הרב יעקב גלינסקי

Rav Yaakov Yitzchak Galinsky (9 Tevet 5681/1920–22 Shevat 5774/2014), known to all as Reb Yankele, was the famed maggid of the last generation — a scion of the Novardok yeshivot who carried their mussar and their fire to crowds across Eretz Yisrael for over sixty years. He was born in Krynki, Poland, to Rav Avraham Tzvi and Devorah Galinsky, who were later murdered in the Shoah with all their family, הי״ד. He learned in the Novardok yeshiva of Bialystok under Rav Avraham Yoffen — a yeshiva with only a few shelves of sefarim, where the bachurim sharpened their understanding while waiting in line for them.

The war drove him east: in 5701/1941 he was exiled to Siberia together with about a hundred yeshiva bachurim, and in the war years he reached Tashkent in Uzbekistan, where he served as a melamed. On Tu B’Av 5705/1945 he married Tzivia, daughter of the Breslover chassid Rav Chaim Binyamin HaLevi Brod; after a period in the DP camps of Germany they came to Eretz Yisrael in 5709/1949 and settled in Bnei Brak, where he grew close to the Chazon Ish and to the Steipler, Rav Yaakov Yisrael Kanievsky.

In the 1950s he headed a yeshiva in Rosh HaAyin and gave himself to the young of the Yemenite olim; in the 1960s he headed the Novardok yeshiva in Chadera together with Rav Elchanan Perlmutter, another Novardok talmid, and afterwards built the Margenita D’Avraham network of kollelim, with branches in Yerushalayim, Modiin Illit and Beit Shemesh. But his name went out as the maggid: small in stature and endless in spirit, he made the rounds of the immigrant towns and held crowds spellbound with Novardok stories, meshalim and sharp sayings that other darshanim borrow to this day. He was once told that with so many people dreaming of the future, the maggid’s task is not to give mussar but simply to wake the sleepers — and each will do his part.

His shmuessen (talks) live on in Vehigadeta, the series on the Chumash and the moadim drawn from his talks by Rav Shalom Meir Wallach (5771–5773), and in the Lehagid sefarim. Among his talmidim was Rav Shimon Baadani of the Moetzet Chachmei HaTorah. Reb Yankele was niftar on 22 Shevat 5774, at ninety-three, and was buried in the cemetery of the Ponovezh yeshiva trustees in Bnei Brak; his grandson Rav Abba Tzvi Galinsky founded the Orchot Yaakov yeshiva in Modiin Illit in his memory.