai around 1864. His father, Rav Simcha Reuven Edelman, was a businessman who was a great Torah scholar and a renowned writer. (He reverted to the original family name, Edelman, while the rest of the family had adopted the name Eiges from his grandmother’s side. It’s possible Rav Simcha Reuven changed back to the original surname to avoid the czarist draft.) Young Chanoch Henoch received Torah instruction from the local rav, the Torah giant Rav Alexander Moshe Lapidos. Rav Chanoch Henoch later studied in Volozhin, following short stints in several other yeshivos around Lithuania.
In 1898, he married Hinda, a granddaughter of Rav Shmuel Lubtzer (Zivertansky), a famous dayan on the Vilna beis din. In 1898, Rav Eiges was appointed to the prestigious position on the beis din to succeed his wife’s grandfather, and he’d maintain that position for the next 43 years until he was murdered in the Holocaust.
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