Reb Yidele of Dzikov walked among men but lived in the world of angels

Photos: Mendel Photography

London-based rosh kollel and maggid shiur Rav Shloime Taussig is ever grateful for the years he spent at the side of Reb Yidele of Dzikov, a tzaddik who walked among men but lived in the world of angels. In Eretz Yisrael and toward the end of his life in England, Reb Yidele never agreed to “become a rebbe,” but he couldn’t hide the spiritual light that shined from his every move

There’s a scene that those fortunate to have been in Rav Yidele Horowitz’s inner circle will never forget: It’s Friday morning, and the saintly Reb Yidele, the only surviving son of the pre-war Dzikover Rebbe, is washing some items of clothing with soap and cold water. A white gartel. White socks. White yarmulke. White shal. Washed, wrung out, and hung on the railings of the small porch of his Jerusalem home, all the while chanting, “lekuved Shabbos kodesh, besheim kol Yisruel.” The simplest of actions, with the holiest of intent. And millions of such simple actions, minute by minute of “l'sheim mitzvah,” added up to a life lived with total self-effacement and incredible piety and purity.

During the postwar decades that he lived in Eretz Yisrael, Reb Yidele, who shunned publicity as well as the title of “rebbe,” was particular not to use his refrigerator on Shabbos because of certain halachic stringencies. On Thursday, he would prepare a bowl of water and freeze it in order to keep food cold on Shabbos. Then, on Friday, the plug of the refrigerator would come out, “lekuved Shabbos kodesh, besheim kol Yisruel.”

“You can’t imagine the avodah, and you can’t imagine the beauty,” says Rav Shloime Taussig, a London-based rosh kollel and maggid shiur who spent years at Reb Yidele’s side, both in Jerusalem and, in the last years of  Reb Yidele’s life, in London. “Putting on his shtreimel, he invoked the kavanah of ‘malbush leShabbos besheim kol Yisruel.’ On every bite, and even on a hot cup of tea on Friday night, the Rebbe would pronounce ‘besheim kol Yisruel, vekuroosuh leShabbos oneg.’ He was actualizing an idea of the Noam Elimelech, that even if one’s physical being is tainted by sin that might prevent those mitzvos from being accepted, doing the mitzvah united with all other Yidden — ‘besheim kol Yisruel’ — is the remedy.

Even on weekdays, when the Rebbe sat down to eat his meal, he had avodas Hashem in mind: “Besheim kol Yisruel vehiskadashtem vehiyisem kedoshim.” There simply was nothing mundane, no separation between the physical and the spiritual.