Zundel Salant
Yosef Zundel of Salant was an Ashkenazi rabbi and the primary teacher of Rabbi Yisrael Salanter.
Biography
Early life and family
Zundel was born on the first day of Rosh Hashana in 1786 in Salantai, Lithuania. He descended from Rabbi Faivush Ashkenazi of Vilna and his father was Rabbi Benyamin Beinush, who was a shochet and hazzan in Salant.As a young man, Zundel studied in the Volozhin Yeshiva under Rabbi Chaim Volozhin. Following Volozhin's death in 1821, Zundel made trips to study with Rabbi Akiva Eiger.
He and his wife, Rochel Rivkah, had two daughters, Tziviah and Heniah, and a son, Aryeh Leib. Zundel did not accept any rabbinical positions and ran a small business which produced only a meager living.
Later life and impact
Zundel's student, Rabbi Yisrael Salanter, was the founder of the Musar movement.In the late 1830s, Zundel settled in Jerusalem, where, at the urging of Rabbi Lehren, he served as the rabbi of the Ashkenazi community. For centuries, all disputes in Halakha disputes and queries in Jerusalem were brought to the Sephardi Beth din. Due to the recent growth of the Ashkenazi community, Lehren wanted Ashkenazim to have their own court. Zundel opened the court, as a temporary court.
In 1841, he appointed his son-in-law Rabbi Shmuel Salant to the court and soon made him the head of it, a position that he held for almost seventy years until his death in 1909.
Zundel lived in a small one-room apartment and sustained himself and his family by selling vinegar but spent most of the day and night in the Menachem Zion Synagogue, which was completed in 1837.