Archive for category Bnei Brak
Rabbi Yekusiel Klein, Bnei Brak, Israel
Moishe Alexander thanks Rabbi Yekusiel Klein for his work in Bnei Brak, Israel
Working in Bnei Brak
Rabbi Yehuda L. Eckstein, Bnei Brak, Israel
Posted by admin in Bnei Brak, Jewish studies on February 11th, 2010
Rabbi Eckstein Receives Donation from Moishe Alexander
Bnei Brak Mayor Interview
Bnei Brak takes its name from the ancient Beneberak, which was not in the same location.
Bnei Brak was founded as an agricultural settlement in 1924 by Rabbi Yitzchok Gerstenkorn and a group of Polish chasidim. Due to a lack of land many of its founders turned to other occupations, and the village began to develop an urban character. Its first rabbi was Rabbi Arye Mordechai Rabinowicz, a descendant of the Yaakov Yitzchok Rabinowicz, known as Yid HaKodosh, and formerly the rabbi of Kurów in Poland. He was succeeded as rabbi of Bnei Brak by Rabbi Yosef Kalisz, a scion of the Vurker dynasty.
The town was set up as a religious settlement from the outset, as is evident from this description of the pioneers:
Their souls were revived by the fact that they merited what their predecessors had not. What particularly revived their weary souls in the mornings and toward evening, when they would gather in the beis medrash situated in a special shack which was built immediately upon the arrival of the very first settlers, for tefilla betzibbur (communal prayer) three times a day, for the Daf Yomi shiur, and a Gemara shiur and an additional one in Mishnayos and the Shulchan Oruch.
Canadian Friends of Kupat Hair
Kupat Hair is a charity based in Bnei Brak in Israel.
Bnei Brak is the only large city in Israel whose inhabitants are mainly ultra-Orthodox Jews. The city is located in the Dan metropolitan region east of Tel Aviv. Its small physical size and large number of inhabitants (some 150,000) make it Israel’s most densely-populated city. Moreover, its birth rate is one of the highest in the country.
Bnei Brak started out in 1924 as an agricultural settlement established by a group of Polish Hassidim (members of a Jewish mystic movement founded in the 18th century in Eastern Europe). However, due to a lack of land, many of its founders were forced to turn to other occupations, such as commerce and handicrafts, and soon Bnei Brak assumed an urban character.
It was officially declared a city with the establishment of the State of Israel, and in the early 1950s, many Admors (Hassidic “Grand Rabbis”) began moving their courts from Tel Aviv to Bnei Brak. Within several years, Bnei Brak had turned into the largest ultra-Orthodox Jewish center in the world, and assumed a marked ultra-Orthodox Jewish character. The city’s religious character gives it a special charm. It has no modish fashion shops, yuppie coffee houses, or posh restaurants, but it has an extraordinary simplicity, modesty and uniqueness which culminate in the hustle and bustle as the Jewish Sabbath day approaches, when crowds of Hassidic Jews throng to the synagogues to pray.
Ultra-Orthodox Jews are divided into different Hassidic courts and into different communities, and the city is divided along the same principle. There are neighborhoods specific to particular courts (for example, the Vizhnitser neighborhood) and to particular communities (such as the Ponevezh district, whose residents belong to the Lithuanian stream of non-Hassidic ultra-orthodox Jews). Interspersed among them are a large number of Yeshivas (institutes of learning sacred Jewish texts), Admor courts, Kollels (institutes for advanced students of religious texts), and other religious institutions.