Rav Aryeh Tzvi Frummer

Early years

Rav Aryeh Tzvi Frummer zt"l was born in 1884 in Czeladz, Poland, to Rav Chanoch Hendel Frummer, a tailor, and Miriam Kayla. He had a brother, Reuven, and two sisters, Taibel Leah and Faigel. His mother passed away when he was three. After his father remarried, he was sent to learn in a cheder in the nearby town of Wolbrum, where he lived with his mother's relatives.

There his sharp mind soon stood out, and people began to call him by the Yiddish form of his name, Leib Hirsch. At twelve he went to the yeshiva ketana in Amstov, near Czestochowa, where he outpaced boys his own age. After his bar mitzvah, a year later, he moved to the yeshiva of the Sochatchover Rebbe, the Avnei Nezer, in Sochaczew. He found students there who matched his own level, and he grew into a notable talmid chacham. He became a devoted Sochatchover chossid and went on to serve the first three Sochatchover Rebbes.

Torah and leadership

At eighteen he married his cousin Esther Schweitzer, daughter of Rav Yehuda Shraga Schweitzer of Lvov. His father-in-law supported him in his home in Milewicz, so that he could continue to learn. In 1910, when the Avnei Nezer passed away, the Rebbe's son and successor, Rav Shmuel Bornsztain, appointed the twenty-six-year-old Rav Aryeh Tzvi to succeed his father as rosh yeshiva in Sochaczew. The yeshiva had hundreds of talmidim and continued until the First World War broke out.

During that war a fire destroyed Sochaczew and its yeshiva, and he moved with his family to Warsaw. When the war ended and the second Sochatchover Rebbe moved to Zgierz, he succeeded his uncle, Rav Yitzchok Gutensztain, as Rav of Koziegłowy. He opened a yeshiva in his home that grew to fifty students, and from then on he was known as the Koziglover Rav. In 1921 he had to leave the town. It is told that the reason was either the hostility of a neighboring priest or a rich man who had lost a din Torah.

Sochatchover chassidim in Zawiercie asked him to be their Rav, and he agreed, and he founded a yeshiva there too. Some time later he was nominated as Rav of Zawiercie but lost to another candidate, and he moved with his yeshiva to nearby Sosnowiec. At each stop his talmidim and admirers grew in number, until the directors of Yeshivas Chachmei Lublin, then the leading yeshiva of Poland, invited him in 1934 to succeed Rav Meir Shapiro, who had died suddenly in late 1933.

It is told that Rav Meir Shapiro had asked him earlier, in his own lifetime, to take over as rosh yeshiva, offering to step down. Rav Aryeh Tzvi refused, because he was too attached to his talmidim and friends to leave them. But after Rav Meir Shapiro's passing at the age of forty-six, and a second request from the hanhala (administration), he saw it as his duty and agreed. At Chachmei Lublin he brought a new spirit of learning, yiras shamayim and depth to hundreds of outstanding talmidim. He served as rosh yeshiva until the Germans closed it in 1939.

Teachings and seforim

In 1913 he published his first sefer, Siach HaSadeh, essays that explain topics in the Gemara, especially in Seder Moed. In 1935 he spent four months visiting Eretz Yisroel. In 1938 he published Eretz Tzvi, a work of responsa on the practical laws of Orach Chaim. The title is another name for Eretz Yisroel and a play on his own name. It includes his replies to questions from leading Torah figures, such as the Rebbe of Ger. It is known for its original method of drawing on Kabbalistic and other non-halachic sources to resolve halachic questions, and it is still quoted widely.

He also wrote an anonymous pamphlet, Ikarei Dinei Tefillah, on the main laws of prayer, which was widely read in Poland before the war. At the second Siyum HaShas at Yeshivas Chachmei Lublin, in June 1938, he began the worldwide study program of Mishnah Yomis, as a companion to Daf Yomi.

A talmid once described Shabbos in the yeshiva. Before Shabbos he davened Mincha weeping, with tears like a river. After a fiery Kabbolas Shabbos, he would recite aloud the passage of Zohar printed with the Friday night zemiros and explain it, which was his only public shiur in Zohar. It sometimes went on for hours, and talmidim who had already gone to sleep were awakened by his voice as he made Kiddush late at night. During the day his Nishmas lasted over half an hour, as he said each word lovingly, and the talmidim said that whoever never heard the Koziglover Rav say Nishmas had never tasted true tefillah.

Later years and passing

After the Germans closed the yeshiva, Rav Aryeh Tzvi fled to Warsaw and entered the Warsaw Ghetto, where he continued to learn and to write chiddushim (new Torah insights). Together with another Sochatchover chossid, Rav Avremele Weinberg, he directed the secret education of several hundred Sochatchover yeshiva students in the ghetto, under the guidance of the third Sochatchover Rebbe, Rav Dovid Bornsztain, who was also confined there.

As the deportations grew more frequent, he and his Rebbe joined other Torah scholars who disguised themselves as workers in a large shoe factory owned by Fritz Schulz. He worked in the section that produced wooden clogs and fur slippers for German soldiers on the Russian front. While he worked he reviewed his learning by heart.

Twelve days after the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, he and his family were deported to the Majdanek concentration camp. A few days later, on 27 Nissan 5703 (May 2, 1943), he was murdered. It is reported that as he was taken to the gas chamber, he clapped his hands and said aloud that they should sanctify the Name of Hashem with joy, and blessed Hashem who had kept them alive to merit this great opportunity.

Legacy

Eretz Tzvi was reprinted in Eretz Yisroel in 1976 by his nephew, Dov Frumer, and is still widely learned today. The study of Mishnah Yomis, which he began, continues around the world.