Away from the Rabbinate

To understand the magnitude of this discovery, one must first know the figure whose presence still reverberates in these streets. Rav Moshe Schreiber, later known as the Chasam Sofer, was born in Frankfurt in 1762. His birth itself was marked with awe: The community of Frankfurt, according to legend, delayed their Kabbalas Shabbos prayers until word arrived that Rebbetzin Reizel had given birth to a son.

From his earliest years, it was clear he was destined for greatness. When he was just nine years old, he began studying under Rav Nosson Adler, the saintly kabbalist, and then under Rav Pinchas Halevi Horowitz, the Baal Hafla’ah. By the time he reached adulthood, he was already recognized as a prodigious scholar.

He had his first rabbinic appointment when he was just 20 years old, in the town of Boskovice, Moravia, a historical region in the eastern Czech Republic that dissolved with the communist coup in 1948, but on the advice of Rav Nosson Adler, he soon moved to nearby Prostejov (Prossnitz), as he preferred to dedicate his life to learning and teaching Torah, not communal politics. He taught students in the yeshivah in the town, and several years later, in 1787, he married Sarah, the daughter of Rav Moshe Yarowitz, the city’s rav.

His marriage was arranged on the condition that he would not seek a rabbinic post, and instead was supported by his wealthy brother-in-law, Rav Hirsch Yarowitz, who undertook to maintain the couple at his expense. This arrangement worked for several years, even though Reb Hirsch hit financial troubles soon after the wedding. He did his best to hide his monetary woes from his brother-in-law, who spent his days in the beis medrash, but one Friday night he learned that his righteous wife had been forced to pawn her Shabbos scarf in order to buy wine for Kiddush.

Faced with the need to support his family, and not wanting to take a rabbinic position, he tried — unsuccessfully — to learn tailoring. Clearly, Heaven had other plans.

In 1794, the centuries-old Jewish community of Dreznitz invited him to serve as their rav. Although he initially resisted, the call of Providence was undeniable, especially after receiving government permission to settle there. The Jews of the town were so overjoyed at his arrival that they unhitched the horses from his carriage and pulled it themselves, unwilling to let him step down. Against his will, he was lifted onto their shoulders, literally and figuratively.

Thus began the rabbinic career of the Chasam Sofer, whose influence would spread far beyond Moravia. Three years later, in 1797, he became rav of Mattersdorf, one of the Oberland “Sheva Kehillos,” and while he declined many additional offers for the rabbinate, in 1806, he accepted a call to Pressburg (today Bratislava, capital of Slovakia), where he established the yeshivah that became the foremost Torah institution of 19th-century Europe. His responsa addressed questions from across the Jewish world, and his rulings still shape halachic discourse today.

Yet for all his global stature, the years in Dreznitz were foundational. Here he wrote responsa, sermons, and even poetry. Here he battled poverty, shaped students, and set the path of leadership that would define his life. And here he confronted a communal dilemma that, two centuries later, would serve as a paper trail back to his very doorstep.

Follow the Map

The responsum in question, written in 1801, deals with the town’s eiruv. Rav Moshe Katz, who succeeded the Chasam Sofer as rav of Dreznitz, had, on his first Shabbos in the town, noticed that Jews carried freely on Shabbos within the Jewish quarter, yet no visible eiruv structure seemed to exist. Alarmed, he wrote to his predecessor, asking why he had allowed such a practice.

Rav Katz knew that the town was surrounded by a wall, with a river on the fourth side. He didn’t consider the river a sufficient partition for an eiruv, as it can freeze in winter and dry up in the summer.

The Chasam Sofer’s reply was characteristically nuanced. He explained that although he, too, had concerns, great rabbanim before him, including the renowned Shach (Rav Shabsai HaKohein), who served for a time as rav of the town a hundred years earlier,  in 1656, had permitted carrying there without a secondary eiruv. If previous rabbanim permitted carrying, he wrote, then the matter is permitted. Anyone who forbade it, he wrote, “casts aspersions on the earlier authorities.”

He did keep his own particular stringency, though; on Shabbos he would take his siddur in hand and walk out the back door of his house, which led to a path just a few meters from the shul — and which he felt, because of where certain eiruv-friendly beams and pillars were situated, was halachically preferable.

In his letter to the new rav, he explains how, if the rav walks a particular route, he will be able to understand what the leniency to carry on Shabbos is built upon — and in the letter, this route is detailed with astonishing precision: He wrote how the alley behind the rav’s house curved like a bow, “passing the winery, the widow Yocheved’s house, the home of David Chaim, until finally reaching the synagogue, nestled at the bend of the street.”

The Chasam Sofer continues, in halachic terminology, to write how, “It would be proper to make a tzuras hapesach on one side and a lechi at the other end, but I am very concerned about innovating publicly in this issue because of the precedent of past rabbanim….”

He goes on to explain to Rav Katz that with a bit of effort, one can find that indeed, on the two sides of the discussed courtyard there are stone protrusions that can be regarded halachically as a “lechi,” mentioning the plaster protruding from the wall of his own house, “if it has not yet deteriorated.”
For generations, students of his responsa read the passage for its halachic reasoning, often glossing over these descriptions as extraneous details. It would take more than 200 years for someone finally realize they were, in fact, a hidden map to a lost Jewish world.

Back to the Neighborhood

Fast-forward to the 21st century, to November 2022, almost three years ago. In Brooklyn, Rav Menachem Meir Yakobovitz, a Satmar chassid and expert on the writings of the Chasam Sofer, was lingering over the Dreznitz eiruv teshuvah from Orach Chaim 89. For most readers, the technical back-and-forth about eiruvin is surely daunting. But Rav Yakobovitz noticed something others overlooked: the sheer amount of geographical description. The responsum didn’t just cite halachic precedent; it painted a picture of a real neighborhood with real people and physical landmarks.

Could it be, he wondered, that something of that neighborhood still remained?

Skeptical but intrigued, Rav Yakobovitz began to investigate. He obtained old municipal maps from the Czech archives and compared them against the text of the teshuvah. He even located tax registers listing Jewish residents from the late 18th century, matching names to houses, including the liquor seller and the widow Yocheved. The pieces began to fall into place.

Yet he doubted that much had survived. Strážnice/Dreznitz had endured two world wars, Nazi occupation, the Holocaust, and decades of communist rule. The Jewish community was gone. What could possibly be left after 230 years?

Rav Yakobovitz tried one last resource. He turned to Google Maps, and zooming in on a satellite photo of Strážnice, he froze. There, at the corner of a street, stood a protruding pillar. The same feature the Chasam Sofer had mentioned more than two centuries earlier.

A few days later, Rav Yakobovitz was on a flight to Eastern Europe. Armed with archival maps, family records, and a photocopy of the teshuvah, he traveled to the town once known as Dreznitz. When he arrived, he walked the streets with growing amazement. The bow-shaped alley still curved behind the rav’s house. The remains of the synagogue stood in the center. And yes — the plaster on the house’s wall still clung to the stone, “if it has not yet deteriorated,” just as the Chasam Sofer himself had written.

Save the House

His excitement, however, quickly turned to alarm. The Chasam Sofer’s house — where he had written teshuvos, davened, learned, and led a kehillah for three years — was still standing, but it was in danger of being demolished. For decades, the house had been inhabited by an elderly Czech man, and after his death, the property passed to his heirs, who were now preparing to sell it to a developer. The plan was to demolish the old house and build a modern apartment block on the lot.

But, Rav Yakobovitz realized, this was no ordinary dilapidated shack. These were the rooms where the Chasam Sofer famously had fought off sleep to learn Torah standing up, where he had written halachic rulings that still guide Jewish life until this day, where he had even composed poems of devotion. To lose it would be to erase a sacred link in Jewish history.

“I decided to knock on the door,” Rav Yakobovitz tells Mishpacha, “but there was no answer. A neighbor who noticed me passed by and pointed to a sign with an email address, explaining with hand movements and a bit of broken English that the house had belonged to an elderly Czech bachelor who had lived there since the Holocaust. He had died during the Covid pandemic at nearly 100 years old. His three nephews, who had inherited the house, wanted to maximize their profits, and a local developer was already preparing blueprints for a three-story building. The wrecking crews could come at any time. It turned out I had arrived at the very last moment. The heirs were finalizing a deal to sell the house for demolition.”

Rav Yakobovitz was horrified. “I felt Hashem had sent me exactly then,” he says. “His nephews became entangled with some tax matters that had just been sorted out. Otherwise, the house would have been demolished four years ago. And here I was, just at the right time. Had I come even one week later, the house would have been gone. For decades, this man had unknowingly guarded the house of the Chasam Sofer. He had no connection to its holiness, yet somehow, everything delayed until I arrived.”

It was clear to him that he had to act — and fast. It was the end of the week, but instead of returning to New York, he flew to Antwerp to seek the counsel and support of Rav Leibush of Pshevorsk, who is active in holy sites preservation in Europe and with whom he had a connection.

“I had no Shabbos clothes with me,” he relates. “I borrowed a shtreimel from one person and a beketshe from another. That Shabbos, when I told the Rebbe what I’d found, he was visibly shaken. He said: ‘The holiness in that house is beyond what a human can grasp. Even angels cannot fathom it. Everything must be done to redeem it.’ ”

From that Shabbos in Antwerp, Rav Yakobovitz launched a frantic campaign. He returned to America aflame, armed with urgency and a story that few could resist. Donors heard him speak of the plaster “that had not deteriorated,” of the back door that still stood, of the stones and pillars that matched the teshuvah word for word. They understood that this wasn’t about archaeology or architecture, but about Torah being preserved in the brick and lime of a house still standing against all odds.

Still, the task was formidable. Property values had climbed in Moravian towns as developers sought to capitalize on tourism and EU investment. The heirs, of course, wanted market value or more. Even sympathetic philanthropists hesitated — why pour resources into a crumbling ruin, when so many pressing Jewish needs beckoned?

The answer was simple and overwhelming: because this was not a ruin. This was a makom Torah. To let it fall would be to sever a living nerve in the Jewish body.

Yet time was running against him. At any moment the sale could close.

Rav Yakobovitz describes the weeks as a blur of phone calls, flights, and meetings. “I would fall asleep with names of donors in my head and wake up with the Rashi letters of the teshuvah floating before my eyes,” he says. “Every word of that teshuvah became a companion. Every line reminded me what was at stake.”

Still, there were setbacks. A major pledge evaporated overnight when a lucrative business deal soured. A European backer, inspired at first, got cold feet when the numbers were tallied. But each time one door closed, another cracked open.

“So many people I spoke with promised something,” he says, “but I was still far from the sum needed to redeem the house.”

And then — in what he still calls a “neis nigleh” — the missing sum appeared, through a single benefactor who prefers to remain anonymous. Rav Yakobovitz prefers not to publicize the details. All he says is, “HaKadosh Baruch Hu wanted this house to survive.”

The sale was closed. The deed was transferred. The house of the Chasam Sofer was spared.

[Rav Yakobovitz has a practical message for readers: “Please wait,” he says. “The site is not yet prepared for visitors. There’s no infrastructure, no water, no facilities, and neighbors and officials must be brought along slowly. With siyata d’Shmaya, it will open formally in the near future. Until then, restraint is part of the preservation mission.”]

Waiting for a Minyan

Three years later, I’m walking together with Rav Shabsi Shmuel Weiss, rav of the Verboi kehillah in Bnei Brak and  founder  of the “Shem Olam” institute for education and manuscript publication, and a group of North American and Israeli askanim (some of whom are Chasam Sofer descendants), through the streets of Strážnice. We’re also joined by prominent members of the Herzog family from all over the world, who for generations have been traveling back to the entire Oberland region to ensure the care of ancient graves and holy sites. The air is crisp, the sidewalks narrow. We stop before the building labeled “Židovská Synagoga” — the old Jewish synagogue, now curated as a modest municipal museum.

In his teshuvah, the Chasam Sofer himself had called it “the holy synagogue” — five times in one letter. Rav Yakobovitz ventures that perhaps it’s because this was the shul where the Shach once davened, the sanctity of his tefillos saturating its walls.

Inside, the municipality has arranged displays: paintings, ritual objects, with explanatory texts in Czech and English. But our group hardly notices. We gravitate toward the aron kodesh.

“This was his place,” Rav Shabsi Weiss says, pointing to the ledger that records seating assignments. “The Chasam Sofer’s seat was here, on the right side.”

Silence falls. No one photographs. Each man steps closer, then back. It is not a museum, but a shul, waiting for a minyan.

Someone begins softly: “V’ha’arev na, Hashem Elokeinu, es divrei Sorascha b’finu….” One voice becomes two, then 20. Soon the room is filled with song, the same plea that might have risen here two centuries ago: “V’nihyeh anachnu v’tze’etza’einu… kulanu yod’ei Shemecha v’lomdei Sorasecha lishmah.” It’s as if “the holy synagogue” comes to life again, if just for a few moments, in its original cadence.

As we step outside the shul, we’re standing in what was once the Jewish quarter. In the 18th century, Dreznitz’s kehillah was robust, numbering several hundred families. Its cemetery has over a thousand matzeivos, many of them inscribed with poetic blessings.

While we’re washing our hands after leaving the cemetery, Rav Weiss remembers a quote from the Chasam Sofer’s teshuvos, (Yoreh Dei’ah 244) in which he writes beautiful words in praise of the community of Dreznitz, how they are all “G-d-fearing and perfect, who love the Torah and its learners.”

“For these people about whom the Chasam Sofer testifies thus,” he tells me, “it’s worthwhile to pray at their graves.”

Here were men and women who upheld a kehillah kedoshah in difficult times, sustaining Torah under Habsburg decrees and economic pressure. Here they learned Torah, davened, married, and raised families. And here they honored a young rav from Frankfurt who would one day illuminate all of Europe.

Now their stones lean in silence, names half eroded. But the Chasam Sofer’s words keep their voices alive.

Out the Back

And then, at last, we enter the Chasam Sofer’s house.

From the street it looks like a ruin — plaster crumbling, shutters dangling. But when the key turns and the door swings open, our breath catches.

Here is the schlafshtub, the bedroom where the Chasam Sofer refused to lie down for years, preferring to learn standing, forcing himself awake with cold water. And when he felt that he needed to sleep, he supported his forehead on a key, and when the key fell, he’d wake up. For all the years in Dreznitz and Mattersdorf, his grandson recorded in Chut HaMeshulash, he didn’t lie in a bed.

Here is the seforim shtub, where shelves once groaned with manuscripts and seforim. And here is the writing room, where responsa flowed from his pen and where, in his younger years, he even composed poetry. Few today know of the book Shiras Moshe, but its intricate Hebrew verses — gematria-laced, acrostic, ablaze with deveikus — were written here. One is dated “Dreznitz, Sunday, 7 Av 5557.”

Here, too, was his small yeshivah, entered through a side door. Admission was not only based on talent and brilliance, but mostly by ratzon, a fiery desire to learn. The Chasam Sofer also accepted weaker boys that others made fun of, as long as they had the desire to learn. He insisted that effort and yearning could transform anyone.

In addition to the house, the mikveh the Chasam Sofer used still exists, hidden and forgotten, yet its stone basin intact.

Next, we trace the Shabbos path out the back door.

“The truth is,” Rav Yakobovitz told me before we traveled, “until I actually saw the house, I wondered why the Chasam Sofer didn’t use the back door all week — after all, it’s a shorter route. But then I saw how this is really the storage part of the house. There is no flooring here, and there are still remnants of a large water urn. There was the kitchen, and here they did the laundry, so it wasn’t exactly a kavod for him to go out between the oven and the storage room. He did it on Shabbos as a stringency, but during the week, he was careful to go out from the front, for kavod haTorah.”

Broken Fences

On our bus ride out of town, we pass through an old fortress gate. Rav Weiss pulls out the teshuvah again:

“One of the city gates, called the Segalitz Gate, has a breach at the corner. Wagons and horses pass through there, and it seems to me that four handbreadths had not remained. My students know of this; I spoke of it many times in my walks there. But it’s difficult to repair, and I feared pressing the matter with the municipal officials, for it is was difficult to repair with a lechi or beam. Better the people be shogeg than meizid,” he writes to Rav Katz, but then continues that if Rav Katz can do something to rectify this, to get the activists and politicians to fix the breach, “then let them be remembered for good, and let my name be remembered, too, that I be joined to those who do a mitzvah.”

The bus itself is passing the very breach he described. The distance between parchment and pavement collapses.

But really, what does one gain from knowing which alley the Chasam Sofer walked, which widow lived on which corner, or whether the plaster jutting out of his wall is still in one piece?

Everything.

Because Torah is not abstract. It is lived in streets and houses, in back doors and lime plaster. The Chasam Sofer’s responsa were not ivory-tower theory, but rather halachah woven into the daily rhythms of a real community. Seeing those rhythms still imprinted on a Moravian street connects us to the timelessness of it all. Just imagine if the house would be a high-rise apartment, the mikveh filled in, the shul nothing more than a curiosity for tourists. Instead, the kehillah of Dreznitz, at some level, is still breathing, its stones creating an intersection of past and present.

The bus pulls away from Strážnice. The river glints, the hills recede. We fold up our “maps,” but we remember that the Chasam Sofer, whose 186th yahrtzeit is coming up on 25 Tishrei, closes his teshuvah with blessings. Two centuries later, may those blessings shield us, and may his Torah continue to guide Klal Yisrael on all journeys, whether they’re going out the front door or the back alley.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1081)