“The Lord Told Me, Come Up to Me”: 160 Years Since the Passing of Rabbi Yehuda Assad
On Wednesday, the 23rd of Sivan 5626, 160 years ago, shortly before dawn, outside the window the skies over the kingdom of Hungary were wrapped in deep darkness, and in those momentous minutes the pure soul of the pillar of instruction ascended to the heavenly vaults. | Shlomo Weiser on the unique figure of one of the greatest halachic decisors of the generations, Rabbi Yehuda Assad, may the memory of the righteous be a blessing, author of Yehuda Yaaleh and rabbi of Serdahhely | And also, the frightening incident that occurred at the time of his passing and its connection to the portrait of the righteous one (Haredim)
On Wednesday, the 23rd of Sivan 5626, 160 years ago, shortly before dawn, there was tremendous tension in the spiritual train station of Hungarian Jewry in the city of Serdahhely. Around the bed of the faithful shepherd stood his trembling disciples, holding their breath. Outside the window, the skies over the kingdom wore deep darkness, and in those stirring moments, as the world went on as usual and the whole city lay asleep, the pure soul of the pillar of instruction ascended to the heavenly vaults. With emotion and tears, his wife described those sublime moments. Shortly before the soul departed, while he was sitting and writing Torah insights, he awakened his wife and said, “The heart stood still and stopped beating, and the heavens darkened with clouds, the Lord told me, come up to me, among the band of celestial beings there I will place you.” Shortly afterward, his pure soul ascended in a storm to the heavenly vaults, and the study of the man who spent his entire life immersed in Torah ceased.
Who was that giant among giants, whose genius and righteousness shook the entire Jewish world? Who was the brilliant scholar in whose splendid yeshiva nearly 150 exceptional Torah scholars gathered, and to whose door thousands of halachic questions were sent from all corners of the world? Who was the leader who, in times of war and fire, when the winds of Reform threatened to uproot the vine of the House of Israel in the land of Hungary, stood like a fortified wall, wrote, responded, and fought like a lion at the gate? It was our great master, the master among the rabbis, Rabbi Yehuda Assad, may the memory of the righteous be a blessing, author of Yehuda Yaaleh and rabbi of Serdahhely. One of the greatest halachic decisors of the generations, whose responsa and depth of analysis to this day remain central and important cornerstones of the world of halachic ruling and Jewish law.
Childhood and youth
In the year 5554, in the alleys of the small town of Assad in Hungary, the infant Yehuda was born, destined to become one of the luminaries of the diaspora and the pillars of the world. The home of his father, the pious and God-fearing Rabbi Yisrael Alnboigen, of blessed memory, was poor and modest, suffused with simplicity and sincere Jewish innocence, far from the glare of outward grandeur that catches the eye. Rabbi Yisrael faithfully bore the burden of supporting his household, toiled with honesty and integrity, but deep inside, in the recesses of a father’s heart, he already discerned the wondrous spark and hidden abilities of his only son taking shape before his eyes.
But the sun of that warm home set too early. Before the boy had time to blossom, while still on the threshold of childhood, his father Rabbi Yisrael passed away. The modest, brokenhearted widow faced the void in the home with her son in her arms, the lone holy ember that had to be guarded with every effort. In those days of loneliness and sorrow, as she struggled to support the home, the righteous mother made a historic decision that changed the course of generations, her only son would not turn to worldly business, he would devote himself entirely to the sacred work of Torah.
News of the orphan from Assad’s extraordinary talents spread its wings until it reached the pure ears of Rabbi Yehoshua Falk Suditz-Bichler, may the memory of the righteous be a blessing, rabbi of Sécsény, who recognized the greatness of the boy’s soul, took him under his wing, and supported him, raising him from the poor home to the house of God, to the benches of the study hall, and sent word to his mother that this son would become great in Israel and that Torah and instruction would come forth from him for the whole of Israel.
After not long, and on the recommendation of his teachers who helped him pave the continuation of his path, the boy’s feet carried him to his next spiritual destination, the splendid yeshiva of his teacher and principal mentor, the master among the rabbis, the towering genius Rabbi Mordechai Banet, may the memory of the righteous be a blessing, in the city of Nikolsburg. The boy entered the yeshiva in his youth, but his spiritual stature began to soar rapidly into the heavens. Rabbi Mordechai Banet, who immediately recognized the extraordinary prodigy, drew him close in an exceptional way and made him one of his principal students. The young man’s pace of study was astounding, and eyewitnesses and chroniclers report that already in his early youth the young scholar was wonderfully versed, in both directions, in 500 pages of Gemara, and the four sections of the Shulchan Aruch were fluent on his tongue.
When his great teacher, Rabbi Mordechai Banet, turned to him and exclaimed with emotion the verse, “Judah, your brothers shall praise you,” these were not mere rhetorical words. His teacher assigned him an immense task with no equal, to deliver lessons and lead a group of about fifty students older than himself, testimony to the absolute esteem in which his great teacher held him.
Within the walls of the yeshiva in Nikolsburg, a wondrous scene unfolded, the youth Yehuda, who had only recently left his widowed mother’s home, entered the gates of Torah with love and strength. Consider the magnitude of the moving spectacle. A young boy, who had entered the yeshiva only a few years earlier, sat at the head and taught the depth of the sugya while around him older students listened in silence and with solemnity, recognizing before them one whose learning was pure and whose Torah spoke from his throat. The hours of the day were not enough for the boy to quench his intense thirst, he scarcely tasted sleep, and in the small hours of the night he found rest among the pages of the Gemara. In the dead of night, when his friends lay at rest and the whole city was sleeping, the burning lamp in his corner testified to an exertion beyond measure. Gemara after Gemara, sugya after sugya, with astonishing diligence, until the entire Torah became clear to him as his own upbringing.
His growth in Torah study was marked by extraordinary asceticism, holiness, and purity, עד that it was said of him that from Sabbath to Sabbath he did not sleep in his bed, and his night study was done standing. At his great teacher’s advice, he began to engage in the wisdom of Kabbalah in those years. The bond that formed between Rabbi Mordechai Banet and his outstanding student was not an ordinary relationship between rabbi and disciple, it was a profoundly deep one. The older scholar, who found in the younger man extraordinary qualities, and the young student, who found in his principal teacher the pure compass that guided all his steps. Under the guiding hand of his great teacher, he continued to draw from the wells of greatness until he emerged ready and prepared to bear the weight of halachic and rabbinic responsibility that would one day illuminate his generation.
Building his home with Rebbetzin Esther, his appointment to the rabbinate, and founding the yeshiva
When he came of age, he married his righteous wife, Mrs. Esther, of blessed memory, daughter of the righteous Rabbi Meir Regner. Their home immediately became a house of study and a source of blessing for every person in need and every downtrodden soul. In 5586, on the recommendation of the leading sages of the generation, Rabbi Mordechai Banet, the author of Chasam Sofer, and Rabbi Yehoshua Falk Bichler, the young genius Rabbi Yehuda Assad was chosen to serve as dayan in the Serdahhely community in the Pressburg district. After five years serving as dayan in Serdahhely, Rabbi Yehuda left at the request of a nearby community to serve there as rabbi, and afterward moved to serve as rabbi and head of the rabbinical court in the community of Semnitz, where he taught תורה for years. In 5614, he returned to Serdahhely and was elevated there as the community’s rabbi, a post he held until his final day.
In the shadow of the couple, a great yeshiva flourished in Serdahhely, such as the place had never known. Young men flocked from all corners of the land to bask in his shade, until the splendid yeshiva numbered about 150 students. The householders of the city opened their homes to the young men and fed them for days so they could devote themselves to study without concern for livelihood. The rebbetzin stood by her husband with tremendous self-sacrifice, so that he could devote himself to Torah and serve his Creator without any material burden. She took upon herself the entire burden of the home, including care for the yeshiva students, and nearly twenty young men regularly ate at her table, especially on the holidays, and she supported them with love and without asking anything in return.
The sight was moving to tears, a small town whose people were simple, transformed by the power of one genius into one of the greatest and most influential centers of Torah in Hungary. The rabbi’s name spread throughout the land, and many of the greatest Torah scholars and rabbis sent their difficult questions to his door, knowing and confident that from him would come faithful instruction and truth.
His stand against the wave of Haskalah and Reform
The years he sat on the rabbinic throne in Serdahhely were not peaceful. Outside the windows of the study hall, across Jewish Europe, winds of evil began to blow, seeking to uproot the vineyard of the House of Israel from its roots. The Reform movement, which arose in Germany and spread like a consuming fire, did not confine itself to its own borders, its long arms began reaching into the loyal communities of Hungary, trying to undermine the foundations upon which the people of Israel had guarded themselves with self-sacrifice throughout the generations.
When the Reformers convened their conference in Braunschweig, the pillar of instruction did not remain silent. Rabbi Yehuda Assad, may the memory of the righteous be a blessing, signed protest letters together with the great rabbis of his generation, and his voice was heard clearly and forcefully among the voices fighting for the preservation of religion. He immediately recognized that what the Reformers sought to undermine was not this custom or that, but a challenge to the very existence of faithful Judaism, loyal to Torah and the tradition of Israel.
When some sought, with the approval of Emperor Franz Joseph, to establish a seminary for rabbis and teachers, an institution that carried the scent of Haskalah and deviation from the path, Rabbi Yehuda Assad stood in the front line among the great rabbis who came out against it strongly and harshly. He was not deterred by the grandeur of the monarchy, and went out to defend the sanctity of religion and the path our ancestors received from their ancestors, so that the House of Israel would preserve its pure character for future generations.
His teaching method and the education of his students
Anyone who entered the gates of Rabbi Yehuda Assad’s yeshiva in Serdahhely witnessed an immense enterprise of Torah studied with clarity, with attention to interpersonal relations and mutual responsibility. Rabbi Yehuda’s method of study was grounded in the plain meaning of the text. He adopted this approach in principle so that even the youngest students in the yeshiva would understand what they were learning without difficulty, and thus taste and experience the sweetness and harmony of the Torah.
It is told that when a student asked a question that caused the listeners to smile, Rabbi Yehuda would immediately come to the questioner’s aid and strengthen the question from various angles, in order to dignify it in the eyes of those listening and prevent the student’s embarrassment. Even in his written answers to his students’ questions, he would reply to them with special and elevated terms of affection. Rabbi Yehuda did not suffice with delivering lessons alone, he saw the student’s full needs and cared for his physical and emotional well-being. He worked with the community members to arrange “days” for the young men, demanded that the public support them honorably, and even personally spent his own money on needy students so that they would lack nothing. Even on his very last day on earth, when his body was weakened, Rabbi Yehuda did not allow his frailty to interrupt his sacred work and studied with his students as usual.
His Torah
Rabbi Yehuda Assad left an eternal mark in ink and parchment. The responsa collection Yehuda Yaaleh is the vast spiritual monument in which part of his genius was revealed. 884 halachic responsa, answering questions from all four sections of the Shulchan Aruch, came forth from his pen. Questions of law flowed to his table constantly from all corners of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Great rabbis and judges, alongside householders and ordinary men of action, all knew well that the door was open wide, and that every question and doubt would receive a refined answer. Indeed, he answered everyone who knocked at his door, with clarity. Thousands approached him over the years, and none left empty-handed. To each he replied with immense patience, for every difficulty and issue he found the halachic opening, and no one left his presence without carrying a clear ruling, a definitive decision, and truth.
His time was used in a wondrous way for the service of God, while the whole world rested in sleep, Rabbi Yehuda sat for long hours after midnight, with the burning lamp before him and the pen in his hand, writing, ruling, and responding to those who asked him. According to the testimony of his household, he lay in bed for only about an hour and a half each night, about an hour of that rest spent while studying a book and only half an hour with his eyes closed.
In addition to the famous responsa book Yehuda Yaaleh, the rabbi left behind many manuscripts that were lost to the Jewish people in the turmoil of the Holocaust of European Jewry. The surviving books are responsa Yaaleh Yehuda on the four sections of the Shulchan Aruch, Chidushei Maharia on Tractate Ketubot, and Divrei Mahar”y on the Torah.
The lights went dark
No one knew on the night of the 23rd of Sivan 5626 what was about to happen. The burning lamp burned as usual, the swift pen raced across the paper, and his hand did not stop for a moment from writing halachic responsa, for that had been his way all his life, from childhood until his very last day. Even as his pure body weakened, his mouth did not cease from words of Torah and his hand did not cease from writing.
About three hours after midnight, the great rabbi rose from his place, approached his wife the rebbetzin, and said to her the chilling words: “The heart stood still and stopped beating, the heavens darkened with clouds, the Lord told me, come up to me, among the band of celestial beings there I will place you.” Shortly afterward, before dawn broke over the skies of Serdahhely, his heart stopped, his pure soul departed, and it ascended in a storm to heaven. Hungarian Jewry had lost its captain and crown.
The next day, when all of Hungarian Jewry learned of the bitter news, the masses streamed from all parts of the kingdom toward the city of Serdahhely. The report was enormous, and the eulogy delivered that day in Serdahhely gathered under one roof many rabbis and leaders who had come from near and far, all deeply stricken, knowing that the pillar of Torah and halachic authority of their generation had been broken. Twenty famous rabbis stood by his bed and eulogized him in tears, each voicing in a trembling voice the pain of the entire generation and the magnitude of the loss that has no replacement. The eulogies began in the morning at 10 o’clock and continued until 8 o’clock in the evening.
Rabbi Yehuda was buried with honor among sages in the old cemetery in Serdahhely, and the site of his holy grave stands there to this day, serving as a place of prayer for anyone in need of salvation, and many have been helped through prayer at this holy place. Today the site lies in Slovakia and is called Dunajska Streda, near the city of Pressburg.
A frightening story is told about the portrait of the righteous one at the time of his passing. Until the day of his death, his image had never been painted, and at the time of his passing, some of his students wished to preserve his holy likeness. The temptation for this proposal arose from the difficult financial situation in Rabbi Yehuda’s home, where he left behind his family, including unmarried daughters. Those seeking to document his image argued that a portrait of the righteous man would sell for thousands, and with that money they would finance a respectable dowry for his orphaned daughters. And from thought to deed, amid the uproar that broke out when news of the death became known, while cries of anguish filled the town, the door inside the house was locked. His pure body, lying on the bed, was dressed in Sabbath clothing, then taken and seated on the righteous man’s chair, books were placed in his hands, and an artisan was brought in to document his portrait. Opinions differ as to whether this was an accurate drawing or a real photograph. In any case, the bitter end of the matter was that everyone who took part in it did not live out the year.
May the great merit of the righteous one protect us and all Israel, amen.
