Rav Klonimus Kalman Shapira

Early years

Rav Klonimus Kalman Shapira zy"a, the Piacezna Rebbe, was born on 19 Iyar 5649 (May 20, 1889), the day after Lag BaOmer, in Grodzisk Mazowiecki, Poland. His bris fell on Yesod SheBeYesod of the Omer. He was the son of Rav Elimelech of Grodzisk, the Imrei Elimelech, and belonged to a line that reached back to the Maggid of Kozhnitz, the Noam Elimelech of Lizhensk and the Chozeh of Lublin. His name, Kalonimus Kalman, honored the Maor VaShemesh.

His father died when he was only three, and he grew up an orphan.

In 1905 he married Rochel Chaya Miriam, a daughter of his nephew, Rav Yerachmiel Moshe of Kozhnitz. She assisted him in preparing his deroshos (Torah discourses) and seforim, and sometimes contributed relevant ideas of her own. Their children were a daughter, Rechil Yehudis, and a son, Elimelech Ben Zion. Neither survived the Holocaust.

Torah and leadership

In 1909 Rav Klonimus Kalman became Rav of Piaseczno, near Warsaw, and before long many chassidim attached themselves to him. The education of children and young men was his deepest concern. He founded the yeshiva Da'as Moshe in 1923, and between the wars it grew into one of the largest chassidic yeshivos in Warsaw.

In that era, large numbers of young Polish Jews were being lured away from the yeshiva world by the city's lively culture and by movements like Zionism. The Rebbe maintained that the methods then common in many yeshivos, strict discipline and learning by rote, would only widen the gap. He taught that a boy should be shown what greatness lay within his reach and be invited to take an active part in his own growth.

Teachers, he wrote, had to learn the student's own language and paint a vivid picture of how sweet it is to live close to Hashem. He urged approaches that were positive, attuned to a young person's feelings, and joyful. His ideas resemble those of Janusz Korczak, who in the same years developed a similar approach on a non-religious footing.

Teachings and seforim

Rav Klonimus Kalman authored a series of seforim on education and inner growth. Chovos HaTalmidim is a collection of essays for teenagers and has become a standard text in yeshivos. Hachshoras HaAvreichim was composed for young married men. Mevo HaSheorim was written as the introduction to Chovos HaAvreichim, the final volume of his educational series; of that manuscript, only Mevo HaSheorim survived.

Derech HaMelech gathers Torah discourses he gave on Shabbos and Yom Tov between 1889 and 1943, and Tzav V'Ziruz is his private diary. Bnei Machshava Tova draws on manuscripts rescued from the ruins of the Warsaw Ghetto and guides the reader toward spiritual heights despite hardship and physical needs. It has appeared in English as both Conscious Community and Experiencing the Divine.

War years

In September 1939, German bombs fell on Warsaw and killed the Rebbe's sister-in-law and daughter-in-law, along with his only son. After Poland was invaded, he was confined in the Warsaw Ghetto together with a few chassidim, and he ran a secret shul there. He worked tirelessly to sustain Jewish life, among other things by arranging immersions in the mikveh and marriages performed in accordance with halachah.

He stayed in the ghetto until it was liquidated, and the support of the Judenrat kept him off the transports to Treblinka in the summer of 1942. As other prominent figures were, he was assigned work at Schultz's shoe factory, which kept him alive a little longer.

Each week in the ghetto he delivered a sermon to his students, grappling with questions of faith as the suffering grew. Seeing that the ghetto and everyone left in it were doomed, he sealed the collection in a canister and buried it. A construction worker discovered it after the war, and it was published in Israel in 1960 as Esh Kodesh (Holy Fire).

Later years and passing

After the Warsaw Ghetto uprising was put down in Nissan 1943, the Rebbe was deported to the Trawniki work camp near Lublin. It is told that he was offered a chance to escape and refused.

He was shot there on 4 Cheshvan 5705 (1944). He fell in the mass shooting called Operation Harvest Festival (Aktion Erntefest), which came after the uprisings at Treblinka on August 2, 1943 and Sobibor on October 14, 1943, when the Nazis feared that revolts would spread. Every Jew still alive in Trawniki was killed in that operation.

Legacy

The Piacezna Rebbe is remembered as a model of faith under crushing pressure. In Esh Kodesh he openly described how faith was shaken in the ghetto, and he searched, drawing on Kabbalah and other Jewish sources, for answers to the problem of Hashem's justice. Yet his own emunah never wavered, and to the end of his life he strengthened others.