Hillel Lichtenstein

Who was Hillel Lichtenstein?

Rabbi Hillel Lichtenstein was a Hungarian rabbi; born at Veča 1814; died at Kolomyia, Galicia, May 18, 1891. After studying at the Yeshiva of the Chassam Sofer, he married in 1837 the daughter of a well-to-do resident of Galanta, where he remained until 1850, when he was elected rabbi of Margarethen. In 1854 he was elected rabbi of Klausenburg, but the opposition of the district rabbi, Avrohom Friedman, made it impossible for him to enter upon the duties of the office; finally he was expelled from Klausenburg by the authorities. Having lived for some time at Nagyvárad, he was recalled to Margarethen, where he remained until about 1865, when he was called to Szikszó. Thence he went, in 1867, to Kolomyia, where he remained until his death. Rabbi Lichtenstein was the outspoken leader of the Haredim in Hungary: he not only resisted the slightest deviation from the traditional ritual, as the removal of the Almemar from the center of the synagogue, but even vigorously denounced the adoption of non-Jewish social manners and dress and the acquisition of secular education. He bitterly opposed the Hungarian Jewish congress of 1868-69 and the establishment of the Neolog rabbinical seminary in Budapest. In 1865 he called a rabbinical convention at Michalovce, which protested against the founding of the Neolog seminary and sent a committee to the emperor to induce the government to prohibit its establishment. In his religious practise he surpassed the rigorism of the most Orthodox Hungarian rabbis, even going so far as to keep a she ass in order to be able to fulfil the law of the redemption of the first-born of the ass. He kept a sheep also in order to be able to give the first fleece to a Kohen, from whom subsequently he bought it back to make tzitzit from it. Rabbi Lichtenstein was an ardent admirer of the Hasidim and made pilgrimages to the famous Rebbe of Sanz, the Divrei Chaim. He offered his own intercession through prayer to people in distress, but declined any gifts.