אליהו דוד רבינוביץ תאומים

Rav Eliyahu David Rabinowitz-Teomim (Shavuot 5603/1843–3 Adar I 5665/1905), known by his roshei teivot as the Aderet, was rav of Ponevezh and of Mir in Lita, and at the end of his days rav in Yerushalayim as the designated successor of Rav Shmuel Salant. He was born in the Lithuanian town of Pikeln together with his twin brother, Rav Tzvi Yehudah; their mother was niftar when they were five, and their father, Rav Binyamin, raised the boys alone. Between thirteen and fifteen the twins together composed Shevet Achim on the klalim of Shas, and later Bnei Binyamin; at sixteen he began Maasei LeMelech on the Rambam, a work that occupied him for decades more. In 5620/1860 he was betrothed to Feiga Mina, daughter of Aryeh Leib Chazan of Ponevezh, and moved to his father-in-law’s home, learning in the kloiz of Ponevezh.

At twenty-nine he was appointed rav of Ponevezh, and served there eighteen years. His rabbanut was marked by the care of the poor: he traveled himself to raise funds for them, and when the rabbanut of Warsaw was offered him he turned it down, being still bound to repay money he had borrowed to feed the hungry of his city; his own household lived in want. In 5646/1886 his daughter Alte Batsheva married Rav Avraham Yitzchak HaKohen Kook; when she was niftar three years later, the Aderet himself proposed that Rav Kook marry his niece, the daughter of his twin brother, and it was he who encouraged Rav Kook toward the rabbanut of Jaffa. On Lag BaOmer 5653/1893 he yielded to the townsmen of Mir and accepted their rabbanut.

After seven years in Mir he was called by Rav Shmuel Salant, by then very old and weak of sight, to stand at his side in the rabbanut of Yerushalayim and to fill his place after him. He went up in 5661/1901, and at his initiative — and at his own expense, given in secret — the eiruv was erected joining the Old City to the new neighborhoods outside the walls. His personal conduct, set down in his Nefesh David, was a Torah in itself: for decades he wore small tefillin through the hours of the day, carried kuntresim of tefillat haderech to hand to travelers on the trains, and was makpid to read kriat shema before haneitz, as the vatikin, even in the early summer dawns of Lita.

He wrote more than 120 sefarim, of which only two were printed in his lifetime — among them Seder Eliyahu, his autobiographical diary, Tefillat David on the siddur, Cheshbonot shel Mitzvah on the 613 mitzvot, Seder Parshiot on the parshiyot of the Torah, and Zecher LeMikdash — and in recent years many of them have been brought to print. He was niftar in Yerushalayim on 3 Adar I 5665/1905, four years after his arrival and still in the lifetime of Rav Salant, and was buried on Har HaZeitim. Rav Kook wrote the sefer Eder HaYakar in his memory; Yeshivat Bnei Akiva Aderet in Bat Yam and a street in the Kiryat Shmuel neighborhood of Yerushalayim carry his name.