Rav Yosef Yoizel Horowitz

Early years

Rav Yosef Yoizel Horowitz zt"l, the Alter of Novardok, was born in 1847 in the Lithuanian town of Plongian. His father, Rav Shlomo Zalman, was the Rav and dayan of Plongian and later the Rav of Kurtuvian. Rav Yosef Yoizel had three brothers and four sisters.

He received his early education from his father and, while still very young, joined the yeshiva in Kelm. At sixteen he was already giving a shiur in the shul of Kurtuvian.

At eighteen he married the eldest daughter of Rav Yaakov Stein, who owned a textile store in Shvekesna. Rav Stein passed away shortly before the wedding, so Rav Yosef Yoizel took over the business and supported his father-in-law's widow and her eight children.

Torah and seclusion in Kovno

His business brought him often to Memel, where at the age of twenty-seven he met Rav Yisrael Salanter, then the Rav of Memel. After hearing several of his shiurim and speaking with him, Rav Yosef Yoizel decided to close the business, leave Shvekesna and learn Torah full time in Kovno. His father and Rav Yisrael both worried about how his wife would take the decision. He assured them that she had always understood him and would understand him this time too.

On Rav Yisrael's advice he joined Kovno's Kollel Perushim, where he learned under Rav Yitzchok Blazer, Rav Naftoli Amsterdam and Rav Avrohom Shenker, who were talmidim of Rav Yisrael. He learned at least eighteen hours a day, mostly standing.

He brought his wife and children to Kovno. There she gave birth to two more children and passed away in childbirth. Rav Yosef Yoizel placed his children with relatives and shut himself away in the home of a Kovno tinsmith, Rav Shlomo. He stayed there a year and a half without going out, and he had the entrance walled up, leaving two small windows through which he spoke with his host when necessary. Dairy meals were passed through one window and meat meals through the other.

Forced to leave, and the forest

In 1881 or 1882 maskilim printed articles that mocked his seclusion. Then forged banknotes were tossed into his yard, and the police were informed that counterfeiters were working from his hideout. His mother happened to visit that day and burned the bundle. Soon afterward the police broke down the wall. They found nothing, but they forbade him to live in seclusion.

Soon after he came out, his mentors urged him to marry again. One evening he passed Rav Shlomo's house and heard someone crying. The next day he asked what had happened and learned that the man engaged to Rav Shlomo's daughter, Chaya Rivka, had broken the engagement. Rav Yosef Yoizel agreed to marry her only if he could remain apart from the world during the week, returning home solely for Shabbos and Yom Tov. They agreed, and the match was made.

Rav Gershon Chirinsky, a lumber merchant with estates around Zetl, helped by Rav E. Lachman of Berlin, built him a retreat in the forest. There Rav Yosef Yoizel secluded himself for twelve years and returned to his family only on Shabbosos. His practice was to speak with his Creator in hisbodedus (self-seclusion), learning Torah and mussar to perfect his character and his service of Hashem.

When his father passed away in 1890, Kurtuvian offered him the post his father had held. He turned it down, since he had a sister who had been left an orphan, and he gave the rabbinic seat to his future brother-in-law.

The Novardok yeshivos

In 1893 or 1894 he began to visit Rav Simcha Zissel Ziv, the Alter of Kelm. Rav Simcha Zissel urged him to take action against the influence of the Haskalah. Rav Yosef Yoizel left his seclusion once again and established kollelim in twenty towns of Poland and Russia, including Zetl, Lida, Odessa, Novardok, Berditchev, Warsaw, Minsk, Dvinsk and Shavli. After each kollel was set up, he urged its students to open a yeshiva next to it. Rav Lachman financed the institutions, and Rav Yitzchok Blazer headed them. The yeshiva in Berditchev had two hundred students.

When he heard his talmidim arguing over a difficult sugya, he would not leave until the matter was settled. This is described by Rav Dov Katz in Tnuas HaMussar, p. 199.

In Novardok itself he set up a yeshiva gedolah, a place of further learning for graduates of his many yeshivos. More than three hundred talmidim were enrolled. He gained a reputation as a baal bitachon, a master of trust in Hashem, and he would sign his name B. B. Madreigas HoOdom is a sefer that preserves a number of his discourses, and its central theme is bitachon.

The war years and Kiev

When the First World War broke out, the Alter decided to move the yeshiva away from the border and would not allow it to remain in Novardok. In 1914 or 1915 he traveled to Ukraine to look for new quarters. Before leaving, he told his talmidim that if the Germans came close to Novardok, they should flee toward Ukraine. He found a place for the yeshiva in Homel. Soon the Germans took the area near Novardok, and the talmidim fled to Homel.

In Homel they stayed in the home of Rav Yaakov Katz. The house soon could not hold them all, so they relocated, first to a bais medrash close by and afterward to several shuls around town. Eighty talmidim had arrived by late summer 1915, and the yeshiva was up and running again. In 1917 or 1918 conditions of the war led him to move the yeshiva to Kiev, where he founded four more yeshivos gedolos.

During Succos of 1919 there were pogroms in Kiev in which hundreds of Jews were killed. Many Jews in the area took refuge in the Alter's home, in the belief that his merit would protect them. By Simchas Torah matters had deteriorated, but he told his talmidim to hold hakafos as usual. Rioters fired at his windows. All present threw themselves down, but the Alter who stayed standing at the head of the table with the kiddush cup in his hand.

Later years and passing

After Succos a typhoid epidemic struck Kiev and took thousands of lives. The Alter's home filled with sick people, and he cared for them himself. In Kislev he caught the disease and never recovered, yet he went on attending to the needs of the sick.

He passed away on 17 Kislev 5680 (9 December 1919). Jews from Kiev and its surroundings streamed to the funeral, and the last to speak was his talmid, Rav Dovid Budnik. Forty-three years later his talmidim brought his coffin to Eretz Yisroel. His reburial took place on Har HaMenuchos in Yerushalayim in the summer of 1963.

Legacy

The Alter is remembered as a talmid of Rav Yisrael Salanter, the founder of the Mussar movement, and also of Rav Yitzchok Blazer and Rav Simcha Zissel Ziv. For a time he also learned in Brest from Rav Chaim Soloveichik. The Novardok yeshivos he built, and the trust in Hashem he taught with such certainty, remain his legacy.