Episode 114: A Detailed Summary of the History of the Maharal's Family up to Rabbi Shneur Zalman

00:01 A struggle was now underway between King Ferdinand I and his sons, Prince Ferdinand and Prince Maximilian, on one side, and the clergy on the other. The clergy wanted to expel all the Jews from Moravia, Silesia, and the other lands, and the king was firmly opposed. But despite King Ferdinand’s opposition to the demand that the Jews be expelled from his kingdom, and despite the two princes’ open defense of the Jews, the head of the Church insisted that the expulsion decree be adopted. He explained that the pope, whose hatred of Jews was very great, demanded it. The head of the clergy was motivated not only by a desire to seize Jewish property but also by a desire to win Jewish souls. By his reckoning, the expulsion decree would lead to mass conversion from Judaism to Christianity. King Ferdinand was helpless, as were his sons, who saw no way to have the decree overturned. Their efforts therefore focused on how much time the Jews would be given before their expulsion. In the end, it was decided that the decree would be fully carried out within two years. By then, not a single Jew would remain in the country. At the priests’ insistence, the decision also required the Jews to come to the churches during that time to listen to their sermons. This measure was intended to prepare the Jews for forced conversion. The new order was immediately conveyed to the leaders of the communities. The Jews received the order to come to the churches and hear the priests’ words with even greater pain than the decree requiring them to leave Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia—the lands ruled by Ferdinand I—within two years. When the head of the Prague community received the expulsion order, he hurried straight to the Maharal’s home. At the same time, a law was proposed requiring all the Jews of Prague to come to the churches the following Sunday to listen to the priests’ sermons. The Maharal instructed that an urgent general assembly be called

02:46 of all the men, women, and children. The assembly was set for the next morning, after the first minyan for Shacharis, in the synagogue courtyard. Young men were sent to every house in the city with a message from the rabbi that no Jew—man, woman, or child—was to be absent. No one knew what it was about, but everyone sensed that it was serious, for an assembly like this had never before been called in Prague. During the night, a platform was erected in the courtyard, another sign of the matter’s gravity. The crowd that began streaming in early that morning felt an unspoken fear about what was happening. As soon as the first minyan finished praying, the Maharal emerged from the synagogue wrapped in a tallis and wearing tefillin, carrying a Torah scroll. After him came Mordechai Meisel, the head of the community, also wrapped in a tallis and wearing tefillin, with a Torah scroll in his hands. Then the other rabbis of the city and the heads of the yeshivos came out one after another, all wearing tallis and tefillin and carrying Torah scrolls. They took their places on the platform. Fear and dread fell over the large crowd as they wondered what this scene meant. Suddenly the Maharal’s voice rang out as he cried with deep devotion, “Hear, O Israel: Hashem is our G-d, Hashem is One.” He burst into tears, as did everyone standing on the platform. The whole crowd sensed that a calamity was at hand. The Maharal turned to them and said, “Listen, Jews. With the Shema Yisroel on their lips, our ancestors went out to fight the Greeks when they sought to abolish the laws of Hashem’s will and defile the Beis Hamikdash—and they defeated them. With the Shema Yisroel on their lips, Jews cast themselves into the fires of their enemies and sanctified Hashem’s name. May the verse ‘Shema Yisroel’ kindle the fire of mesirus nefesh in our hearts now as well, and give us the strength to withstand every trial.” The Maharal continued, “The people among whom we live are friendly toward us. So are the king and his ministers. Sadly, though, the priests are terrible enemies to us. They—

05:20 they are the ones who dare to confront the children of Avraham, Yitzchak, and Yaakov.” The Maharal then read aloud the king’s order requiring the Jews to come to the churches to listen to the priests’ sermons, and forbidding any Jewish leader to prevent it. The crowd burst into tears, their weeping growing louder until it seemed to reach the heavens. Women and elderly people fainted and dissolved in tears. The Maharal called for quiet and said, “Let us stop crying. Instead of showing weakness, let us all—young and old, men, women, and children—show strength and courage, and thereby sanctify Hashem’s name. Here, before the Torah scrolls, let us all swear that not one of us will go to hear a priest’s sermon. And if we are dragged into a church by force, we will cover our ears. Are you prepared to take this oath upon yourselves?” “We swear! We swear!” everyone cried out together in a loud voice. “We swear by our lives and by the lives of our children that we will never listen to the priests’ words on matters of faith.” The Maharal instructed everyone to repeat word for word after the chazzan, who proclaimed, “Hear, O Israel: Hashem is our G-d, Hashem is One. Blessed be the name of the glory of His kingdom forever and ever. And Hashem is G-d.” Shofars were sounded. The kohanim went up to duchan and blessed those assembled. When the gathering ended, the Maharal, the other rabbis, and the community leaders sent a petition to the king demanding that the decree requiring them to listen to the priests be rescinded. The petition stated that the Jews had sworn to remain faithful to their Judaism, and that allowing the decree to stand could therefore lead to tragedy, for the Jews would be prepared to give their lives. Accompanied by the community leaders, the Maharal visited Prince Ferdinand and asked him to put a stop to the priests’ audacity. They had already begun entering the Jewish streets and inciting people against the Jews’ faith, leading to confrontations. In these incidents, the Jews were actually helped by their non-Jewish neighbors, who could not bear the priests’ appalling treatment of them. More than once, the priests were forcibly driven from the Jewish streets. The priests hastened to exploit such incidents to make false accusations against

08:01 the Jews, but there were always non-Jewish neighbors who testified on the Jews’ behalf and brought about the arrest of the agitators. And so these tumultuous events continued day after day. The priests, who had expected to convert many Jews, were bitterly disappointed when their prolonged efforts achieved nothing. The decree requiring attendance at the churches was not observed at all. Jews who were dragged to church by strongmen hired by the priests covered their ears and did not hear a word the priests said. The priests tried every means of making their efforts appear successful. Only after much labor and at enormous expense did they manage, after a long time, to ensnare three Jews. Two of them had been known for years in the Jewish streets to be mentally disturbed. The third was a chronic drunk who was always wandering the streets intoxicated. The priests realized they had no chance of bringing the Jews to conversion, whether by kindness or by force. All the Jews remained steadfast in their faith despite the priests’ every effort, and the priests gave up hope. Time passed. Three months before the end of the two-year period set for the expulsion of the Jews from Ferdinand’s kingdom, the head of the Church came to King Ferdinand and reminded him of his promise to expel them. The royal treasury was then in far worse condition than before. King Ferdinand knew very well that if the Jews were indeed expelled, the financial crisis would deepen further. Tax revenues would fall almost to nothing. At the same time, the king felt he had no choice but to keep his promise, and he was deeply troubled. His sons, Princes Ferdinand and Maximilian, advised him to have one of the Jewish leaders travel to the pope in Rome and seek to have him release the king from the vow the Christian cardinal had forced upon him to carry out the expulsion. This mission was entrusted to Rabbi Mordechai Tzemach of Prague, whom we have encountered before. By then, the pope was Pius IV, who had succeeded Paul

10:29 Pius IV was friendlier to the Jews than his predecessor. When Mordechai Tzemach was received by the pope and spoke with him, he made a good impression, and the pope agreed to give the king—the king of Bohemia and Moravia, Ferdinand—the declaration needed to prevent the expulsion of the Jews. When Mordechai Tzemach arrived in Prague with the declaration in his hand, the Jews’ joy was immeasurable. The king handed the matter over to his son Maximilian, and in 5323 the decree was annulled altogether. In 5361—that is, 1601—Mordechai Meisel, the head of the Prague community, passed away, and Rabbi Shmuel, the Maharal’s grandson, was appointed head of the community in his place. The Maharal himself passed away on 18 Elul 5369, that is, 1609, at the age of ninety-seven. The Maharal reserved three graves in the Prague cemetery: one for himself, one for his learned wife Perl, and one for his only son, Betzalel. But since Betzalel passed away in Chelm, where, as we recall, he had been the head of a yeshiva, and was buried there, the Maharal designated the third grave for his grandson Shmuel. If we jump ahead, we find that when Shmuel reached the age of seventy-nine, he felt himself growing weaker. So he summoned the gabbai of the chevra kadisha and reminded him that the third grave beside the Maharal’s was intended for him. The gabbai told him there was a serious problem: the space still available there was extremely small, and a grave could not be dug in it. It turned out that over the years, under pressure from various prominent people who wanted to be buried near the Maharal, the whole area had filled with graves dug very close together. Little by little, almost without anyone noticing, they had encroached on the Maharal family’s burial plot until very little space remained. Shmuel told the gabbai, “I insist on my right to be buried there.” Shmuel advised the gabbai to go to the grave of

13:20 his holy grandfather, the Maharal, and remind him that he himself had designated the adjoining plot for his grandson’s burial. “My grandfather will surely keep his promise,” Shmuel told the gabbai. And indeed, when Shmuel passed away in 5415, that is, 1655, the promise was fulfilled: the plot of land widened, leaving ample room to dig a grave for Shmuel, the Maharal’s grandson. Shmuel had a son whom he named Yehuda Leib after his grandfather. This descendant of the Maharal was gifted with great talents and became a great Torah scholar. At that time, Rabbi Eliyahu Baal Shem of Worms settled in Prague. We already remember Rabbi Eliyahu Baal Shem of Worms from the story of his birth and upbringing, and his struggle to study Kabbalah. Rabbi Eliyahu’s name had become well known during the Maharal’s lifetime. After many years of teaching Torah in his yeshivos in Worms and later in Chelm, Poland, which produced hundreds of students, Rabbi Eliyahu Baal Shem moved his yeshiva to Prague. Both the revealed and the hidden dimensions of Torah were studied there. Rabbi Shmuel, the Maharal’s grandson, was very wealthy and contributed large sums of his own money to support Rabbi Eliyahu Baal Shem of Worms’s yeshiva. When he moved the yeshiva to Prague, the Baal Shem of Worms added a new preparatory division for young boys. Unlike his yeshivos in Worms and Chelm, which had been intended only for married students, here he also established a yeshiva for young boys. Rabbi Shmuel sent his son Yehuda Leib there, and he excelled in his studies. When Shmuel, the Maharal’s grandson, passed away, Rabbi Eliyahu Baal Shem of Worms was 108 years old. So when it became necessary to go to the Maharal’s grave and remind the tzaddik of the burial plot he had designated for his grandson Shmuel, it was Rabbi Eliyahu who sent ten of his students to carry out the task.

16:17 He himself also attended Shmuel’s funeral and delivered a eulogy. Let’s return to Shmuel’s son Yehuda Leib. Yehuda Leib inherited considerable wealth from his father. The members of the Prague community chose Yehuda Leib to succeed his father as head of the community, but he declined, saying that he did not have the qualities needed for such an honored position. Yehuda Leib also endured suffering. His first wife passed away, leaving him with young children. He married again. His second wife also passed away, about a year after his father’s passing, and she too left young children. Rabbi Eliyahu Baal Shem, the great Torah scholar and Kabbalist, then called his student Yehuda Leib to him. He told him that he saw a good future for him in the city of Poznań and blessed him with a long life. Indeed, three years later, Yehuda Leib was offered a match with Sarah, the daughter of a Jew named Chaim from Poznań, who was a great Torah scholar and a wealthy man. In 5408—that is, 1660—when Yehuda Leib was fifty-six years old, he apparently moved to Poznań, around 1660. Seven years later, in 5427, 1667, their son Reb Moshe was born. He would become the great-grandfather of Rabbi Schneur Zalman, the author of Tanya and founder of Chabad Chassidus. So we can see the family line here, beginning with the Maharal of Prague, who, as we related earlier, was a descendant of King David. Then we have his grandson Yehuda Leib, whose son was named Moshe, and two or three generations after Moshe came Rabbi Schneur Zalman, the founder of Chabad Chassidus. Poznań was then a center of Torah learning, and Yehuda Leib found many scholars there with whom to discuss Torah. He especially enjoyed debating with the students of Rabbi Yitzchak Kloiber, who, as we recall, was the teacher

19:12 of the Maharshal. Rabbi Yitzchak Kloiber’s students were great scholars of both the revealed Torah and Kabbalah. One native of Poznań was the great scholar Rabbi Shmuel Eliezer HaLevi Eidels, known as the Maharsha. He served as rabbi in Tiktin and later in Ostroh, and was known for his magnificent yeshiva, which produced many great Torah scholars. The Maharsha was, in his day, among those who opposed Kabbalah, as were many of his students who had been born in Poznań. In this way, a large group opposed to the study of Kabbalah formed in Poznań. We already remember the struggle between the students of Rabbi Yoel of Zamość—Reb Baruch Batlan and his fellow chassidim of Rabbi Yoel Baal Shem—and those opposed to the study of Kabbalah and the hidden tzaddikim, as well as everything that happened in Poznań with the house taken over by evil spirits. All of that took place in Poznań. We should also mention that Yehuda Leib’s son Moshe lived at the same time as Reb Baruch Batlan. That means Reb Moshe also lived in the time of Rabbi Yoel Baal Shem of Zamość, who succeeded Rabbi Eliyahu Baal Shem of Worms. So we see two parallel developments here. In Prague, Rabbi Eliyahu Baal Shem opened a yeshiva, and his student Rabbi Yoel became the Baal Shem after him. Meanwhile, another student of Rabbi Eliyahu Baal Shem, Yehuda Leib, moved to Poznań, married there and had a son, Moshe. This Moshe eventually became related by marriage to Reb Baruch Batlan. So on one side was Moshe, among those opposed to Kabbalah, and on the other was Reb Baruch Batlan, among the chassidim and hidden tzaddikim. In any case, opposition to Kabbalah in Poznań grew after the tragic events connected with Shabbetai Tzvi, the false messiah. Many believed that this tragic development had come about because of the study of Kabbalah. For twenty years, there was a struggle between supporters of Kabbalah study and its opponents. These were

22:15 These were the twenty years in which Moishe, the son of Yehuda Leib, grew and developed, and his personality took shape. For this reason, Moishe was educated only in the study of the revealed parts of Torah and did not study Kabbalah at all. When he was seventeen, Reb Moishe was matched with Sarah, the orphaned daughter of Shneur Zalman. This Shneur Zalman was descended from Rabbi Yitzchak Katz, the Maharal’s son-in-law. Thus the two branches of the Maharal’s family were joined: the descendants of his only son and the descendants of his daughter. Shneur Zalman, the father of Sarah, Moishe’s wife, was a dealer in diamonds and precious stones. Although his daughter was very young when he passed away, she took over his business, succeeded greatly, and amassed considerable wealth in addition to what she had inherited from him. Years passed, and Moishe, Sarah’s husband, was appointed head of the community of Pozna. This was in 5452, exactly one hundred years after the Maharal visited Pozna. Moishe and Sarah named their son Shneur Zalman after her father. He was, in fact, the grandfather of Rabbi Shneur Zalman, the founder of Chabad Chassidus. Reb Moishe was twenty-two when his son was born, and three years later he was appointed head of the Pozna community—a position no one so young had ever held. It was not because of his lineage, his scholarship, or his wealth, but primarily because of his exceptional qualities and gifts. Even at a young age, Moishe showed a remarkable talent for leadership that made him fit to be a leader among the Jewish people.