הרב מרדכי גימפל יפה

Rabbi Mordechai Gimpel Yaffe (5580/1820–25 Cheshvan 5652/November 26, 1891) was for forty years the rav of Rozhinoy in White Russia, and in his last years one of the men of the First Aliyah to Eretz Yisrael. He was born in Utyan in northern Lithuania, a descendant of Rav Mordechai Yaffe, the Baal HaLevushim. His father, Rav Dov Ber Yaffe, had been a talmid of Rav Chaim of Volozhin and was niftar at thirty-two, when the boy was only nine. Mordechai Gimpel learned in Volozhin, and he favored an orderly, systematic study of halacha.

He was among the earliest members of Chovevei Tzion and corresponded on the settlement of the Land with Moshe Montefiore, Rav Tzvi Hirsch Kalischer and Rav Shmuel Mohilever; he also wrote for Yechiel Brill’s HaLevanon, at times together with Rav Mohilever. In the early 1880s he helped Brill and Rav Mohilever assemble a group of Jewish farmers from around Rozhinoy who were prepared to go up with him and work the land, and as his own aliyah drew near he immersed himself in Seder Zeraim. In 5648/1888 he went up with many families from his town and settled in the moshava of Ekron, declining an invitation from rabbanim of the Old Yishuv to live among them. Soon after, he founded a yeshiva in Yehud, a moshava its settlers had abandoned shortly before out of fear of malaria, and named it Etz Chaim after the yeshiva of Volozhin.

On the eve of one shemitah year, and in the great dispute over the sabbatical year he stood for strictness, opposing any leniency; he argued that there was no danger to life, nor of losing hold of the land, if the settlers kept sheviit. The farmers of Ekron heeded him and rested from their fields through the shemitah year despite the threats of the Baron’s officials. Six years after his aliyah he fell ill with fever and was niftar in Yehud. At his own request he was buried not in Yerushalayim but in the old cemetery of Petach Tikvah, to show that this place too carries the kedushah of Eretz Yisrael. Rav Diskin, the elder, came to the levayah against his custom of never leaving Yerushalayim, and stood through three hours of hespedim.

He was the great-uncle of Rav Avraham Yitzchak HaKohen Kook — the brother of his paternal grandmother — and the letter that opens the first volume of Igrot HaRaayah is addressed to him. His talmidim included Yechiel Michel Pines. His sefarim include Haggadat Mordechai on the Haggadah, glosses on Midrash Shocher Tov on Tehillim, Elef HaMagen on Masechet Horayot, written with his brother-in-law Rav Natan Neta Luria, and Techelet Mordechai on the Ramban’s commentary on the Torah, first printed in Yerushalayim in 5714/1954 and printed again from his manuscript in the Machon Yerushalayim edition of the Ramban in 5766/2006.