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Reb Arele

Reb Arele

1894 CE1947 CE · Modern · Jerusalem

R. Aharon Roth (1894-1947), known universally as Reb Arele, was a Hungarian-born mystic and the founder of the Toldot Aharon (Shomrei Emunim) movement — the most ascetic, anti-Zionist, and emotionally intense of the postwar Jerusalem Hasidic communities. Unusually for a Hasidic founder, he was not from a rebbe-dynasty; his authority rested entirely on personal charisma, his Shomer Emunim treatise on faith and trust, and his demanding model of avodah she'be'lev — service of the heart through intense, weeping prayer.

He settled in Jerusalem permanently in 1939 just before the Holocaust destroyed his Satoraljaujhely community. His Shomer Emunim, Shulchan HaTahor, and Taharas HaKodesh remain core texts of Mea Shearim ultra-Orthodoxy. His son-in-law R. Avraham Yitzchak Kohn succeeded him as Toldot Aharon Rebbe; the movement remains based at the great beit midrash on Shivtei Yisrael Street in Mea Shearim.

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Stop 1 of 21894–1939Rebbe, Mystic

Sátoraljaújhely (Ihel)אוהעלNortheast Hungary — Ihel Hasidic center

What they did here

Born in Ung (Uzhhorod), Hungary. Led a small but intense following in Satoraljaujhely and Beregszász before WWII.

About Sátoraljaújhely (Ihel)

Sátoraljaújhely (Yiddish Ihel), in northeast Hungary, was the seat of R. Moshe Teitelbaum (Yismach Moshe, 1759-1841) and his descendants — including the early Satmar Teitelbaum dynasty before its move to Satmar (Satu Mare). R. Aharon Roth (Reb Arele) led his early Hasidic following here.

See other sages who lived in Sátoraljaújhely (Ihel)

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