Rav Yitzchok Yaakov Reines

Early years

Rav Yitzchok Yaakov Reines zt"l, the Rav of Lida, was born in 1839 in Karolin (Karlin), a town that is now part of Pinsk, Belarus. His parents were Shlomo Naftali and Gela, and the family traced its line to Rav Meir ben Yitzchok Katzenellenbogen. He was a ben zekunim (child of his father's old age). His father had lost his first wife and children in the earthquake that struck Tzfas in 1837. He had been in Eastern Europe at the time, collecting funds for the Tzfas community, and he never went back. He stayed in Lithuania, remarried and began a new family.

As a boy, Rav Yitzchok Yaakov learned Gemara intensively, first with his father and then with a series of tutors. One of them introduced him to the Shaagas Aryeh, which he mastered and later took as his model for learning. At fourteen he began writing down his own essays on Talmudic topics, the start of a lifetime of writing that produced hundreds of essays and eleven published books.

In his teens, he and his study partner met a stranger of remarkable learning, whom his biographers never name and describe as a mathematical wizard. The man taught the two young students the basics of algebra and geometry, which he insisted would help them in Gemara, and urged Rav Yitzchok Yaakov to study the Rambam's Biur Milos HaHigayon, a work on logic and the precise meaning of terms. Rav Yitzchok Yaakov later credited this book, together with the Shaagas Aryeh, with shaping his approach to learning.

Torah and leadership

He learned at the Kollel Prushim in Eishishok and then at the Volozhin Yeshiva under the Netziv, where he received semichah. In 1859 he married Elke Rachel, daughter of Rav Yosef Reisen, the Rav of Hordok. They were married for forty-five years and had three children. Their son Moshe was a prodigy who wrote several works on Gemara and passed away at twenty-one. Their son Avrohom Dov Ber edited and republished his father's seforim, and their daughter was Gela Reines Rabinovitch.

Rav Yitzchok Yaakov became Rav of Saukenai, Lithuania, in 1867, and of Svencionys in 1869. In 1882 he founded a yeshiva there that included secular subjects in its program. That year he also took part in a gathering of rabbonim and communal leaders in St. Petersburg, where plans to improve the situation of Russian Jewry were discussed. He proposed his own method of learning in place of the one then common in the yeshivos. The proposal was turned down, so he opened a yeshiva where he could put his ideas into practice.

The course ran for ten years. A student would gain the knowledge needed for rabbinic ordination and, at the same time, the secular education required of a government-recognized rav. The aim fit the Russian government's own wishes, yet he met such strong opposition from within the Jewish community that the authorities closed the yeshiva after four years. His later attempts to reopen it did not succeed. He also helped establish the first kollel perushim, which supported young married men preparing for the rabbinate, together with Rav Yitzchok Blazer.

From 1885 until his passing he served in Lida. In 1905 he realized a personal dream there, with a yeshiva in which Torah and secular subjects were both taught. It was named Torah VeDaas, and it drew many students from across Russia. They gave seven hours a day to traditional learning and three hours to other subjects, among them Russian language and literature, mathematics, history, geography and bookkeeping. The Rav wanted his talmidim to qualify for official rabbinic posts, to withstand the revolutionary ideologies of the day, and to earn an honest living in a changing economy.

For Gemara shiurim to the older students he engaged Rav Shlomo Polachek, the illui (genius) of Meitshet, who had learned the Brisker method from Rav Chaim Soloveitchik himself. He appointed Rav Eliyahu Dov Berkovsky, a product of Novardok, as mashgiach ruchani (spiritual supervisor). Former talmidim wrote warmly of the spacious dormitories, good light and air, a large library and well-kept grounds. Rav Yitzchok Yaakov did not teach on the faculty, and kept to administration and fundraising. But every Shabbos he gave a long lecture, on Friday night in winter and late on Shabbos afternoon in summer. He would choose a halachic topic at the start of each term and develop it week by week from the parsha, joining halachic analysis to derush.

Mizrachi and Religious Zionism

Early in his adult life Rav Yitzchok Yaakov was drawn to Chovevei Tzion, which was led by figures such as Rav Shmuel Mohilever and Rav Dovid Friedman of Karlin, and he was a member from its beginning. At first he hesitated to join. After studying the question carefully, he decided it was right and committed himself fully. He was one of the first rabbonim to answer Theodor Herzl's call, and he attended the Third Zionist Congress in 1899. He worked with Zionist leaders of every kind, despite the deep differences between them.

Around 1893 Rav Shmuel Mohilever founded the Mercaz Ruchani (spiritual center), and its abbreviation, Mizrachi, later became the name of the movement Rav Yitzchok Yaakov led. At the Fifth Zionist Congress in Basel in 1901, when other forces threatened to pull the movement away from religion, his religious faction grew into the strongest branch of the Zionist organization in Russia. He supported the British Uganda proposal as a temporary measure to save Jewish lives.

He held that religious Jews could cooperate with free-thinkers in settling European Jews in Eretz Yisroel without lowering their own standards. Most of the rabbonim of Eastern and Western Europe still opposed political Zionism. In 1902 he published Or Chadash al Tzion, a call for a Judaism that included economic productivity, training and a renewal of Jewish thought and feeling. The same year he organized a conference of religious Zionists in Vilna, where the Mizrachi movement was founded, and the movement recognized him as its leader at its founding convention in Pressburg. He argued that earlier generations saw Hashem's hand in nature, while Jews of his own day see it in history, especially in surviving the exile and returning to Zion.

He travelled widely and spoke before large crowds across Eastern Europe, and met with leading rabbonim, roshei yeshiva and Chassidic Rebbes. He faced fierce, sometimes violent, opposition. At the same time he was careful to keep Zionist politics out of his yeshiva, insisting that a school exists to educate and not to indoctrinate, whatever the cause. His successor as head of the movement was Rav Yehuda Leib Fishman, who later took the name Maimon and became the first Minister of Religious Affairs of the State of Israel.

Teachings and seforim

Rav Yitzchok Yaakov developed a logical, systematic approach to learning, set out in his Chotem Tochnis, and wrote many seforim on rabbinic literature. His Edus beYaakov, on the laws of testimony, appeared in Vilna in 1872, preceded by his notes on Edus biYehoshef by his father-in-law (Vilna, 1866). Later came Shaarei Orah on Haggadah and Midrash (Vilna, 1886) and Orim Gedolim on halacha (Vilna, 1887). Nod shel Dimaos, a collection of eulogies and funeral sermons, was printed in 1891, followed by Or Shivas HaYamim (1896), Orah veSimchah, and the Or Chadash al Tzion of 1902.

His Sefer HaArachim was published in New York in 1926 from his manuscript, prepared by his son Avrohom Dov Ber. A great deal of his writing never reached print and is kept at the Mossad HaRav Kook Library in Jerusalem. Edus beYaakov was republished there around the year 2000.

Later years and passing

His tireless work for Zionism, and the strain of raising funds for his growing yeshiva, wore down his health in his last years. Rav Yitzchok Yaakov passed away on 10 Elul 5675 (August 20, 1915), in the middle of the First World War. His levaya was held under fire, as the German army was about to enter Lida. Many residents had fled, and those who stayed to honor their Rav were frightened, but they gave him a proper burial and managed to deliver several hurried eulogies.

Because of the circumstances, most of the Jewish world did not hear of his passing for as long as a year. When word spread, he was eulogized by many, among them the maggid Rav Binyomin Shikuvitsky in the beis midrash of the Radin yeshiva. The Chofetz Chaim was present and asked the entire audience to sit on the floor in mourning. Rav Yosef Tzvi Dushinsky, who differed with him on Zionism and other matters, said that he had known the Rav in his youth, that he was able to open a new path in learning Gemara and the poskim, and that his intentions were pure.

One eulogizer called him an "oseh chadashos, baal milchamos" (one who makes new things and is a master of battles), a phrase from the berachos before Shema. It praised his bold new ways and his courage against opposition. Yet those who knew him stressed his piety, his fine character, and the love and respect he had for every Jew. On the fiftieth yahrzeit, plans were announced to bring his remains from Lida to Eretz Yisroel, but they have not been carried out.

Legacy

Rav Yitzchok Yaakov combined vision with practical sense. His commitment to Zion came from his conviction that the Torah sources he knew so well called for the return, and from his worry for the millions of Jews in Poland and Russia and the future he feared for them. His school reforms grew from his pain over young Jewish men who had grown distant from learning and mitzvos, and he wished to raise their spiritual level.

His name lives on above all in Eretz Yisroel, where many streets and entire neighborhoods are named after him, and the Mizrachi movement he founded continues his path. Students of his yeshiva wrote of an uplifting intellectual and spiritual experience.