The oldest Hasidic rebbe, Avraham Joshua Heschel Twersky of Machnowka, died Friday on the evening of Yom Kippur, in Bnei Brak. He was 93 years old.
The aged rebbe, one of the heads of the Council of Torah Sages and of the ultra-Orthodox Agudat Israel Party, was a practising Hasidic rebbe in the Soviet Union before coming to Israel in 1966.
Twersky had survived a 10-year sentence in a Soviet Labor camp, some three-and-a-half of those years in Siberia.
Rebbe of the Hasidim in the town of Machnowka from the age of 22, Twersky was renowned for his learning. He was punished by the Soviet authorities apparently for refusing to be appointed Chief Rabbi of Russia, with the title of “Patriarch.”
Upon his release from imprisonment, Twersky continued to practise openly as rebbe in Moscow until he received permission to make aliya.
He managed to smuggle out a family treasure, a Torah scroll that had reputedly belonged to the Baal Shem Tov, the 18th-century founder of Hasidism. The rebbe was buried on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem at midnight Saturday after the end of the Yom Kippur fast.
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