Sassov (Hasidic dynasty)
Hasidic dynasty named after Sasiv (Sasów) in Galicia, now Ukraine; several separate lines use the Sassov title, in Israel, the United States and London
| Sassov | |
|---|---|
| Founded | Sasiv (Sasów, Sasov), eastern Galicia, now Ukraine |
| Founder | Moshe Leib of Sassov (Moshe Yehuda Leib Erblich, c. 1745–1807) |
| Leader | Rebbe |
| Headquarters | Several lines: Kiryat Yismach Moshe (Ganei Tikva, Israel); Monsey, New York; formerly London |
| Type | Hasidic dynasty |
| Notes | |
Sassov (also Sasov or Sassow) is a Hasidic dynasty named after the town of Sasiv (Polish: Sasów) in eastern Galicia, now in Ukraine. Its first Rebbe was Moshe Leib of Sassov (c. 1745–1807).[1][2] The YIVO Encyclopedia says that Moshe Leib "left no Hasidic dynasty".[1] Several separate family lines have nevertheless used the Sassov title: his own Erblich descendants, now in Monsey, New York; a line appointed from the Belz family, whose Teitelbaum descendants lead courts in Israel and Monsey; and a Rubin line in London.[2][3][4]
In the UK the Sassov Beis Hamedrash is a registered charity in north-west London. Its trustees include Benzion Freshwater and Solomon Israel Freshwater.[5]
History
The town
Sasiv was founded in 1615. In 1726 Jacob Sobieski granted the town a privilege. Its Jewish population was 223 in 1764 and 1,906 (58 per cent of the town) in 1880. Jews there made candles and atarot (ornamental collars for prayer shawls), and the town was a world centre for their production. The Jewish population was 1,761 (52.1 per cent) in 1912 and 1,096 (35.4 per cent) in 1921.[6]
About 1,500 Jews lived in Sasiv at the start of the Second World War. German forces arrived on 2 July 1941. On 15 July 1942 an Aktion sent many of them to the Belzec death camp. The remaining 400 were sent to the Zloczow ghetto on 25 November 1942, and the local labour camp was liquidated in July 1943. The Jewish community was not re-established after the war.[6]
Moshe Leib of Sassov
Moshe Leib was born in Brody in about 1745. His teacher was Shmuel Shmelke Horowitz.[1] According to the Encyclopaedia Judaica, he spent 13 years studying Torah and Kabbalah under Shmelke, and was also a pupil of Dov Baer, the Maggid of Mezhirech, and of Elimelech of Lyzhansk.[7] He served in Apt (Opatów) and then settled in Sasov in the 1780s. He was known for his modesty, his love for his fellow Jews and his work to ransom captives, and was later a figure in the stories of I. L. Peretz and S. Y. Agnon. His teachings were published as Likute Ramal (1856) and Ḥidushe ha-Ramal (1921). He died in 1807. He had one son, Yekutiel Shmelke, and two daughters.[1]
The Encyclopaedia Judaica says that after he moved there, the town became a great Hasidic centre. His disciples included Jacob Isaac of Przysucha, Zevi Hirsch of Zhidachov and Menahem Mendel of Kosov. It also lists Torat ha-ReMaL ha-Shalem (1903) among his published novellae. His son Yekutiel Shmelke was seven when his father died; he grew up in the homes of Abraham Chaim of Zloczow, Menahem Mendel of Kosov and Israel of Ruzhin, and returned to Sasov in 1849.[7]
Rebbes and succession
| Line | Rebbe | Base | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Erblich (descendants of the founder) | Moshe Leib Erblich | Sasiv | Founder; died 1807.[1] |
| Yekutiel Shmuel Shmelke Erblich | Sasiv | Son of the founder.[1][2] | |
| Yaakov Tzvi Erblich | Porozovo | Son of Shmelke; known as the Rebbe of Porozovo.[2] | |
| Moshe Yehuda Leib Erblich | Monsey, New York | Son of Yaakov Tzvi, according to Myshtetl. A cantor in Israel, Great Britain and Canada who later settled in Monsey.[2] | |
| Yaakov Tzvi Erblich | Monsey, New York | His son and successor.[2] | |
| Belz appointment and Teitelbaum (Sassov–Keretzky) | Shlomo of Sassov | Sasiv | Grandson of Sholom Rokeach, the Sar Shalom of Belz. His father was the first Rebbe of Olesko (Alesk). Died 1919.[2] |
| Lipa Meir Teitelbaum | Kiryat Yismach Moshe, Ganei Tikva, Israel | Great-grandson of Shlomo; founder of Kiryat Yismach Moshe; the "Sassov"-Keretzky Rebbe. In his first marriage he was a son-in-law of Joel Teitelbaum of Satmar. Died March 1966.[2] | |
| Yosef Dovid Teitelbaum | Kiryat Yismach Moshe | Son of Lipa Meir and Rebbetzin Bluma. Son-in-law of Dovid Moshe of Kretchnif and a disciple of the previous Klausenburger Rebbe; Rabinowicz says he was proclaimed rebbe after his father's funeral in 1966.[2][3][8] | |
| Chanoch Henoch Teitelbaum | Monsey, New York | Brother of Yosef Dovid.[2][3] | |
| Rubin (London) | Chanoch Heinoch Dov Rubin | London (from 1925) | Died 1929.[4] |
| Simcha Rubin | London (Whitechapel; Golders Green from 1942) | 1910–2003.[4][9] |
Myshtetl notes that, as a result, Monsey has two separate Sassov courts.[2] Myshtetl says that Shlomo, "although not from the lineage of the Sassover dynasty of Rebe Moshe Leib", took the title "Rebe of Sasov". The townspeople had asked the Sar Shalom of Belz whom to appoint after Moshe Leib's descendants had become rabbis in other towns.[2]
Rabinowicz mentions other rabbis and rebbes with the Sasov name in passing. He writes that Shlomo Shapira, later rabbi of Munkács, was betrothed to Frimet, a daughter of Yekutiel Shmelke of Sasov, married in Sasov in 1846 and lived there with his in-laws; after the death of Nehemia, the rabbi of Sasov, Shmelke became rabbi of the town and Shlomo served as its dayan.[10][11] He also names Shmelke Rubin of Sasov as the father-in-law of Shragai Yair Rabinowicz of Białobrzegi; Eliezer Rubin, "the Rebbe of Sasov", whose daughter Havah Sarah was the mother of the third Spinka Rebbe, Yaakov Yosef (born 1916); Moshe Yehuda Leib Shapira of Sasov-Stryzov; and Nehemia Shapira (1874–1942) of Sasov, who officiated at a Munkács wedding in 1933.[12][13][14][15] He says Shmuel Shmelke of Sasov was buried at Yagolnice near Czortkov, and that the Munkács rebbe Boruch Rabinowicz owned a Torah scroll of Moshe Leib of Sasov (1745–1807).[16][17]
Factions
Israel
Tzvi Rabinowicz calls the founder of Kiryat Yismach Moshe Hananya Yom Tov Lipa Teitelbaum; Myshtetl calls him Lipa Meir Teitelbaum (see the table above).[18][2] According to Rabinowicz he was born on Yom Kippur 1905 and studied under Avraham Menahem Steinberg of Brody. On 12 Elul 1924, in Orshova, he married Hayyah Rosa, daughter of Yoel Teitelbaum. He later headed the rabbinical court of Satmar and became rabbi of Samiah, where he also ran the yeshiva. During the war he escaped to Romania, disguised as a beggar and sometimes as a soldier. From 1944 to 1947 he lived in Jerusalem, where he founded the Yitav Lev yeshiva, and he set up the Or HaHayyim girls' school in Bnei Brak. In 1948 he settled in New York, where he started a Sasov beit midrash.[18]
After his wife died in 1954 he married Bluma, daughter of the principal of the Satmar yeshiva, in Israel. In Adar 1963 he laid the foundation of a new kirya of 260 dunams, which Rabinowicz places in Ganei Tikva and Kiryat Ono, near Ramat Gan.[18] Rabinowicz writes that his father-in-law believed a Jewish state was an "abomination" and Zionism an evil creed, but that Teitelbaum disagreed with this ideology and "sought the support of David Ben Gurion and the Mizrachi leader Shlomo Zalman Shragai for his new project" (David Ben-Gurion, Shlomo Zalman Shragai). He urged his followers in the United States to make their homes at Yismah Moshe. In the summer of 1963 he fell seriously ill and spent the next eighteen months in hospital. He died on 12 Adar 1966 and was buried in Tiberias, leaving a daughter and four young sons, the eldest of whom, Yosef David, was born in 1954.[19]
Rabinowicz writes that after the funeral the eldest son, Yosef David, was proclaimed rebbe, as "the Yanuka of Sasov". He studied at the yeshiva of the Klausenburger Rebbe and under Rabbi Wozner of Bnei Brak, and married a daughter of David Moshe Rosenbaum of Kretchnif.[19][8] After Lipa's death the kirya faced severe financial problems. In August 1972 his widow sold 200 dunams to the Africa-Israel Investment Company, which built a garden suburb, Givat Savyon, with 1,300 homes, shops and public services, and gave priority to religious buyers. At the time of the sale the kirya had no Hasidic yeshiva, because the existing one had been "lent" to a Lithuanian group. Rabinowicz says that by 2000 it had four houses of worship, two kindergartens and a Bet Yaakov school, and that Yoel Teitelbaum had advised the family not to leave Israel during the Six-Day War but otherwise showed no interest in the kirya.[8]
In January 2025 the Queens Jewish Link reported on a visit to Queens, New York, by Yosef Dovid Teitelbaum, the Sasover Rebbe of Kiryat Yismach Moshe. Rabbi Simantov Yanetz hosted the visit in Briarwood on 27 January. According to the report, the Rebbe's eldest son leads a Sassov kehillah (congregation) in Borough Park, Brooklyn, and his other sons lead communities in Betar (Beitar Illit), Bnei Brak and Jerusalem.[3]
Beitar Illit is an Israeli settlement in the occupied West Bank. In 2024 the International Court of Justice (ICJ) found that Israel's settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem "have been established and are being maintained in violation of international law".[20]
UK
Chanoch Heinoch Dov Rubin, according to the historian Jeffrey Maynard the first Hasidic Rebbe to live in London between the wars, came to London in 1925. He set up a beis midrash (house of study and prayer) at 14 Fordham Street in the East End. He died in Westcliff in 1929, aged 40. Rabbi Shulman and the rebbes of Premishlan and Biala gave eulogies, and the Chief Rabbi, Joseph Hertz, attended the funeral.[4]
His son Simcha Rubin, born in Sassov in 1910, succeeded him. In 1930 he married Chava, daughter of Rabbi Dov Heschel of Lvov; 1,000 guests attended the wedding at the Portman Rooms. Matzav.com describes it as the first Hasidic dynastic marriage in England. In 1942 he set up the Sassover Beis Medrash on Helenslea Avenue, Golders Green. From 1957 the building was also home to Yeshivas Chayei Olam. During the war he helped refugees and orphans, and he later supervised kashrut in old people's homes. His second wife was Minna Weber. He died in 2003.[4][9]
Finances and charities
Sassov Beis Hamedrash
Sassov Beis Hamedrash is a charitable company (company 04978521), incorporated on 27 November 2003 and registered as charity 1102303 on 25 February 2004.[5][21] Its registered office is at New Burlington House, 1075 Finchley Road, London NW11 0PU, and its contact email is at Cohen Arnold. It operates throughout London, owns or leases land, and had one employee and seven trustees in 2024–25.[5]
Its objects are:[5]
- to advance the Orthodox Jewish religion and education;
- "to maintain and develop the synagogue known as Sassov Beis Hamerdrash" (sic);
- to relieve poverty among Jewish people throughout the world.
The register does not give the synagogue's address.[5]
| Year | Income | Spending |
|---|---|---|
| 2021 | £176.09k | £165.36k |
| 2022 | £228.55k | £210.31k |
| 2023 | £405.04k | £236.26k |
| 2024 | £257.97k | £253.15k |
| 2025 | £741,762 | £275,281 |
In 2024–25, £659,800 of its income came from donations and £81,970 from investments. It spent £26,750 on raising funds and £248,530 on charitable activities.[5]
| Trustee | Appointed | Trustee of other charities |
|---|---|---|
| Benzion Schalom Eliezer Freshwater | – | Parsha Ltd; Beth Jacob Grammar School for Girls; Mayfair Charities Limited; The Raphael Freshwater Memorial Association; Service to the Aged; Regent Charities; The Union of Orthodox Hebrew Congregations |
| Solomon Israel Freshwater | – | Zichron Chaim; Service to the Aged; Mayfair Charities; The Raphael Freshwater Memorial Association; TOL Charity |
| Graham Shurek Morris | – | The Morris Charitable Trust; Schreiber Charitable Trust; Friends of Nahalat Moshe; Investream Charitable Trust; TMAVA CIO |
| Luzer Rokach | 24 September 2012 | The Grove Manor Charitable Trust; Helenslea Tzedoko Ltd |
| Moshe Broner | 6 June 2012 | Friends of Ohel Yizchak Umiriam; Rabbi Shohel Cohen Memorial Fund; Toled Foundation; Shellix Co Ltd |
| Robert Vorhand | 7 May 2025 | Beth Jacob Foundation; North West London Chevra Kadisha |
| Israel Rubin | 7 May 2025 | None on record |
Source: Charity Commission register.[5]
See also
- Sassov Beis Hamedrash
- Belz (Hasidic dynasty)
- Satmar (Hasidic dynasty)
- Bobov (Hasidic dynasty)
- Daejan
- Freshwater group
- Hasidic dynasties
External links
- Charity Commission: Sassov Beis Hamedrash (1102303)
- Companies House: Sassov Beis Hamedrash (04978521)
Notes
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 Gad Sagiv, Mosheh Leib of Sasov YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe, accessed 26 October 2026.
- ↑ 2.00 2.01 2.02 2.03 2.04 2.05 2.06 2.07 2.08 2.09 2.10 2.11 2.12 My Shtetl, Jewish Sasiv myshtetl.org, accessed 26 October 2026.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 Shabsie Saphirstein, Sasov Rebbe From Israel Visits Queens Queens Jewish Link, 29 January 2025, accessed 26 October 2026.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 Jeffrey Maynard, What was the Sassover Rebbe reading? A signed volume containing three books bound together, and an interesting Berlin subscription list Jewish Miscellanies, 13 July 2021, accessed 26 October 2026.
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 5.6 Charity Commission for England and Wales, Sassov Beis Hamedrash, charity 1102303: full print register-of-charities.charitycommission.gov.uk, accessed 26 October 2026.
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 Encyclopaedia Judaica, Sasov Jewish Virtual Library, accessed 26 October 2026.
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 Yitzchak Raphael, Moses Leib of Sasov Encyclopaedia Judaica (Encyclopedia.com), accessed 27 October 2026.
- ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 Tzvi Rabinowicz, Hasidism in Israel: A History of the Hasidic Movement, Northvale, N.J.: Jason Aronson, 2000, p. 249.
- ↑ 9.0 9.1 Matzav.com, Today's Yahrtzeits & History – 11 Sivan Matzav.com, accessed 26 October 2026.
- ↑ Tzvi Rabinowicz, Hasidism in Israel: A History of the Hasidic Movement, Northvale, N.J.: Jason Aronson, 2000, p. 254.
- ↑ Tzvi Rabinowicz, Hasidism in Israel: A History of the Hasidic Movement, Northvale, N.J.: Jason Aronson, 2000, p. 255.
- ↑ Tzvi Rabinowicz, Hasidism in Israel: A History of the Hasidic Movement, Northvale, N.J.: Jason Aronson, 2000, p. 258.
- ↑ Tzvi Rabinowicz, Hasidism in Israel: A History of the Hasidic Movement, Northvale, N.J.: Jason Aronson, 2000, p. 211.
- ↑ Tzvi Rabinowicz, Hasidism in Israel: A History of the Hasidic Movement, Northvale, N.J.: Jason Aronson, 2000, p. 272.
- ↑ Tzvi Rabinowicz, Hasidism in Israel: A History of the Hasidic Movement, Northvale, N.J.: Jason Aronson, 2000, p. 282.
- ↑ Tzvi Rabinowicz, Hasidism in Israel: A History of the Hasidic Movement, Northvale, N.J.: Jason Aronson, 2000, p. 285.
- ↑ Tzvi Rabinowicz, Hasidism in Israel: A History of the Hasidic Movement, Northvale, N.J.: Jason Aronson, 2000, p. 288.
- ↑ 18.0 18.1 18.2 Tzvi Rabinowicz, Hasidism in Israel: A History of the Hasidic Movement, Northvale, N.J.: Jason Aronson, 2000, p. 247.
- ↑ 19.0 19.1 Tzvi Rabinowicz, Hasidism in Israel: A History of the Hasidic Movement, Northvale, N.J.: Jason Aronson, 2000, p. 248.
- ↑ International Court of Justice, Summary of the Advisory Opinion of 19 July 2024 icj-cij.org, 19 July 2024, accessed 26 October 2026.
- ↑ Companies House, Sassov Beis Hamedrash, company 04978521 find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk, accessed 26 October 2026.