Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By richards on November 19, 2014

Synagogue Terror Victim's Grandfathers Were Rav and Rebbe

courtesy of Yitz Twersky

Rav and Rebbe: Rav Joseph Soloveichik, center in top hat, meets with leaders of the Talner Hasidic sect at the marriage of Moshe Twerskys parents in Boston. Isidore Twersky, Moshes father, stands at the left.

Published November 18, 2014.

Rabbi Moshe Twersky, murdered in a bloody Jerusalem terror attack on November 18, bore the last name of one of the most illustrious families in Hasidic Europe. But he also was the truest disciple of his grandfather, Rabbi Joseph Ber Soloveitchik, the founder of Modern Orthodoxy, Twerskys brother-in-law told the Forward.

Twersky, the scion of two famed Ashkenazic rabbinic dynasties, was slain in a West Jerusalem synagogue during morning prayers.

Friends mourned Twerskys loss, and the loss of the connection Twersky represented to Soloveitchik, known in Modern Orthodox circles as the Rav. Moshe was the apple of the Ravs eye, said Rabbi Menachem Genack, CEO of the Orthodox Unions Kosher Division and a lifelong friend of Twerskys. I would have to say the most special relationship the Rav had, in terms of this sense of continuity was with Moshe as he was growing up.

Twersky, 59, was buried in Jerusalem soon after his death. His killers used guns, knives, and an ax in their assault. Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority, condemned the killing of worshippers in West Jerusalem while at the same time demanding an end to invasions of Al-Aqsa Mosque, a reference to recent efforts by right-wing Israeli Jews to challenge Muslim control over the Temple Mount area holy to Jews and Muslims.

Twersky, said his brother-in-law, Rabbi Jonathan Rosenblatt, of the Riverdale Jewish Center in the Bronx, was the gentlest, most affable, most loving and tolerant person you would ever meet. Its just such a terrible contrast between such sublime gentleness and such horrible brutality.

Twersky had a gold-plated Orthodox pedigree, the product of an unusual union between the Hasidic Twersky dynasty and the Lithuanian Soloveitchik dynasty. His parents marriage, which united the two lines, was analogous, perhaps, to a theoretical union of a Bush and a Clinton.

See original here:

How Moshe Twersky's Family Tree Melds Hasidic and Modern Orthodox Worlds

Category: Hasidic
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