The Elie Wiesel Living Archive

at The 92nd Street Y, New York. Supported by The Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity

In Hasidism: Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel of Apta

Loving Israel, Healing Division, Protesting in this World and the Next

Oct 20, 1983

Known as the lover of Israel, the Apter Rebbe was “the supreme arbiter of ideological controversies.” Indeed, he was able, at the great wedding at Ostilla, to heal the divide that threatened to split the Hasidic movement. Disciple of Reb Elimelech of Lizensk, the Apter Rebbe championed love for all Jews only after being chastised by a woman for revealing certain things about her which even God had concealed. When traveling, he preferred to be the guest of the sinner rather than the righteous; he was always being arrested; he too conducted a trial of God, a phenomenon that has always fascinated EW. At the end of his life, the Apter Rebbe promised that in the next world he would protest until the Messiah was sent. Did he keep his promise? Have we survivors “kept the pledge given to the dead who vanished into the dark recesses of history?”

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1) Apter Rebbe as exemplar of ahavat Yisrael
2) His Message of Love and Compassion amid a World at War
3) Contrasting Rabbinical Responses to Napoleon’s Laws of Emancipation
4) Great Hasidic Controversy in Pshiskhe
5) Abraham Heschel’s awareness of his own impending death
6) Humor of Professor Wiesel
7) Din and Rakhamim – Justice and Mercy
8) Biography of the Apter Rebbe
9) Master and Disciple: Rebbe of Lizhensk and the Apter Rebbe
10) Many Stories and Exaggerations Related by the Apter Rebbe
11) Martyrdom in Jaffa
12) Napoleonic Wars and the Jews
13) Arguing with God
14) Repentance
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