100 years after Rav Shayale's passing, the blessings of his home flow again

From devoted chassidim to lost souls, everyone was welcome in Reb Shayale’s home in the Hungarian village of Kerestir, where there was a never-ending supply of food, miracles, and salvations. When Reb Shayale passed away 100 years ago, he said the blessings would continue as long as the chesed did. The thousands who now converge at his kever know it’s true

When Rav Yeshaya Steiner, known to the world as Reb Shayale of Kerestir, passed away a hundred years ago this week on 3 Iyar in 1925, could he have known that a century later, chassidish singers would be crooning “Yeshaya ben Reb Moshe” songs for personal yeshuos, and that his burial spot on a Hungarian hilltop would become the Jewish world’s most popular yahrtzeit pilgrimage site after Meron on Lag B’omer?

What’s more baffling is that just 20 years ago, most people only knew Reb Shayale as the “mouse rebbe”: Hanging his picture in your house was a surefire segulah for removing mice infestation, based on a miracle story in which Reb Shayale sent a battalion of mice to the local courthouse to shred the file of evidence against a fellow Jew who’d be standing trial the next day. Yet who would have dreamed of flying to Hungary to go to his kever? And how, as they say in today’s vernacular, did Reb Yeshaya “go viral”?

A chassidic rebbe in the Hungarian village of Kerestir (Bodrogkeresztúr), Reb Shayale was beloved and revered for his kindness and humility, with the doors of his home at 68 Kossuth Utca always open to all.

From impassioned chassidim who doted on his every word, to lost souls searching for a bed and a warm meal, everyone was made to feel welcome in Reb Shayale’s house, where a seemingly never-ending supply of food and drink was dispensed at all hours of the day and night. The downtrodden, the forlorn, the struggling, and even the lice-infested were all treated like royalty by Reb Shayale, and visitors left Kerestir both spiritually and physically sated, often seeing miraculous personal salvations when all hope seemed lost.

As his last moments in This World slowly ticked away, Reb Shayale promised his heartbroken followers that those who came to his house would be helped just as they were when he was alive. In a further charge to his children, Reb Shayale explained that his promise of continued posthumous yeshuos was contingent on a single condition: that the chesed emanating from his house would continue after his passing just as it had in his lifetime.

His descendants are determined to carry on their zeide’s legacy. And judging by the crowds who flock to Rav Shayale’s house in an out-of-the-way Hungarian village year-round and especially on his yahrtzeit, where they’re welcomed with food, a bed, a mikveh, and anything else a visitor might need, the legacy is going stronger than ever.

But it wasn’t always like that.