Rabbi Chaim Ozer Grodzenski Reported Elected Chief Rabbi of Warsaw

The Yiddish daily “Najer Hajnt” carries a report to-day that the Executive of the Warsaw Jewish Community, which has an Agudist majority, has invited Rabbi Chaim Ozer Grodzenski, of Vilna, known as the Gaon of Vilna, to accept the office of Chief Rabbi of Warsaw.

Rabbi Grodzenski, who was elected last week by the Conference of Polish Rabbis as Honorary President of the Federation of Polish Rabbis, is regarded as one of the great scholars in Israel, and the Agudists in Vilna have looked up to him for years as the virtual Chief Rabbi of Vilna. The Vilna Jewish Community, however, against the Agudist claims, elected in 1929 ex-Senator Rabbi Rubinstein, one of the Mizrachist leaders, as Chief Rabbi of Vilna, and since the Agudists obtainedtheir majority in the Warsaw Jewish Community they have made efforts to induce Rabbi Grodzenski to accept the post in Warsaw.

When Rabbi Rubinstein was elected, Chief Rabbi of Vilna, the Agudists in Vilna appealed to the Government, contending that Vilna has no need of an official Chief Rabbi and that the Jews of Vilna regard Chaim Ozer Grodzenski, the head of the Vilna Beth Din, as being in effect the Chief Rabbi of the town. The Ministry of Education and Public Worship nevertheless overruled the objection and issued a decree confirming the election of Rabbi Rubinstein to the Chief Rabbinate. When the matter came up before the Board of the Vilna Jewish Community in March 1929 for ratification, seventeen members voted in favour and five members of the Agudath Israel voted against, and three other members abstained. For a time it was understood that the Agudist members of the Vilna Jewish Community intended to secede from the Community as a protest, and to form a separatist Community. The Vilna Rabbinate at the time also lodged a protest with the Jewish Community of Vilna against its action in ratifying Rabbi Rubinstein’s election to the Chief Rabbinate.

Before Senator Rubinstein’s election there was no Chief Rabbi in Vilna since the time of Rabbi Samuel, (1777) the last officially recognised head of the Beth Din. From Rabbi Samuel’s time the title “Rosh Beth Din” was discarded, no Rabbi subsequently elected being authorised to assume that title.

Rabbi Dr. Pinchas Cohn, the President of the Agudath Israel World Organisation, speaking at the time of the situation created in Vilna by the Government’s ratification of Rabbi Rubinstein’s election as Chief Rabbi of Vilna, said: The position can be properly understood only by bearing in mind the place occupied by Rabbi Rubinstein as Rabbi in Vilna as against the great authority exercised by the Gaon Rabbi Chaim Ozer Grodzenski. When Vilna was part of the Czarist Empire, the Russian Government required that in every town a person should be appointed who had a thorough knowledge of the Russian language, for the purpose of keeping the registers of the Jewish Community. These people bore the title of Rabbi only to the outside world. To the Jewish population, the Government Rabbi was a matter of complete indifference. Rabbi Rubinstein held the post of Government Rabbi in Vilna, but Rabbi Grodzenski was the sole religious authority, not only to Vilna, but to half the Jewish world.

There is no official Chief Rabbi in Warsaw, but Rabbi Professor Schorr, the preacher of the Warsaw Great Synagogue, which is a “German” or “modernised” congregation, is regarded in many quarters as Chief Rabbi, as was his predecessor, Rabbi Professor Samuel Roznanski.