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A Disciple of the Maggid Becomes Berditchev's Rabbi

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A Disciple of the Maggid Becomes Berditchev's Rabbi

This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.

Levi Yitzchok of Berditchev trained as a disciple of Dov Ber, the Maggid of Mezeritch, a documented line of transmission distinct from an independently formed teaching, before going on to serve as rabbi of Berditchev, in Ukraine, from 1785 until his death. That appointment, held for the remainder of his life rather than for a fixed term, is documented as the specific office through which the town of Berditchev itself came to hold a lasting place in Hasidic memory, its name now inseparable from the rebbe who led it.

His origin lay further west, in Hoszcza, in Volhynia, a documented starting point distinct from Berditchev itself, the town whose name he is now remembered by. The move from disciple under the Maggid of Mezeritch to a settled, decades-long rabbinate in one town is documented as the specific career arc that gave Levi Yitzchok the standing from which his later reputation, built less on legal rulings than on a distinctive spiritual temperament, was able to reach the rest of Hasidism.

That a disciple trained under one of early Hasidism's central teaching figures went on to hold a single rabbinate for over two decades, in a town that took his name into its own lasting identity rather than the reverse, marks Levi Yitzchok's Berditchev rabbinate as a documented case where an office held in one place became inseparable from the man who held it.

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Article On

Source Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2nd editionMichael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik (eds.)
Sources
Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2nd edition
Michael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik (eds.), Macmillan Reference USA, 2007View the Source
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