הרב משה טייטלבוים

Rav Moshe Teitelbaum (12 Cheshvan 5675/1 November 1914–26 Nissan 5766/24 April 2006), known by his sefer as the Berach Moshe, was the Satmar Rebbe and president of the Hisachdus HaRabbonim from 5740 until his passing; before he came to America he sat as av beit din of Senta and of Sighet. He was born in Sighet in the Marmarosh mountains to Rav Chaim Tzvi Teitelbaum, author of the Atzei Chaim and Rebbe of Sighet, and to Brachah Sima, daughter of Rav Shalom Eliezer Halberstam, and was named for his forebear the Yismach Moshe; through his mother he was a great-grandson of Rav Chaim of Sanz and a descendant of Rav Shneur Zalman of Liadi. He was orphaned of his father at eleven, and three months later his mother was niftarah as well, and he was raised in the house of his grandfather, the Rebbe of Ratzfert. At thirteen he went to learn in Karaly by his uncle, Rav Yoel Teitelbaum, who would later be the Satmar Rebbe, and as a young man he received semichah from Rav Shaul Brach, rav of Kashau. He married Leah, daughter of his cousin Rav Chanoch Henoch Meir, av beit din of Keretzky and son-in-law of the Kedushat Yom Tov, and they had three children; he was appointed rav of the kehillah of Senta in Yugoslavia, settling there in 5700/1940.

In Iyar 5704 the Jews of the city were seized and sent to Auschwitz. They reached the camp on the second day of Shavuot, and that same day his wife and their three children were murdered. He himself was sent to the labor camp at Tröglitz, where he worked close to a year at hard labor in a benzene refinery; when American forces bombed the camp to break the Germans’ fuel supply, the Germans put the surviving prisoners on a train to Theresienstadt, which was itself bombed from the air — many were killed, and the rest went on foot for several days until they reached it. The camp was liberated in Iyar 5705/1945.

After the war he returned to Sighet (Romania) and set himself to rebuilding religious life among the she’erit hapleitah, and while he was there he married a second time, to Pessel Leah, daughter of Rav Aharon Teitelbaum of Volova, whose whole family had been killed in Auschwitz. Fearing the new Communist rule he left, and reached New York, where he found his uncle Rav Yoel, who had also been saved from the war. He settled in Boro Park and founded the beit midrash Atzei Chaim Sigut, named for his father, and there he was known as the Sigeter Rebbe, leading the Sighet court his forebears had led before him.

On the passing of Rav Yoel in 5739/1979, whose three daughters had gone before him, he inherited his place, and was appointed Rebbe on the first yahrtzeit of his uncle. He held himself a custodian of what his uncle had built — “we must not blaze new trails, but learn the teachings of my uncle,” he said — and he kept many of the minhagim his uncle had set down; in his manner of leading he was plain-spoken and practical where his uncle had been fiery. He wrote the sefer Berach Moshe, five volumes of chasidut on the Torah and the moadim. He was niftar on 26 Nissan 5766 and buried in Kiryas Joel near the kever of his uncle Rav Yoel; his sons Rav Aharon and Rav Yekusiel Yehuda each came to head a Satmar court, and another son, Rav Chananya Yom Tov Lipa, led the Zenta beit midrash in Williamsburg.